You Before Anyone Else

by Julie Cross

  “So Finley was on top of that?” I nod toward the set.

  “Yeah, she was a cake adornment. Precious concept, isn’t it?”

  I can just imagine Finley up on that cake, fuming about hooking up with a guy who ended up at her job the morning after. I shouldn’t laugh, but I have to.

  When we finally arrive on set, everyone introduces themselves in one rapid procession.

  I run through all the names a few times in my head. It’s impolite to not address someone by their full name after they’ve given it. Alonzo, Roberto, Emmy, Alan, Eliza—who’s clearly still not happy about our makeup session before—and Eliza’s assistant, who still remains nameless.

  “Okay, you can take your place on set,” Alonzo says.

  I make my way between a “God Save the Queen” poster with a yellow mustache and a turned-over red garbage pail.

  “Here is your story,” Alonzo says. “You are a rich schoolboy, cutting class to go smoke and drink with his friends.” I stand there unchanged. I didn’t know I’d be playing a character from “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room.” “I know it sounds like a lot of emotions to get into one picture, but just see what you can do with it.” Without warning, Alonzo starts snapping pictures like a fiend. “Okay, change up your pose. Let’s see what you got.”

  I still haven’t moved. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to be doing? It’s not like I have a drink in my hand or a cigarette. My stomach is in knots all of a sudden. I give what probably looks like an aloof expression and cross my arms.

  Alonzo shakes his head. “No, no, no. I don’t want it to feel posed. It should feel lifestyle cool.”

  So pose without looking posed. Sounds easy. Plus, I’m in the middle of a cheap replica of an alley in Hackney. This is really not helping.

  I see Finley off to the side, watching. When Alonzo pauses to adjust the lights, she steps closer and whispers, “Don’t think about the camera. Imagine you’re back at the party last night, hanging out.”

  Returning to the party leads to thinking about the walk up to Finley’s room and everything that happened after.

  “Perfect, bello!” Alonzo calls, startling me. “Keep that expression. Just change your pose.”

  Finley gives me a smile from her spot in the corner. The sweet Finley returns.

  CHAPTER 9

  Finley

  “What are they shooting over there?” Eddie’s leaning a little too close to me while we both sneak a peek at the studio beside ours.

  I spot a familiar face standing near the stylist.

  “Prada,” I say, working hard to keep the jealousy out of my voice. “It’s for the fall-winter line.”

  “Isn’t that—”

  “My roommate, Summer,” I finish for Eddie.

  Unlike my giant birthday cake set, Summer’s spotlight is under an elegant, makeshift dance studio with a white grand piano in the center. The dress she’s wearing is absolutely gorgeous. It’s short, light purple, and it flares out like a tutu. Her hair is piled in a bun on top of her head. At five eleven, Summer easily has a couple inches on me. My five eight status is something all my agents have tried to hide or divert attention from. And now I see why. Those three inches look like a foot under the lights with the dress and the set.

  My stomach sinks. A wild, edgy side might not be enough to get me here.

  Summer looks up and spots me. I give her a little wave. But then, after wrapping up my last shots and saying good-bye to the crew, I take a stab at being a good sport and walk over there to say hi. Behind me, Eddie gets called back to set, and some of the day’s anxiety lifts off me, knowing he’ll go his way after this and I can go mine. Not that he isn’t nice to look at. Not that I didn’t love his hands on me last night. But the beauty of all of that lies in the moment. Not the future. At least, I think it does.

  “This is kind of amazing,” I say when I reach Summer.

  She’s standing behind a chair, leaning into it, her face filled with anxiety. “Yeah, how about I go stand on top of your birthday cake and you can try balancing in these?”

  Summer’s height drops a few inches, and she sticks out a foot, revealing a pointe shoe dyed purple to match her dress. Okay, so I’m not going crazy. She really did look taller all of a sudden. “You shouldn’t stand in those if you don’t know how.”

  “Try telling him that,” she snaps, nodding toward the photographer less than twenty feet away.

  I squat down to examine the shoes more closely. The ribbons are incorrectly sewn, as are the elastics. And they aren’t broken in at all. I tap her right foot. “Drop your heels.”

  She lowers to the floor, but when I push her feet out into wide second position, her toes curl over. “Those shoes are too small for you.”

  Summer shifts to one foot and shakes out the other, like her circulation is cut off. “Figures. My feet are too big for Prada. All the dieting in the world won’t fix that.”

  My mom had a saying, one I’d heard too many times to count: your shoes are your instrument. I watched her stand in front of countless ecstatic eleven-year-old girls and recite that piece of wisdom before their first pointe class. She would have had a heart attack watching anyone’s feet being shoved into a shoe that’s so obviously the wrong size.

  “Why do you need to stand in these? Can’t they just drape you across the piano and show off your matching feet or something?”

  “The ballet shoe heels,” Summer explains and then gestures at four girls in wardrobe right now. They’re all wearing identical dresses to Summer’s except different colors—one orange, one pink, a nude, and another in light blue. The heels they’re wearing are a boot style that travel almost to the knee, and the front mimics a pointe shoe, giving the leg a longer, slimmer look. And emphasizing that “beauty is pain” message high fashion folks love to spread.

