Something Borrowed

Chapter 2. Accidental Model

Chapter 2. Accidental Model

(Tamara)

Tamara sighed as she stood from her bed and almost swayed. She took a moment to adjust herself and her vision as she leaned against the wall and took in a deep breath. Her thoughts were crashing against each other, like planets colliding, comets shattering and she couldn't find the beginning or the ending to her thoughts. It was so random, everything, piling up inside her. June, their friendship, their hatred, their bitterness, their ego... it was all so vile and bitter against the base of Tamara's throat. She almost wanted to vomit it out...

Tamara walked slowly towards the bathroom. She needed to have a hot, hot bath. She needed to wipe herself off of June and the mark she had left on her. Indelible marks. But the bathroom was already occupied.

"Alish... come out." Tamara shouted at her roommate who was already inside the bathroom. "It is late. I have to get ready."

"Did I ask you to sleep in?" Alisha retorted and Tamara heard Alisha stomping inside the bathroom. An elephant would be more stealthy than Alisha.

"I didn't sleep in."

"Then what were you doing? You were always the first one up." Alisha said as she walked out, wrapping her hair in a thick towel.

"My mom called me and Ju-June... she is dead," Tamara said with a small wince and Alisha stopped on her tracks.

"June, as in June, the friend from high school?" She blinked up at Tamara, her eyes concerned. "You okay, babe?"

Tamara nodded with a solemn look on her face. She was still so confused about how to feel about June's death.

"I don't know what I feel. I am confused. My mom said she ODed, but June wasn't the drug using type."

"You hadn't talked with her for so long. She must've changed, Tammie."

"No. She hated drug addicts, she'd often gripe to me about how they were being stupid and senseless. June was not stupid or senseless," Tamara said with a frown. As she thought more and more about June, it was becoming more and more clear. June would never have killed herself. But if she did, she wouldn't have used drugs to do so.

"One day we caught one of our seniors doing drugs. I wanted to walk away, I mean, I had always hated confrontations, but June had yelled at him. 'If you want to kill yourself, fine go ahead. Do it the easier way. Take a poison or jump up from the top of the building. At least it is not degrading or disgusting. At least it has an oomph. If you want to go, go out with a bang, right. Drug overdose? No one would pity you for that. No one would remember you after a day, because they would think you deserved it...and you would.' I was so sure the guy was going to kill us both, but he looked at us, looked at the drug in his hands—it was probably the first time he

was using—and then he threw it away and walked away. Just like that."

"Wow." Alisha said, looking stunned. Tamara was stunned too, when that had happened.

"Yes, wow. June inspired that kind of reactions from everyone." Tamara's voice had a bitter edge to it. "Only I knew how manipulative she was." And still Tamara had never had the courage to say goodbye to June or her friendship.

"So why did you stay as friends for so long?" Alisha asked with a frown as she gave Tamara a look.

"Because even though I knew she was manipulative, I just couldn't say goodbye to her or her friendship. I guess I was just a wuss or a doormat. She had always walked all over me and I had let her and then it kind of become a pattern for us. Me giving in, and June usurping me."

"No, you were a good friend. It was wrong she used it, but you were a good friend, Tammy."

"What kind of good friend would feel relieved when they hear their friend is dead?" Tamara said with a self derogatory smile.

"Sometimes we can both love and hate a person at the same time, you know." Alisha said with an understanding smile. "Now stop beating yourself up and go get ready. It is getting late for work. Today, I will make breakfast."

"And we will be waiting in the hospital corridors after that. Do not touch anything. I will be back in five." Tamara said as she walked inside the bathroom and slammed the door shut. When she got ready, she ate breakfast and drove towards her work. Tamara could not stop thinking about June, as she drove through crowded traffic of L.A. It had become familiar, but today she wished the roads weren't so crowded, so swarming with so many people. It almost made her feel claustrophobic. The traffic light turned red and Tamara stopped her car as she stared through the gaps in the long lines of cars.

Tamara imagined June in a wooden coffin, her body ice cold, her face pale, her eyes fixed. It made her intestines twist and turn.

June is dead.

Even though it should have been a relief, it was not. Not really. Tamara shook her head as if to keep June out of her mind, but June never did anything she was asked to do. June was not made for rules and orders. June was not made for cages or boxes, she was beyond the labels, beyond literal translations. June was extraordinary in her own way. She was all thing magnificent and unforgettable and Tamara was trapped in her magnificence, her spiderwebs of myth and mayhem.

When someone honked, Tamara jerked in her car seat and blinked. The traffic light had turned. Sh*t. She cursed as she started her car again.

