Page 19 of Total Obsession

"I've been modeling since then, and just when I was worried things might slow down for me because of my age, well, I finally got what seems to be my breakout."

"Are you excited to be on television as more than just an extra?" I asked her.

She nodded her head slowly. "Yes, but I'm a little overwhelmed, to be honest. I haven't really had any acting lessons or anything like that. I'm not sure why they picked me. I've just been on runways all this time."

I smiled. They picked her because I told them to pick her, but she didn't know that.

"They picked you because they can see how much talent and potential you have naturally. Some of the best actors of our time had little to no experience before their big break."

"Oh, yeah?" she quipped. "Like who?"

"Jennifer Lawrence, Charlize Theron, Natalie Portman, and Marilyn Monroe, to name a few. Should I keep going?"

She laughed and puts her hands in front of her face. "No, no. I wouldn't dream of putting myself in their league. Please, stop."

Another subtle nod towards her insecurity. Another thing I could use to make her fall harder.

"Nonsense," I said, brushing aside her comment. "You're going to be as great, if not better than all of those names. I can't wait to see how high you soar."

She blushed and moved closer to me. It was almost too easy. It almost made me feel bad.

"So, now you know all about where I've been," she said.

I knew what came next.

"So, can you tell me anything about where you've been?"

I grabbed my drink from the nearby coffee table, taking a sip of the whiskey that was poured for me by one of the attendants when I boarded.

"What a terribly boring way to spend a plane flight," I said to her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and handing her the drink. "Sip?"

"Are you trying to get me drunk?" she asked with a laugh.

"That depends. Are you the sort of girl to get drunk on just one sip?"

She took a sip and handed it back to me, wrinkling her nose.

"Ah, I see. You're the sort of girl who prefers fruity drinks. I'll remember for next time."

"Next time," she repeated the words. I could hear hope in her voice.

"Of course, next time. Did you think I was going to find you again after all these years just to let you go?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. I mean, it wasn't that hard to know where I was all this time. It was you I could never find."

I furrowed my brow. "You looked for me?"

"Of course I did," she said, shaking my resolve towards her even more thoroughly.

"Why?"

She took a deep breath. "Because there were so many things left unsaid between us."

"I'm not sure that's really true," I said, thinking back to everything she'd said to me in front of all of the other students. It was still a pain I hadn't processed. I'd had a lot of people say a lot of shit to me over the years, but Zoey Campbell saying that I was weird and that she didn't want to be my friend anymore was pretty much number one on my Painful Memories List.

She seemed disheartened by my answer, and I attempted to redirect her. "So, what are you doing when you get back to Milan?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Honestly, just packing up. The show where we reconnected was my last one. I'll be moving to where the television show is being filmed at the end of the month."