Unstoppable (Fierce)

by Voight, Ginger

  Jace was ready to blow it off entirely, but I encouraged him to take advantage of the opportunity. “Might as well strike while the iron is hot,” I advised as I twirled my finger along the chiseled perfection of his chest.

  “I agree,” he grinned as he pushed me back on the bed. After he’d thought about it, though, he realized that it was great PR for the show. The producers of Fierce set out to prove anyone could chase any dream. Why not put someone the world often dismissed as handicapped or lesser than on the cover of every single fashion magazine from coast to coast, the poster boy to what was hip and current? It opened a door to other models, honoring individuality over the ever-elusive state of perfection.

  It wasn’t his favorite endorsement by far. He’d already been tapped to endorse a new motorcycle, designed to match his sleeve tattoo. It was deeply layered with things that meant something to him, and he would add layers to document each stage of his life. Before the war, he opted for a waving American flag over a lightning backdrop. After the war, he added a proud eagle flying across the face of the flag, holding an olive branch of peace in its beak to signify his quest for peace over battle. Now there was a banner below the eagle, which stated simply: “Dream Big. Live Large. BE FIERCE.” It was sexy, hard core and patriotic – which summed up Jace’s philosophy toward life.

  He made it clear to me that if Titanium and Lace wanted to cover up this proud piece, he’d walk on the deal entirely.

  Turned out, though, the executives at Titanium and Lace were more than accommodating. The only caveat they seemed insistent upon was that they wanted to do a couples theme in order to show off their men’s and women’s fashion. Jace had suggested me immediately, given I was the runner-up to Fierce. Unfortunately, their sizing cut off at XL, a size I had left in the taillights in middle school. Even now, after losing the weight I had lost, I still found myself reaching for a 2X for the truest fit. In some shops, I could get away with a 1X, it just depended upon how large the sizes ran.

  Some stores made me feel skinnier than others, but places like Titanium and Lace – like many hipster clothing spots – made me feel like a freak living off the grid entirely.

  “They want to set me up with another model,” he told me on the phone, as the car brought him back to the hotel. “It doesn’t feel right if it’s not you.”

  “I don’t want you to miss this opportunity,” I replied. “I mean, it’s a photo shoot. It’s not marriage.”

  “There are other clothing lines. If I’m supposed to represent the inclusivity of our show, then shouldn’t it include all of us from Fierce? And if it doesn’t, why would I be supporting it?”

  I shrugged, though he couldn’t see. I was used to these types of hurdles when shopping for clothes. That was why I could never get excited about it unless it was a specialized boutique, made to honor and celebrate my particular figure. These other restrictions were the standards we all had to live by. It seemed silly to penalize Jace when he’d worked so hard for these opportunities. I said as much to him.

  “Maybe I’ll get Lavender,” he said, and I could almost hear the smirk over the phone as he referred to our loud and proud transgender cast mate.

  “I’d love to see that!” I chuckled.

  Later that night, when the rest of the gang had arrived and checked into the hotel, we all headed to the Haight for pizza. It was a noisy crowd that got even rowdier as the beer flowed and the pizza pies stacked up on the four tables we all occupied. Shelby gravitated toward Jace and me, her Fierce family she felt truly safest around. She turned to Jace. “How did it go with Titanium and Lace?” she asked.

  Jace shrugged. “I still haven’t decided,” he answered.

  She tackled another piece of pesto pizza. “What are you waiting for? I’d be all over that in a heartbeat,” she said. “It’s one of my favorite stores. I love their mod pieces the best.”

  “Maybe I should give them your name instead,” he joked, but Shelby’s face fell.

  “They wouldn’t use me. I’m not really getting endorsements,” she said as she loaded her slice with parmesan cheese. “Just local stuff around Nashville. I thought coming in third would be a bigger opportunity, but you and Jordi seem to have the biggest draw.”

  Randy nodded. “If it weren’t for DIB, I’d probably still have to hustle just to wring as much as I could out of my eighth place finish, too. Milo got a Broadway show and Lavender snagged a Las Vegas review, but the rest of us faded to black the minute the final credits rolled.”