Tamara parked her car in her parking spot and walked inside the lavish glass building, that reeked of money and luxury. It was pretentious, but the world she lived in was pretentious, opulent and high class. Tall windows, reflective glasses around the space, wooden furnitures that would cause acid reflex on ordinary people, marbled floors that reflected faces, modern ceiling lights that glowed even in the mornings... the whole place was built to scream affluence.

Tamara worked in a fashion magazine, Zealous. A bi-weekly fashion and lifestyle magazine that covered topics on fashion, clothing style, recent trendsetters, beauty and cosmetics, skin care and hair care, Jewellery and accessories, fashion designers, fashion events and runway.

She was one of the senior editors of Zealous, and she worked closely with the managing editor of the magazine.

She wrote columns, titled 'Tammie Talking Fashion'. Tammie Talking Fashion was more of an open ended column than an article. Sometimes she interviewed fashion designers, models and celebrities, about what is hot and what is not, what is recently trending in the fashion world.

Her article would feature trending fashion lines of the season, way to mix and match the existing wardrobe, budget shopping and styles, recent trends, fashion events, how-to's about different fashion accessories, Do's and don'ts while choosing outfits to match your style and body shape.

Her dream was to become the chief editor of the magazine one day, in the distant future and she had been working hard to reach that position. Marianne Sloan, the current managing editor was retiring soon—or so she had been saying for over a year now—and Tamara was working as hard as she could to become her replacement. Managing editor was the first step to reach the editor in chief position. Tamara had big dreams, big ideas and she knew, to reach them, she had to work hard, and smart.

She was almost the managing editor, now, anyways, if only without the official title, since Marianne Sloan was always on Tamara's ass about any mistakes other editors, associate editors and assistant editors make. Tamara was also the one who had to oversee the models and photographers, editorial contents. She was the one who had to book the venues, fashion designers. Marianne was too uppity to do all these grunt works, except none of them were grunt works. These were the things they actually had to do to run a magazine. So in a roundabout way, Tamara had been the one running the magazine for a year now.

"You are late." Anita, Marianne's PA said as she pushed Tamara towards the wardrobe room. "You need to start."

"I am right on time, Ani." Tamara retorted as she walked inside the room, only to be pulled into the chair by a frenzied looking Stefan and Gloria, the torture duo. Tamara was confused as to why she was in the chair right now.

"Guys, I am not the one you need to get ready. I am not the model. Your eyes... do you both need to see an ophthalmologist?" Tamara almost screamed when Stefan pulled her hair out sharply. "Ouch. Be careful with my hair." She said with a wince.

"Sit, sit, already late." Stefan said with urgency. He was always urgent, always in a hurry before a photoshoot, but she was not here for the photoshoot. She was here for Sophia, the one who should be getting this treatment. Not her. "Gloria shall explain everything else." Stefan said, his voice rich and royal.

"I don't know what is going on here, guys. I am so not in the mood for your pranks." Tamara glared as she tried to get away from Stefan's strong grip. The guy looked thin, but God, the grip.

Gloria, though, lazily opened her big bag of miracle things and started wiping Tamara's face with something wet and sticky. Stefan glared at her. "You don't have all the time in the world."

"I have enough." She said as she popped a bubble with a loud pop and Stefan looked at her, a disgusted frown on his smooth face.

"Do not do that here, imbécile." Stefan said and Gloria poked her tongue out at him and then blew the bubble gum closer to his face.

"Yes, Diva."

"I still don't understand what the hell I am doing here, guys. Where the hell is Sophie?" Tamara asked, trying not to wince when Stefan started to braid her hair.

"In the bathroom. The poor girl has diarrhea."

"Oh, s**t, Marianne is going to kill her and bury her." Tamara said and then suddenly it stuck her. "No way, I can not be the replacement to Sophie. Let me go. Let go, Stefan, or I will never forgive you. I can call Hannah or Mira. Anyone. Just let me go." Tamara pleaded with the guy, who refused to let go.

"No. Time," Stefan said, "you are it or we all are dead." He finished in a voice that made Tamara's palm sweat.

"No, Marianne would kill me if I mess this edition. It is special for her. This will be last edition before she retires." Tamara said as she desperately tried to pull away from him. She knew how Marianne would react to it. She would pop a vein or two and then bury Tamara, alive.

I would follow June... into afterlife.

"Like how the previous fifty editions were her last ones. You are so gullible, Tamara. She is not going to retire anytime soon, she is keeping you on the leash, throwing crumbs of her fictional retirement... So unless one of us poison her food or coffee, she will live for another hundred years, and she will live it right here, tormenting us."

"Maybe we can ask Anita to help kill her?" Gloria said with a small chuckle.

Anita Sharma was Marianne's personal assistant/servant maid. Either would be a right fit for her.