  I look back down at Summer’s feet. Now it makes sense. She’s going to stand up and show the comparison between pointe shoes and the ballet heels. Even without turning my head, I hear the distinct sound of one of the girls stumbling in those heels.

  There’s a lot of commotion on set with all the assistants testing lights and shifting props, trying to get everything perfect.

  “Sit,” I order.

  She bites her lip like she’s nervous, which is not very Summer-like behavior, but eventually, she plops down, her knees shaking. I peel the shoes off and start the process of warming them up, first flexing the shank, allowing for easier bending. I bring both shoes closer to my face and inhale the familiar scent. I’m immediately transported to an empty, dust-covered studio in Connecticut. One that’s waiting to be brought back to life.

  I shake those thoughts from my head and quickly kick off my flip-flops and slide my feet into the purple pointe shoes. They’re a little big, but I shut down my mother’s voice, lecturing me about the importance of a proper fit. I stand and then rise up to half relevé, pushing my arches forward with the hope of giving the shoes a wider range of motion.

  Summer stays on the floor, rubbing her toes. “How do you get your feet to go sideways like that?”

  I rest a hand on the chair Summer had been holding with a death grip moments ago and push all the way onto my toes. And just like that, I’m inches taller. The rush of adrenaline makes it easy to ignore the pain in my feet from lack of practice and zero padding in the toes.

  Summer’s mouth falls open. “Forget the sideways feet. How do you do that?”

  “Practice.” Hours and hours of practice. A wardrobe of leotards and tights and very little else. Bloody toes and sore muscles. The inability to walk across wood floors in socks without doing at least one pirouette. I’m not sure if my body can move that way anymore, but it’s all still in my head. And my heart.

  “Okay, but how do I fake it in a matter of minutes?” Summer asks, bringing me back to the reason I put on the shoes in the first place.

/>   I release the chair and drop my heels, then press back up on pointe a few times in a row. “I’m hoping to make these bend a little easier for you. Let me see your toe point?”

  She stares blankly at me.

  “Point your feet.”

  Summer’s toes curl over. She’s slightly flat-footed but supporting herself decently. Probably helps that she wears heels all the time. Prada is lucky her ankles aren’t weak, because she could have broken a bone just by attempting to stand in pointe shoes. Obviously, the creative talent behind this concept knows nothing about ballet.

  “Summer, we’re ready for you!” the photographer’s assistant calls.

  I do one quick pirouette and then lower to my normal height and quickly remove a shoe. By now, the photographer has taken notice of me and is striding this way.

  He points to the remaining purple shoe on my right foot, then the one in my left hand. “What is this?”

  For a second, the anxiety returns to Summer’s face, and then she pulls it together, arms folded over her chest, diva expression plastered on. Now she looks like the daughter of Vogue’s top creative director.

  “What is this?” Summer repeats, giving me a nod. “A professional. That’s what. Did you think I’d be able to master an art form that takes years of practice in an hour? You want me in this shoot, and you want this concept, then I’m gonna get it fucking right. And hopefully without a broken bone.”

  His face changes from suspicious to sympathetic, maybe even a little nervous. “Of course, sweetheart, whatever you need.”

  My jaw drops open. Wow. So this is what it’s like to make it big. Maybe if I tell off a few photographers, I can get the diva label and start booking some big jobs? That definitely wasn’t sweet and innocent, that’s for sure.

  “Finley?” Summer says, lifting her eyebrows, passing on a silent message to me. “What’s your professional opinion regarding these shoes and my ability to stand in them for the shoot?”

  “Um…well…” I look at the shoe in my hand and then quickly remove the other one. “They’re a bit small for her. If she had the correct size, it might make it easier to—”

  “We have plenty more.” The photographer lifts a cloth from a nearby table, revealing more than a dozen boxes of pointe shoes.

  I hesitate, my gaze drifting between the shoes and the two of them. What am I doing?

  “The right size, Finley…” Summer prompts.

  “Oh, yeah.” I kneel on the floor and sift through the boxes, pulling out a size that I know will at least be better. I spot a package of toe pads as well and grab one of those. “Try these.”

  The photographer stands there watching. His hovering makes me nervous, so I busy myself searching for a pair close to my size. I locate a box on the very bottom of the stack and remove them. These shoes are nude colored instead of purple.

  “These feel better,” Summer says after getting both shoes on. “Especially with the padding in the toe.”

  I tell her to take them off again and go through the same process of bending them with my hands. Then I put on the nude-colored pair and show her how to break them in by doing pliés and half relevés. When I push up all the way onto my toes, the photographer claps and says, “Brilliant!”

  For a moment, I’m five years old again, looking into the studio mirror, attempting to mimic the brown-haired woman beside me, dancing on top of her toes. Back then, it had looked like magic to me.

  Relax your shoulders, Fin. Real ballerinas have loooong necks, like a giraffe.

  Goose bumps pop up all over my arms, the voice in my head surrounding me like a cool breeze.

  “Do you need her legs to be straight?” I ask, forcing myself back to the present.

  “Yes, straight long legs,” he says.