  “I don’t know how big of a draw I have,” I told her. “I couldn’t get a gig with Titanium and Lace because they don’t make my size.” Suddenly, a light bulb appeared over my head. I turned to Jace. “Why don’t you suggest Shelby to T&L?”

  Her eyes widened as she stared at us. “Are you kidding?”

  I shook my head. “They want him to do couple spreads. Why not two of the top three Fierce contestants? That way you’ll get your name and face out there so people won’t forget you.”

  “Strike while the iron is hot,” Jace agreed, parroting my advice to him. He glanced over at me to see if I was truly OK with the idea, but I thought it was a perfect way for everyone to get exposure. Why let some nameless model ride Jace’s coattails, when Shelby had worked hard to shape her brand over the past year?

  “If you’re sure,” she said, her big, blue eyes wide and hopeful as she stared up at Jace. He hesitated a minute or so before he gave her a tender smile. “Sure. I’ll send them a message tonight.”

  My gut tightened and I immediately second-guessed suggesting her, especially since Titanium and Lace was all over it by morning. They loved the idea of using two finalists from the show, and I could imagine they were doing somersaults in their offices that they got two of the most picture perfect ones of the bunch. They set their plan into motion so that everything could be set up for a preliminary photo spread by Friday morning. Shelby was a chatty, little ball of an excitement as we cruised around the Bay at sunset on a luxury cruising boat that Thursday night.

  She kept asking Jace his opinion on how they should pose and what she should wear, and he patiently indulged her. I gritted my teeth and tried to tune it out as we stood near the railing. Instead I focused on the majestic skyline of San Francisco coming to life with a thousand twinkling lights that seemed to skip across the rippling water to reach us.

  “She’s just excited,” I kept telling myself. “She’s not being possessive, she’s understandably enthusiastic. Besides. This was my idea.”

  She shivered against the chilly night air, clutching her big coat around her tiny shoulders. She talked until her teeth clattered, and Jace – gentleman that he was – decided to wrap one of his big arms around her quaking shoulders to provide extra warmth.

  She gave him a grateful smile that only provoked the green-eyed monster deep inside me. I knew she loved him, why had I thrust her at him like a big, raw steak to a starving lion?

  I stole a glance at him through the corner of my eye. He seemed perfectly content to hold her in his arm as we watched the city go by. It made me wonder about their kiss eons ago, when he had been drinking and kissed her because I had disappeared with Eddie.

  What had it been like? What had it looked like? Had he pulled her close, or had she leaned in?

  And most importantly, if I were not in the picture right now, would they be doing it again?

  Despite the romantic grandeur of the tour, or the rest of the night that followed, my mood was definitely in the shitter by the time we reached the hotel. Shelby, who had just turned 22, wanted to celebrate a nightcap with Jace, to toast their good fortune with the T&L campaign. She was, in her very subtle way, trying to get rid of the one she considered the “third wheel” – the married lady who wasn’t old enough to get into the bar.

  Off her hopeful glance, I sent them on ahead with a feigned yawn. My head was low all the way up to the room. As much as I didn’t want to think about it, I kept imagining the scenarios with them in the pool ba
ck at the finalist mansion, when they had kissed for the first, and Jace had assured, the last time.

  I knew Jace well enough to know that he wasn’t the kind of guy to kiss any girl who happened to be in his reach. After Amy dumped him, he had shunned female attention, afraid of his heart being broken again by trusting the wrong girl. I was the first one he kissed, the first one he’d made love to, the first one he had wanted more than he had feared.

  So his decision to add Shelby to that list was significant. I knew they were friends, and had spent quite a bit of time talking – privately – probably sharing the same deep secrets both of them had shared with me. I really couldn’t imagine a scenario where Jace might have willfully used her out of convenience, the same way Eddie always had used me.

  No, he had kissed her because he wanted to. He had been attracted to her, enough to want to cross over the line of friendship for a taste of her lips.

