Just Listen(60)

I sat there for a second, a little weirded out, because actually this was how I felt, too, when I looked at the older ads I'd done, especially the Kopf's commercial. That girl was different from who I was now, more whole and unbroken and okay than the one I saw in the mirror these days. I'd just thought I was the only one who noticed.

"No offense," Owen said.

I shook my head. "It's fine."

"I mean, it's a nice picture." He peered at it again. "I just think you look better now."

At first, I thought maybe I'd heard him wrong. "Now?" I said.

"Yeah." He glanced up at me. "What did you think I meant?"

"I don't…" I began, then stopped. "Never mind."

"You think I'd tell you that you looked better here?"

"Well," I said, "you are honest."

"I'm not a jerk, though," he replied. "You look good. You just don't look like you. You look…

different."

"Different bad," I said.

"Different different."

"Super vague," I pointed out. "Placeholder. Double placeholder."

"You're right," he said. "What I mean is, looking at this, I think, Huh, that's not Annabel. That doesn't look like her at all ."

"What do I look like?"

"Like this," he said, nodding at me. "My point is, I don't know you as someone who gets their picture taken in a cheerleading outfit. Or even as a model, period. That's not you to me."

I wanted to ask him to explain further, to say what I was to him, exactly. But then I realized maybe he just had. I already knew he thought of me as honest, direct, even funny—all things I had never thought about myself. Who knew what else I could be, what kind of potential there was in the differences between that girl and the one he saw now. So many possibilities.

"Owen!" Mallory yelled up the stairs. "We're ready for you now!"

Owen rolled his eyes. Then he walked over, holding out his hand to help me to my feet. "Okay," he said.

"Come on."

Looking up at him, I realized that this, too, was part of my real back-to-school days: Along with Sophie and Will and everything horrible, there was Owen, reaching out a hand to me. And now, as I reached up, closing my fingers over his, I was grateful more than ever for something, finally, to hold on to.

Owen was right about the tears. Within an hour, we had a meltdown.

"It's not fair!" said the dark-haired girl, whose name I now knew was Angela, her voice wavering.

"You look good," Mallory told her, adjusting her boa. "What's the problem?"

I knew. In fact, it was pretty obvious. While Mallory and the others were alternating between Evening Elegant and Nighttime Formal (or, depending on how you looked at it, Fantasy Engagement), Angela had been continually assigned Workplace Classy, which was clearly the least favorite of the chosen looks.

Now, she looked down at her plain black skirt, black blouse, and flats. "I want to do Evening Elegant," she protested. "When is it my turn?"

"Owen!" Elinor, the blonde, called out, tugging a tube top down over her stomach. "Are you ready for me?"

"No," Owen muttered as she moved in toward him, tossing her hair and putting a hand on her hip. "Not even close."

The shoot was quite a production. Not only had the girls pushed back the furniture in the living room and draped a white sheet over the mantel for a backdrop, there was also a dressing and makeup area (the powder room) and background music (mostly Jenny Reef, Bitsy Bonds, and Z104; Owen's offer to put together a mix was roundly rejected).

"It will be your turn," Mallory, who was now in a gold bathing-suit top and sarong, the boa over her shoulders, told Angela. "But Workplace Classy is very important. Someone has to do it."

"Then why don't you?"

Mallory sighed, blowing her bangs out of her face. "Because my look is better suited to evening," she explained as the redheads, who'd moved on to swimwear, practiced for the beach action shots by tossing a soccer ball back and forth.

"With your glasses, you look better doing serious corporate looks."

I glanced at Angela, whose upper lip was now trembling slightly. "You know," I said, "maybe she could take off her glasses."

"I'm ready!" Elinor said to Owen. "Go ahead! Get the shot!"

Owen, who was standing in front of the couch, winced as he lifted the camera to his eye. In my experience, models did not ever boss the photographer, but that was clearly not the case here. Instead, Owen just kept his finger on the shutter pretty much nonstop, taking shot after shot as the girls arranged themselves every which way. Now, as Elinor blew a kiss to the camera, and to him, he looked appalled.

As a stylist, I'd been told it was my job to stay in the powder room/dressing area and supervise wardrobe, which consisted of the piles of clothing and shoes that were scattered on the countertops, floor, and nearby stairs. After my few early suggestions—less cleavage and makeup, for starters—had been completely ignored, I'd been mostly watching Owen and trying not to laugh.

"You know," he said now, as Elinor dropped to the floor and began to writhe toward him, her elbows clunking across the hardwood, "I'm thinking we're about done here."