  Summer’s flat feet will make standing straight very difficult. “What if she’s facing backward, leaning against the piano?”

  His face wrinkles, and he scratches the back of his head. With a sigh, I walk over to the set and place my hands on the slick surface of the piano, going up on my toes. Both he and Summer follow. He doesn’t say anything, but I can hear him thinking, trying to rearrange the concept. I grab Summer and put her in my place. Leaning against the piano, she manages to get all the way on her toes, but her face wrinkles in pain.

  “Is it supposed to hurt this much?” she whispers to me.

  “Another reason to have the back of your head to the camera. You can glance over your shoulder and get some face in the shot,” I say.

  “Maybe,” the photographer finally says, then grabs one girl at a time and arranges them in different poses around Summer, all of their calves long and flexing in response to the heels and pointe shoes.

  The assistant is beside him now, both of them speaking in a mix of French and English. I catch a few words from the assistant when he says, “I still like her standing on top of the piano better, but this works too.”

  Standing on pointe on the piano? Jesus. She would have broken more than an ankle. But then again, what’s more edgy than a broken neck from a modeling shoot, right?

  I back away from the set, allowing the lighting people to make the proper changes, but I don’t get all the way out before I bump into someone. I spin around, and I’m pressed up against Eddie.

  Like last night. Except with clothes on this time.

  He drops a hand onto my shoulder to steady me. “So, Finley Belton…you’re harboring a secret talent?”

  My face heats, and I can’t look him in the eye. That whole “we had sex” thing really makes small talk difficult. I bend down and remove the nude-colored pointe shoes. “Yeah, apparently, I’m a professional consultant for Summer. Looking forward to sending her the bill for my expert services.”

  He’s back in his normal clothes again, the curly hair returned to its semi-unruly state, and by the looks of it, he’s gone through great effort to wipe his face clean of all makeup. In fact, his skin looks red from scrubbing so hard.

  “You’re all done for the day?” Lame. Like I said, small talk is weird. Maybe any talking after last night is weird? I’m in brand-new territory, so I have no idea what this is supposed to be like.

  “Yep, thank God,” Eddie says, shaking his head. “That was torturous. I don’t know how you do this all the time.”

  “Well, it pays the bills.” I hold up the shoes, looking for an excuse to end this conversation. “I better return these.”

  “I’ll go with you. We can walk out together.”

  Great.

  I have to walk past the Prada set to get my flip-flops and bag. Summer catches my eye and mouths, “thank you.”

  Coming from a spoiled diva model, that’s quite the kind gesture. And even though today sucked, it was nice to be good at something. To feel like I belonged, even if my consultant position was made up on the spot.

  I try to return the nude-colored pointe shoes to the stylist, but she waves a hand and says, “Keep them. We were told they can’t be reused.”

  It’s hard to tell if she’s unhappy that I “ruined” an extra pair of shoes or not, but whatever. I tuck the shoes into my bag and head for the elevator, feeling the heat of Eddie beside me.

  He reaches for the down button and then leans against the wall, facing me. “Tell me about ballerina Finley. I’m only familiar with model Finley.”

  I sigh again and contemplate banging my head against the wall. This is so not how you do a one-night stand. Besides, how familiar could he even be with model Finley? We just met last night.

  CHAPTER 10

  Eddie

  “What’s there to tell? I used to do ballet.” Finley taps her toe and stares down the elevator doors, willing them to open.

  Normally, evasive answers would be a cue for me to back off, but for some reason, the more walls she drops between us, the more I want to figure out how to knock them down
again. They were down last night almost from the moment we were introduced.

  And the ballet thing? The girl has obviously worn many pairs of pointe shoes in her past, and yeah, I’m surprised to find this out. And people don’t surprise me very often.

  Except Caroline. She gets the queen of surprise title after the last several months.

  My stomach twists into knots, remembering her text from this morning. You’re doing the right thing, E.

  I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. I just know that I’m not doing what Caroline thinks I’m doing. Lying to my parents is one thing, but lying to her…

  The elevator doors open with a loud squeal, and I realize Finley’s staring at me, waiting for me to move. “After you.”

  Her forehead wrinkles as she steps inside the elevator. The doors close, but I block her from pushing a button and lean closer, resting a hand on either side of her, my fingers curling around the railing. I’m instantly taken back to last night, the heat filling the small space between us. Yes. This is what I need. My happy place.

  “Look,” I say, enjoying her instant reaction to me invading her personal space—wide eyes, mouth falling open, and her pulse… I can feel it speed up when my chest brushes hers. “I know you’re all, ‘I failed at the impersonal one-night stand,’ but really, there’s only one rule, and I don’t think either of us broke it.”

  Her eyebrows lift. “What’s that?”

  I inhale, and even with the large quantity of hair gel on both of us, I still get a trace of her familiar scent, one that involves fruit and sex. My own heart picks up. “The only rule is to have fun. And I definitely enjoyed myself. What about you?” Have fun and avoid a scandal.

  Her eyes lock with mine, cheeks reddening. Her fingers crawl up my T-shirt, wrapping around the material covering my heart and pulling me so close our noses touch. “I had fun, Eddie.”