Arranged(53)

He got exactly one second into it before he was dragged away by a beefy, ruddy hand.

I glanced behind me at Chester, who was gripping the man by both shoulders and shaking him. Clearly setting him straight. Good old Chester.

I watched and pretended to take another sip of champagne. No way in hell was I partaking anything with carbonation when I didn’t get to wear more than tiny scraps of silk and lace for the next five hours.

Not today, bloating.

After that Chester made the journey across the room simply by throwing an arm around my shoulders and elbowing his way through the crowd. Unsurprisingly, no one else touched me after that.

I knew my assigned camera crew had caught the whole thing, and I wondered briefly how it might play out, but quickly shook the thought off. No use dwelling. Nothing I could do about it but keep my game face on.

I sat down at my station and let hair and makeup do their job.

“Is your security guard always so protective?” The question was from someone on a mic, pitched loud enough to carry over the noise of the crowd. It came from a friendly woman standing behind my assigned camera crew. I recognized her as one of the people producing the show behind the show.

I shrugged and smiled pleasantly. “When he sees the need. I don’t tend to like being grabbed by strangers.”

Several people laughed.

“You don’t know who that was?” the woman asked. She was smiling engagingly, like she found that fact charming.

I shrugged again, hoping I wasn’t being made a total fool of but fully aware that playing dumb had its advantages. “I don’t, but I have to say he did look sort of familiar.”

The woman addressed Chester, “Do you know who it was?”

Chester was scowling, an expression that didn’t look to be leaving his face anytime soon. He was the only one in earshot that didn’t seem amused by the whole thing. “Some guy who doesn’t know how to keep his hands to himself.”

That got a loud laugh. I got the feeling the guy must have been more famous than I realized. “He’s Brooks Ainsley,” someone called out. I shook my head. Didn’t ring a bell. “A recording artist,” the producer explained to me. “He has the number one song in the country right now.” That explained it. I’d been too busy keeping up with Jovie’s K-pop obsession lately to check on the US charts.

“Oh,” I responded. “Tell him we said congrats.” That got a big laugh.

I knew we’d smoothed it over and twisted it to our advantage as best as we could when the producer moved on to cajole some questions out of the next model, looking very pleased with herself. People would be talking about the incident for days, particularly since it’d all been caught on camera. It was as good for me as it was for their brand, and even the handsy pop star would no doubt be pleased at the extra internet hits on his name, even if he was getting dragged.

Wins all around. Free publicity at its easiest.

The next hour showed me a part of the event I hadn’t really understood until it was happening. I was there early for prep, but the array of celebs were there for a different reason entirely. While the models sat wearing barely anything and had our hair teased and makeup caked and baked on, the guests flitted from station to station, studying and judging us like we were pieces of art at an exhibit. It was very odd, more like doing a car or boat show than a runway, where we were on display in a different way.

It wasn’t pleasant, but I plastered a fake bemused smile on my face and bore it well. On the upside it kept me too busy to linger on nerves over the catwalk.

Several of the famous attendees even deigned to speak to me, and the ones that did were even nice. Not surprisingly, Chester’s scuffle with the recording artist had the whole gathering astir. A famous entertainment reporter had caught the entire thing on her phone and insisted on showing it to me.

I watched initially with reluctance, but as I took it in, even I thought it was funny. The man had grabbed at me and been plucked clean away in one second flat. Meanwhile as Chester was clearly berating him, looking like he might pulverize him where he’d stood, I’d watched the whole thing with calm eyes and sipped casually at my champagne.

“It’s already gone viral. They even made it into a meme. You want to see?” the woman asked me.

I said sure and she showed me a GIF of myself. It was the moment I’d sipped the champagne, watching the scuffle with utter composure. Someone had put thug life glasses over my eyes and captioned it with the word BADASS in bold caps.

I found myself smiling. The whole thing had turned into an unexpected confidence booster and it was no doubt good press for me, less so for the pop star, but I supposed that’s what you got for grabbing random women.

The whole event flew by in a frenetic rush that seemed to come to a standstill and rush by in a blur at will, feeling both too quick and too slow. The backstage pre-game passed by too quickly for me to process but also felt like it dragged on with agonizing leisure.

After forever of waiting and before I was ready, I was squeezed into various pieces of exquisitely sheer white lace, strapped into a set of angel wings that almost tipped me over on the spot, and sent down the runway.

This was the first of the two looks I was walking for the show, and even though I had to wear pieces of stick-on nude tape to keep it TV friendly, it was the more conservative of the two. That being said, I was practically naked and felt it keenly with every strutting in five-inch stilettos step.