Page 44 of Burning Both Ends
Julian was fifteen years her senior, divorced, established in his career, and refreshingly transparent. On their third date, he'd laid out exactly what he was looking for.
"I'm not interested in marriage or living together," he'd told her over dinner at a restaurant in Silver Lake. "I travel too much, work too much. But I enjoy your company, and I enjoy supporting people with talent. I could introduce you to the right people, help you to navigate this town. You'd have your own life, I'd have mine, but we'd enjoy the time we spend together."
The proposition should have offended her, perhaps. A younger version of herself might have seen it as another exploitative industry arrangement. But Julian's honesty had the opposite effect. Here was someone saying exactly what he wanted, whathe could offer, with no manipulation or coercion. He wasn't promising to make her career or threatening to break it. He was simply offering a mutually beneficial relationship between adults.
"And if I say no?" she'd asked, testing.
"Then we finish this excellent wine, I call you a taxi, and we say goodnight as friends who had a nice dinner." He'd shrugged, completely at ease. "Your career will do just fine without me." Then he'd added, with the same directness, "And I should be clear... I see other people. Mostly casually, sometimes models, sometimes not. I'm not looking for exclusivity."
Luisa had appreciated his candour. In an industry built on illusions and unspoken arrangements, his transparency was refreshing. She knew exactly what she was agreeing to.
She'd accepted his proposition, and for the next year and a half, they had exactly the relationship he'd described. Julian kept his word... he introduced her to influential industry figures, invited her to events where she made valuable connections, occasionally gave her guidance on LA's complex social hierarchies. But he never directed her career, never tried to control her choices, never acted entitled to her time or body. He gave her expensive gifts, a beautiful bracelet that she occasionally wore in particular was from him, but they were offered with no strings attached.
Luisa was under no illusions about Julian's other relationships. She would occasionally spot him at industry events with other women, sometimes younger models just establishing themselves in LA. Rather than jealousy, she felt a certain solidarity with these women. They were all trying to make their way in the same system, making their choices with open eyes. Julian was, in hisway, one of the more honest players in a dishonest game, and he was good to her.
He became, to Luisa, her 'not-boyfriend'.
The challenge was, though, that eight years into her career, eight years since Tulum and everything that followed, she hadn’t had a normal relationship in all that time. Eight years. Every emotional or romantic entanglement during that time had been with a professional angle to it, and her longer term relationships, whether Bel, Carlos or Julian, weren't relationships in the normal sense. None of them were someone she was going to move in with, to marry, to grow old with.
Professionally life was good. A constant stream of high profile work, the face of Cimarron and her investment in that… Luisa was doing well.
But Luisa was coming to the realisation that in her personal life she need more. She just wasn't sure, though, if she knew how to go about it.
Miami
The afternoon shoot had wrapped early, leaving Luisa and Bel lounging by the hotel pool with a couple of other models and crew members. Florida's evening heat was starting to ease, the setting sun casting long shadows across the water. Luisa was nursing a mojito, listening to the comfortable buzz of conversation around her while stealing occasional glances at Bel.
It was their third day working together on this shoot and tomorrow would be their last. Though they hadn't explicitly discussed it, there was an unspoken understanding between them as always that tonight would be spent together, as it always was when they worked on the same job. Their eyes had been meeting throughout the day with that familiar electricity, the silent acknowledgment of what would come later.
Bel was in the middle of a story about her friend Saskia's birthday party when she gestured with her hand and something caught the light... a delicate silver bracelet with a small pendantthat Luisa hadn't noticed before. It was subtle but distinctive, the kind of piece that looked both personal and expensive.
"That's beautiful," Luisa said during a lull in conversation, nodding toward Bel's wrist. "Is it new?"
Bel glanced down, touching the bracelet almost unconsciously, a small smile that she seemed to try but couldn't quite manage to conceal. "Thanks. Clem gave it to me for my birth..." She stopped abruptly, something flashing across her expression before she smoothed it away. "For my birthday last month."
It was the smallest of slips, but in that brief moment everything about Bel's expression changed. There was a softness in her eyes that Luisa had never seen before, and an intimacy in how she touched the bracelet that told Luisa everything she needed to know about who Clem was and what she meant to Bel.
"It suits you," Luisa replied casually, but something inside her shifted. Luisa and Bel never talked about their love lives, that was their unspoken rule. Yet here was tangible evidence of someone else, someone who knew what Bel would like, who celebrated her birthday, who gave her gifts she treasured enough to wear.
The conversation moved on, but Luisa's thoughts kept returning to that bracelet and the look on Bel's face. Later, when they ended up in Bel's room as expected, the sex was as passionate and intense as always. Yet afterwards, as Luisa lay next to Bel in the darkened room, she found herself staring at the bracelet resting on the nightstand where Bel had carefully placed it before they'd fallen into bed together.
"Who's Clem?" Luisa asked quietly, surprising herself. They didn't do this, just didn't ask about each other's love lives outside the bubble of their encounters on location.
Bel was silent for so long that Luisa thought she might not answer. Then she said quietly, "Someone important to me. Back in London.”
"She has good taste in jewellery."
Another long pause. "She works in fashion, she’s got a good eye." Bel smiled. "She’s one of my best friends. I live with her and Saskia."
“Just best friends?”
Bel hesitated. “It’s complicated.”
“It looks like that. You’ve known her a long time?”
“A long, long time.”
The words hung in the air between them. Clem. Someone who could make Bel’s expression go like that. Someone who, clearly, was waiting for Bel back home. Luisa felt a strange hollowness open up inside her, not quite jealousy, she couldn't be jealous with this arrangement with Bel that they'd had over the years, but something more complex.