  Why wouldn’t he want to have sex with her? Eddie certainly did. She was petite, with glowing blonde hair and bright blue eyes, and was, at the very heart of it, a sweet person that Jace must have trusted on some level to give himself over like that.

  And now they were in a bar together. He was, no doubt, sharing a celebratory drink with her. Maybe with every sip, he’d remember why he wanted to kiss her in that pool in the first place. I could imagine them sitting close in an intimate little booth, his head bent towards hers to hear what she was saying in the noisy, crowded bar. She’d place her tiny hand on his thigh as she’d bend to whisper in his ear. He’d laugh, they’d look into one another’s eyes and time would stretch as another kiss hung in the air.

  Would he look away from her beseeching eyes? Or would his gaze drift to those pink, perfect lips and remember what they felt like, what they tasted like?

  Would he want more?

  My masochistic brain pulled a memory from the Eddie files.

  “If it makes a man an asshole to want beautiful, sexy, thin women,” he had told me once, “then all men are assholes.”

  “Not all men.” I tried to insist, but he was quick to correct me.

  “I suppose you think your Bionic Boy is any different.”

  “I know he is,” I had asserted.

  “Why?” he challenged. “Because he told you some pretty, flowery things that made you feel less gross about yourself? He’s a man. Men lie. They say what they want to get what they want. But inside we’re all the same.”

  I rattled my head to free myself from such depressing thoughts. I was driving myself crazy. This was my idea, I reminded myself again. Jace wasn’t Eddie, not even remotely. Shelby was our friend and we both wanted to help her. He had never given me any reason not to trust him.

  So I peeled off my clothes and jumped into a fragrant bubble bath, trying to fill my mind with much nicer thoughts… like what I was going to do to him when he finally got back to my room that night. I didn’t even bother dressing after I toweled off. I wrapped myself in a thick, complementary robe and crawled into bed to wait. After about a half hour, I turned on the TV.

  I dozed off before he came to bed, awaking only as the bed shifted under his weight. I glanced at his darkened silhouette. “Have a good nightcap?”

  “Yeah, sorry that took so long,” he said as he slipped out of his pants, then curled up next to me on the bed. “She needed to talk.”

  “About what?” I asked as casually as I could as I gently trailed a finger across his chest.

  “She’s really freaked out about tomorrow. She thinks they’ll figure out she’s no model and send her packing. She’s panicked she won’t be good enough.” He gathered me into his arms. “I had to talk her down from the cliff, and let her know she’s perfect as is.”

  My gut tightened. “How did you do that?”

  His eyes searched for mine in the darkness. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been gone a couple of hours. That sounds like you had to do some major convincing. Was it all at the bar?”

  He propped himself up on one arm. “What are you asking me, Jordi?”

  “How long does it take to convince a pretty girl she’s pretty?”

  “You tell me,” he said as he bent his head towards mine. He kissed me softly. “I’ve been trying to convince you for almost a year.”

  I ducked away from his kiss and pulled the covers up almost to my chin. “Oh, please. It’s not the same thing and you know it.”

  “Isn’t it?” he coaxed softly as he tugged the covers down. “My opinion is the same, only the people are different. Why does she have to agree any faster than you do? Don’t I get to say who I think is pretty?”

  He scooted closer, and I could feel the hardening contour of his body against the soft flesh of my hip. “And shouldn’t I get to say who I burn for every minute of the day? Who I dream about touching even when we’re thousands of miles apart? You’re an echo on my soul, Jordi.” My eyes fluttered shut the lower his voice dropped. “Every time I think of you I want to touch you, I want to kiss you, I want to love only you.”

  My words were lost when his hands touched my body. His large hand possessively cupped my full breast as he nibbled at the nape of my neck.

  “I love the way you fill my hand,” he whispered near my ear as his thumb lightly brushed across the hardening nipple. I couldn’t help but gasp. “You’re mythical, like a goddess.”