"Stop. Let me go."

"Can not. Sophie already tried her friends from inside the bathroom," Gloria said. "No one is available in such short notice. This is the centre spread on Fabien Alanzo's recent 'love in spring' line and you, my dear, only you can do."

"I am nowhere close to Sophie. Please, do not humiliate me."

"Only you can not see how beautiful you are, but... wait, you are doing. Alisha called Fabien. And Gloria called Sebastian. They both agreed that you would be an amazing replacement. Now, can you please sit still, woman!"

"You called Sebastian? Shit." Tamara said as a slow flush raised from her neck to cheeks. "I am going to die in mortification and you two... I will haunt you afterwards."

"Sebastian had promised to behave."

"When did he ever behave?" Tamara asked as she thought about their photographer. He was so gorgeous that it sometimes hurt Tamara's insides. But after that one disastrous date, she had realized they were better off as friends. They were friends and in between those occassionally stolen kisses, that she didn't regret, they continued to be friends. She knew Sebastian and she could never become anything more than those strings of kisses and stuffs in her fantasies.

Gloria laughed. "I see the way he looks at you and I also see the way Stefan looks at him." She said and Stefan threw a comb at her before he turned me to the mirror and said, "tada."

Tamara stared at herself for a moment and shrugged. She looked good, but she was nowhere near the centre spread in a famous magazine kind of beautiful. June would have fit right in those pages, though.

Her smile fell when she thought about June and then she sternly told herself to forget June, at least until this whole fiasco was over. This was not just her career on the line. This was both her life and career on the edge of a steep cliff. Marianne would either push her off or pull her back.

"If this backfires, and Marianne kills me, you can both be sure that I will not be leaving you alone." Tamara said as she stood up and Gloria handed her a scarlet red dress elegant cross waist, a plunging neckline and a flared gown. The dress looked like it was made for luxury. Tamara touched it with affection and walked inside the changing room.

This is not me. She thought with a wince. This dress is not made for me. Of course, she didn't mind that she was not extremely beautiful, she was rather pleased with her smartness, her brain and she was good looking. Beauty was only skin deep and she knew how true it was. She had seen it, lived it, loved it and hated it. She would rather be ugly on the outside than on the inside.

She pulled the dress down and the soft fabric fell lusciously over her curves. She walked out and Gloria sighed. Stefan faked wiping away at his eyes. "My baby, how you have grown. You are the perfect vision to look at." Stefan said as he motioned her to twirl. She did and they laughed.

"Now go, make me proud." Stefan said and Tamara walked out only to be greeted by the smouldering eyes of Sabastian Gomez. He was hot and gorgeous and he was totally a bad boyfriend material.

He whistled and smiled. "Gorgeous, bellisima. My eyes want to come out of my head and see you closer."

"Why go that far? I can just walk close to you." Tamara commented with a sarcastic smile and he shrugged.

"You are as boring as you are beautiful."

"You are as dramatic as you are gorgeous, Seb, and now if we have done talking about our best and worst qualities, can we get this over with?"

"Why, you look a vision in Fabian's dress that I want to keep you with me in my..." He stopped, gave her a crooked smile and Tamara pressed a finger to her lips, signalling him to stop. He gave her a pout.

"Sebastian, promise me. No funny business." Tamara said with a wave of her hands

"When have I ever?" He whispered as he took a look at her from head to toe, his eyes half-lidded and his smirk, full blown. "Be still my heart. I need to do justice to this beautiful woman."

"Ok, enough and shut up." She said, almost feeling uncomfortable with the praise.

"Tamara, you know what is the best quality you have? It is your humility. But sometimes it is also your worst trait. Accept compliments, dear."

"I do accept them. About my brain."

"Your body is just as amazing as your brain, bella. No need to be shy about that. Now, enough chit chat. Chop. Chop. Let us go."

"Where?"

"To our shooting location."

"Again, where?" Tamara asked as she followed him down. He gave her a small smile.

"This cozy cafe I knew. Le Seinè. It will be perfect. Something for lovers. The air smells like passion, hunger..." He said in a deep voice that was used to torture women and winked at her. She shook her head at him in irritation. "We should go there sometimes."

"No, we are not going." Tamara said with a smile. "Seb, we have tried this."

"Once."

"And you kept making passes at our waitress."

"Beauty is to be appreciated." He said with an indignant scowl.

"Yes, you can appreciate beauty, but do it alone."

"You are no fun, bellissima." Sebastian gave her a pout. She smirked.

"Yes, I know."

"But I will make you change your mind, Tamara. One day. You will come."

"Oh, will I?" She said with a glib smile and he poked her nose with one finger.

"Yes, yes, you will." He smiled as they walked out together.

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