Everything Better Plan

“So, most importantly, is he cute?” Olivia was currently suffering through a very interrogative Skype call with her best friend Samuel Marshall. Samuel was also a model, signed with Olivia's same agency. He was intimidatingly beautiful, with an incredibly sculpted face; captivating green eyes and gorgeous, bronze skin. They'd clicked the very first day of Olivia beginning her contract with their agency, and had been best friends the whole three years since. As stereotypical as it sounds, a lot of the models Olivia worked with were very lacking of personality, finding someone like Samuel in their business was extremely rare. He was caring and funny and fiercely passionate about his opinions and beliefs, which Olivia loved because she was the exact same and often they would find themselves arguing over the dumbest things, such as: Kanye West – god complex or misunderstood?; McDonalds – food or mush? and, of course, the classic: Who is Uber A in Pretty Little Liars?

“What?” Olivia laughed at the question. What were they, 12? She had just been recounting what had occurred in the coffee shop yesterday with her and Alex, and Samuel had already asked way too many questions considering how irrelevant the situation was. He'd also slipped in a subtle 'Do you think he could possibly be into men now?'. Yes, that's right, a blonde model from LA with a gay best friend. Olivia was that girl.

“Okay, you're engaged, but you're not dead!” Samuel exclaimed, emphasising the last word, causing her to raise an eyebrow at him.

“I know, I know, but I just don't look at other men anymo-”

“Bull. Fucking. Shit.” he cut her off with a blank expression.

“I'm serious,” she defended with wide eyes, “and I'm hurt that you would sugges-”

“I'm sorry, who the fuck is this? Did Derek hire this person to dress up as Olivia and try to convince me that we can't talk about cute boys anymore? I don't think so, so, is he cute?” Samuel's eyebrows were raised expectantly and a smirk washed over his face.

Olivia let out a deep sigh before the corners of her lips began to tug upwards, “Okay, fine, yeah, he's super cute, like waaaaaay cuter than I remember,” she gushed, causing Samuel to crack up.

“Are you gonna see him again?”

“Well, I gave him my number,” Samuel gasped mockingly, causing Olivia to roll her eyes, “but he hasn't got in touch or anything yet, he just mentioned maybe getting coffee and chatting, that's all.”

“You should totally fuck him,” Samuel dead-panned, looking directly into his webcam.

Olivia's eyes widened at her best friend. He was always like this; playful and silly, but she was always taken aback. “Dude, shut up.”

“Okay, no you're right, you shouldn't,” he nodded, “but yano maybe you should,” his expression completely apathetic. Olivia rolled her eyes again, “Dude, you're pathetic excuse for a fiancé ditched you at Christmas!” he exclaimed, pulling her a knowing look.

“We're not gonna have this conversation right now, okay? So I'll text you later or something, I gotta go, bye, love you,” she spieled off before quickly hanging up leaving him no time to respond. She really didn't want to speak about being sat alone in a hotel room whilst her fiancé shopped the sales on the Upper East Side. She'd been spending so much time internally trying to justify his actions, thinking about it logically would just hurt her. She regretted telling Samuel, but at the same time he was the only person she had besides from Derek.

She had totally lied when she claimed she had to go, she had absolutely nothing to do and so she decided to respond to some emails. Her agency had made it apparent to anyone interested that she was spending Christmas in Baltimore, but it was totally up to her if she wanted to take any offers – it was the holidays after all. It was highly unlikely any of the offers would even be viable, considering she wasn't going to be in town for too long so mostly she was just scrolling through her inbox and deleting.

Delete. Delete. Delete. Until, 'Nude modelling for new gallery opening'. Olivia had never received an email quite like this before, she was intrigued, so she decided to give it a quick read.

It basically requested to have her model in the nude for a night class that they were starting up at a new a gallery in the Baltimore area. The opening was in just 2 days and they had no leads on finding a model, so they had looked at agencies online and found her and her current location. So, she would be standing completely naked for a few hours in front of total strangers whilst they all analysed every inch of her and copied it down.

“Wow,” Olivia breathed, laughing slightly. She'd never, ever thought of doing any nude modelling before, but this wasn't exactly posing for a raunchy photograph, this was for art. She shook her head, what a dumb idea, there was no way. No way.
But, she decided not to delete the email.

Notes