Let Her Go

Dazzle

Dazzle: [noun] a brightness that blinds someone temporarily

Three Years Later

Cameras flashed, bright and blinding, but Harlow was so used to them now that she filtered them out. She didn't even feel nervous anymore, didn't have to focus on keeping her shoulders up and her hips forward, her eyes straight ahead, her face an expressionless mask. It was as natural to her as breathing, this walk, and when she made it to the end she posed for the cameras, turned gracefully, and began the walk back.

In the early days, the walk back had always been the most stressful part. You could see the corner, the end, you were so close, the adrenaline was fading and your limbs were beginning to tremble. Stumbling that close to the finish line didn't just carry the risk of ruining your career, but also of breaking your heart. How many of the girls she'd worked with had thought they'd made it only to misstep it in those last few metres? At least a dozen. And only half of those still worked as models.

But she hadn't felt that anxiety in a long time either.

Instead, she felt exhausted. Exhausted and hungry and bored. She was twenty-two, old to still be doing runway shows, but when she'd become the face of Anya Walborough's winter line of female footwear two years ago, she'd been lifted out of semi-obscurity and into the limelight. Now she was one of the rare success stories in this industry – her career only beginning to take off while many of the girls she'd started modelling with were aging out, if they hadn't done so already.

You have to stay relevant, her first agent had told her just after she'd turned nineteen. As long as you're relevant you've got a job.

He'd been wrong about a lot of things, but not about that.

So she'd done commercials and music videos and photo shoots and runways shows. She'd dated prominent men and integrated herself with famous designers. She'd worked her arse off for two and a half years to stay ahead of the curve. That was why she was still here, still relevant, her face splashed across magazines and billboards and television ads, cameras flashing at her from the moment she stepped out of her apartment to the moment she stepped back inside it. And all the while her business degree sat at home and gathered dust.

Sometimes she wondered why she'd made the effort of doing the online program if she wasn't planning to use the degree she'd gotten out of it. Realistically, with the kind of work she was getting now she could let her career run its course and live more than comfortably when it was all over.

But that's not the endgame. Remember. You're going places.

She turned the corner and the chaos of the runway, with its explosions of camera flashes, dazzling spotlights, and the loud, pumping music, fell away to be replaced by a different kind of chaos. Backstage was frenetic and fast-paced, the air heavy with expectant anxiety, stifled irritation, and dozens of over-developed egos.

In a lot of ways, being out here was like balancing on a hair-trigger. In a room full of nervous young women, all of them uniquely lovely and loaded with the kind of arrogant self-interest they needed to succeed, things could get bitchy fast. It was inevitable that something would flip that switch.

But nothing could ever be entirely ugly. There had to be some element of beauty in all that madness. And there was. It was evident in the way girls helped adjust one another's outfits, offering murmurs of reassurance, sharing their little plastic cups of food. It was camaraderie, a phenomenon so profoundly beautiful it made Harlow catch her breath every time.

She couldn't dwell on it tonight, though. The moment she got back she began working on getting herself out of the feathery concoction she'd been squeezed into earlier, hands coming out of nowhere to untie straps and undo zippers, voices yammering and chattering in her ears, telling her where not to step and what to do with her arms.