  I fought the urge to shake my head. “Jace,” was all I could say.

  He tore down the sheet, revealing my body to him. Easily he shifted over me and fit himself against me, between my thighs, as his eyes locked with mine. “Every time you surround me,” he said softly, toying with my lips in a series of subtle kisses, “is like falling into heaven.”

  I melted against him. I shivered against the night air, trying not to feel conscious of every bulge that was pressed against him. His hand disappeared between my legs, his fingers dancing across my slippery flesh until I writhed beneath him in exquisite longing to be filled, to be completed. He watched my face as I lost myself to the sensations. When that first wave of pleasure hit, he shoved himself inside of me, hard and true.

  “You’re perfect,” he said into my mouth, before a deep, hard kiss that proved his passionate words were true. My fingernails dug into his strong hips as I encouraged him to show how raw his desire was for me. He lost himself in every thrust, and I felt every ghost between us slip away the more he branded me for his own. I was thrashing under him by the time he drove in that last time, empting himself inside of me, heart and soul.

  As he curled up beside me and drifted to sleep, I chastised myself for doubt him. He wasn’t like all men. He couldn’t be.

  When I reached for my phone to set the alarm, I saw a text I had missed while dozing. It was from Shelby.

  “Thank you so much for recommending me for this photo shoot. I really feel it’s going to happen for me and Jace now and I’ll have you to thank for my happily ever after. You’re my guardian angel, Jay! Love you!”

  My stomach tied back up in a knot and all the scenarios I ran in my head while they were together made an unwanted encore. I couldn’t even sleep as I wrapped myself around Jace’s sleeping form.

  All I could do was hold on for dear life.

  He was gone by the time I got up the next morning. Rather than watch TV at the hotel room, I headed down to the venue early. I decided to walk, which I regretted about halfway there, when I ran across a newsstand featuring all that week’s news that was fit – or titillating – to print. From one of the gossip mags a big headline screamed: “FIERCE DIVA AIRBRUSHED TO SELL TICKETS?”

  Despite my better judgment, I stopped to read the piece.

  “Are some markets tilting the odds more into Fierce finalist Jordi Hemphill’s favor, by editing her to be thinner? That is what some size-positive groups are saying. New promotional photos in bigger cities like New York and Chicago show the plus-size singer morphed into a noticeably thinner version of herself, in some markets almost comically so.”

&nb
sp; I glanced at the photos, which showed me squeezed into a tiny, supporting talent box and morphed smaller just to fit. The piece was right, in markets where fashion reigned supreme, I was very noticeably smaller. I sighed, reached into my purse and grabbed some money to pay for the magazine. Ten minutes later I was back at the hotel, knocking on Vanni’s door.

  He was disheveled when he answered, wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms. I had to grin to myself, reminded that we were living the rock star life now. There were no early risers in our bunch. “Hey,” he said as he wiped the sleep from his eyes with one hand. “What’s up?”

  I held up the magazine. He took it, glanced over it, and then moved from the door to invite me inside. “Did you know about this?” I asked him as I watched him close the door behind me.

  “We hire out concert PR, Jordi. This was likely a decision made independent from the label. Graham would never sign off on this.”

  I hadn’t thought so, but who knew for sure? His job was to sell tickets. Obviously someone thought this was the right way. With a sigh I wilted into one of the sofas in his suite. “I guess you’re right.”

  He sat across from me. “You want me to call Graham? I’m sure we can change it.”

  I shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “It does if it bothers you,” he said softly. “You get a say in things, Jordi. If this bothers you, raise your voice. Make a fuss. People will listen.”

  I snorted as I thought about all the people I had known throughout my life, who never missed an opportunity to let me know how badly I missed the mark by being overweight. They weren’t listening. They never did. And I suspected they never would.

  This was just the world we lived in.

  “I’m not the one selling tickets to your tour anyway,” I added, thinking of all those screaming girls in the front row, who no doubt paid a pretty penny to sit there. They tolerated me, but they came for Jace and Vanni.