Night Air

Chapter 3

I dug my keycard all the way into the tiny slot on the door and watched as the light turned green. I turned the handle and pushed to reveal my home for the next month.

My mouth fell ajar as I looked around the clean hotel room and dropped my bag to the ground in front of the door with a thud. The walls were a soft chocolaty brown color with a white color showing only about a foot from the ceiling. The bed had a white, plush comforter with white and gold pillows which matched the white, golden, and brown color on the floor.
A big, leather, brown chair sat comfortably in the corner of the room with a white pillow sitting on it. Right behind the chair was a huge window that overlooked the busy city below.

"Woah." I whispered to myself slowly walking to the window, hearing the door finally close behind me. I looked over and saw the brown framed glass door which led to a balcony. I hesitantly reached for the handle and turned pulling it back with ease, not hearing even a single squeak from the new, shiny hinges.

I stepped out onto the balcony and let the quiet, cool LA breeze hit my face blowing all of my hair back. I looked down and saw all of the lights from the city that made up for the nonvisible stars that you couldn't see in the night time sky here.

I let the clean city air take over my lungs and slowly let the air back out through my nose.

A knock on my door made me jump about five feet into the air. I turned around and walked back into the warmer room and gated over to the door.

I pulled it open with as much ease as I did with the door to the balcony and I saw an older, tall, bald man in a suit standing there. "Hi. Can I help you?" I asked transferring all of my weight to one leg.

"Yes. I'm the president of the modeling agency and I just came to give you your schedule. You would be Alyssa, am I correct?" He asked in a more feminine tone than I was expecting. I gave the man a simple head nod and he smiled. "Great. Here is your schedule and you will be able to meet all of the other girls and the photographer tomorrow morning. He's your photographer." He said handing me two pieces of paper stapled together. He pointed to a name at the top of the paper and I assumed that's who he meant my photographer was.
My eyes widened when I heard it was a male. I wasn't sure why, but for some reason I was expecting a female to be the photographer.

I briefly looked over it seeing it had my schedule for everyday of the week. I let out a sigh of relief seeing I had every other Saturday and every Sunday off. I let the top paper fall back onto the bottom one and smiled at him. "Thank you."

"You're welcome, dear. If you need anything, my name and number is right there on the paper and feel free to call." He said showing his perfectly white and straight teeth.

I looked down at the paper then looked back up at him. "Thanks, Tom."

"Anytime, dear. Get some sleep and don't arrive late tomorrow." He said over his shoulder as he walked away.

I closed the door and leaned against it looking at the paper. I scanned my eyes over it and saw where it had my main photographer's name. "N. Horan." I said quietly to myself.

"Let's just pray he's not a weirdo or that he's maybe gay." I mumbled to no one.

*

My eyes forced themselves open as I heard the annoying sound of my alarm going off, obviously doing its job correctly. I groaned as I reached over so I could turn the damn thing off. I turned it off and then swung my bare legs over the side of the warm bed and I immediately regretted it.

I stood up and quickly walked to the bathroom wanting to do nothing more than to turn the shower on and stand under it let it massage my back. I shivered just thinking about it and eventually turned the water on and stripped down before stepping under the warmth that I had been lacking since getting out of bed.