Hard to Handle (A 1D Story)

Ch. 13 - Fashion Show

The venue for Georg’s fashion show was exactly as ‘LA’ as the invitation suggested – a dingy two-story walkup on a random street corner on Wilshire. As per usual, the whole thing seemed effortlessly chic and underground – when in reality, everything down to the dust on the brick wall was calculatingly executed for maximum “hipster”-ness.

Check-in turned out to be located on the second floor – nothing more than a plastic white table and a snooty-looking redhead wearing big black-framed glasses. She barely looked up at me when I approached her.

“Name?”

“Uh, Jennifer. I don’t know if it might actually be under –”

“I don’t see a Jennifer on here,” she replied, in a condescending monotone (obviously practiced). “You do know you had to RSVP, right?”

I instantly bristled. I hated when people gave me attitude. “Yes,” I snapped back. “Actually, my company did. You do know they’re the ones sponsoring this whole thing, right? Maybe you’ve heard of P&W.”

The girl looked up at once, eyes wide as saucers. “Oh my god, you’re the handler who’s supposed to bring…” She trailed off; face paling as she took in the five boys standing behind me. “…One Direction.”

“That’s right.” And what.

“Hello,” the guys greeted her in their usual polite voices.

She swallowed, seemingly frozen in a look of wide-eyed awe. “Uh, sorry about that… go right ahead.” Her fumbling fingers handed us each a program (the ones with the graphic I’d made on them!) and pointed us to the right. I suppressed an eye roll and we all made our way to the open bar.

“That was brilliant,” Louis chuckled, eyes scrunching up into crinkles as we all reached for our complimentary glass of white wine. “That girl wasn’t very nice, was she?”

“It’s the way of LA,” I shrugged sagely, taking a long sip of wine. “We’re rude to each other until the moment we find out we have what the other wants.”

“That means what she wanted was us. I like it,” Niall laughed, wagging his brows.

We laughed. “Anyway, I’m going to look around,” I told them, glancing at the thin gold watch on my wrist. “Show starts in half an hour, so meet me in the runway room then.”

The space leading up to the runway was organized like a museum, filled with different installations that were supposed to be related to the theme of Georg’s line… or something like that. Whatever. Modern art had never been my strong suit. I could never seem to understand how a splotch of orange paint or stacked tin cans was somehow supposed to be symbolic of world peace or feminism or whatever the artist happened to be into. Modern art was all way too esoteric for me – no matter how deep I tried to seem.

Georg’s installations were no exception… but the craziest part of them was that they were human installations. Each side of the room was partitioned off, with nude models painted all over with white paint posing within each one. Some of them had feathers pasted on their eyebrows and on their white underwear, but nothing else. Even their hair was spray-painted white.

I stood in front of the first girl, eyes scrunched up in confusion. Is this supposed to mean something? That feathers symbolize peace? Or maybe that modern art is a colossal waste of time…Yeah, that’s gotta be it.

“Enjoying the show?” a teasing voice materialized at my side.

I turned around to see Harry, one hand holding a flute of champagne and the other in his pocket. With his casually part-buttoned dress shirt and black skinny jeans, he looked perfectly at ease amongst the sea of fashionable try-hards. I flushed, conscious of the fact that this was the first time we’d been alone with each other for longer than five minutes since the awkward night of Chloe’s birthday.