Under the Stars and Stripes (Under Him)

“I HEARD THAT!” he shouts, as he spins again like a ballerina and turns out of the door and into the hall.

“Brittany, you look lovely today,” Tony says to me. “But why don’t you tell me who this gorgeous young woman is whom you’ve brought in?”

Sarah blushes, which is not quite as easy to make happen as it when it comes to me. Sarah’s seen more dicks in her day than the ticket-taker at a convention for people named Richard.

But all the guys Sarah has dated or slept with, although all slightly older, have never exceeded the last acceptable age where a person can get away with riding around on a Hover Board and saying things like, “on fleek,” or calling marijuana “gas.”

Most of them were losers that went to community college with us, or losers she met on Tinder.

She’s never had the good fortune of dating a man with nearly twice as many years of experience as she has.

“I’m Sarah,” she says, in such a forced way of being demure that it comes across more like she has to pee and doesn’t have time to be wasting by talking to us.

“This is my best friend who is here for her camera test,” I tell him. “And who is also, apparently, about halfway through her very first stroke.”

“Yeah, Tony,” Simon tells his business partner, “she’s here to work. So please don’t be inappropriate.”

“Oh,” Tony replies. “You mean like, for example, the way you are, by shacking up with our newest model? Who, by the way, is technically still a teenager for the next few months.”

Simon’s eyes roll around as if he’s looking for a way to make it all not sound as bad as it does, but then he just shrugs and walks away, saying, “Okay, point taken.”

In front of the camera, as it turns out, Sarah is quite a natural. I had been expecting for her to be a little over-the-top with her modeling as she is with… well… everything else in life. But she has this certain captivating quality when she’s just being shot candid that even surprises me.

“Get it, girl!” I say from across the studio as Simon takes one last picture of her, and Tony, sitting beside him, checks her out.

“What do you think?” I hear Simon ask Tony.

But before he even bothers saying a word to Simon, Tony shouts, “YOU’RE HIRED!” across the studio and runs back to his office to get a contract for her.

“Tony’s much cuter than you let on,” she tells me when she comes back over.

“Omigod, you guys should date, too,” I say, so that Simon doesn’t hear. “Then we can be–”

And in unison, we say, “... best friends who are dating best friends!”

This hits a bit of a crescendo as we made our way through the sentence, which ends with us jumping up and down in the air.

So… I’m pretty sure Simon did hear that.

When Tony returns with her contract— as well as a picnic basket in which I can see a bottle of champagne sticking out of— Sarah signs her name on the dotted line and gives Tony her CashTag (and her phone number) so that he can give her her deposit to start working.

All the while, Simon pops the cork on the champagne bottle, which inadvertently flies across the studio into one of the big bright soft boxes near where he was taking pictures of Sarah.

“Are we celebrating?” I ask.

“Hell yeah,” Sarah says. “We both have new jobs as models and you have a hot, older zaddy for a boyfriend, and I…”

Her eyes glance over at Tony— who may be the very first person in history to be standing while also half sitting on the edge of their seat— listens intently for what she’s going to say next.

“Well… I can keep my options open, but at least I’ve got some money coming in, so I don’t have to stay at my parents’ forever,” she finishes, in kind of an anti-climatic way.

“Yeah, but your mom is going to miss you,” I tell her.

“And I’ll miss her, too. But she has to stop feeding me lasagna, so it’ll be a good kind of missing someone.”

“Well, we’re glad that everything is going so well for you ladies,” Tony says as Simon hands each of us a glass of champagne.

“Here’s to you two,” Tony adds as he raises his cup to clink— or maybe to clack— against all of ours.

I didn’t get a bottle of champagne when I was signed, so I know that Tony is really into Sarah.

“Well, none of it would be possible without you boys,” I tell him as I cheers to them as well.

“But mostly you,” I purposely say above a whisper in Simon’s ear before kissing him on the mouth.

Is it too soon to think I might be falling in—