Free Beneath the Glitter: A Novel (Sophia and Ava London) by Elle Fowler, Blair Fowler Page B

spend too much time texting Liam.”
    “No,” Sophia corrected. “I think you spend all your time texting Liam.”
    “Are you jealous?” Ava asked her playfully.
    Sophia picked up Ava’s phone and read aloud, “‘ LIAM CARLSON : Just had carrot ginger smoothie. Yummy. What r u doing?’” Sophia put the phone down. “Um, no.”
    It was Thursday, which meant pizza night, and since their call for the Tastemakers’ photo shoot wasn’t until three the next day, they’d stayed up late watching old episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? So when the phone rang a little before eight the next morning, even Ava was a bit groggy when she went to answer it.
    She listened for a minute, then stumbled toward Sophia’s door. “It’s Katie. The person in charge of the Tastemaker’s shoot called and they want to know if there’s any chance we could be there by nine thirty. Someone had a scheduling conflict.”
    “Do we have to?” Sophia asked with her head still buried in her pillows.
    “She says we don’t but it would generate a lot of goodwill.”
    “How far is it?”
    “Half an hour. We’d need to leave in about an hour.”
    Sophia took two deep breaths and hauled herself up into a sitting position. Eyes still closed she said, “Okay. I’m awake. Tell them we can do it. But I want a lot of goodwill.”
    When they arrived there was a little confusion about where they should go. Someone seemed to have neglected to tell the PA about the switch, and she spent ten minutes on her headset trying to verify that they really were supposed to be there then. Which meant they were late by the time she whisked them over to the trailer set up in front of the snack bar.
    Outside the trailer were two men sitting in deck chairs smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. Sophia and Ava recognized both of them. The older one, wearing his signature straw cowboy hat and python boots, was Ohlfons Yaz, makeup pioneer from Iceland. The younger one with bleach-blond hair and a tattoo of a spider on his neck was Troy Goddard, the bad boy of French hairstyling. Together they were, oh god, one of LA’s top hair and makeup teams.
    Ohlfons got up from his chair, put the cigarette out in the coffee cup, and tossed it sideways into the garbage can.
    “You’re late,” Ohlfons said in an intimidating foreign accent. He snapped his fingers. “Come.”
    Ava and Sophia exchanged looks. So much for goodwill.
    Inside the trailer he pointed each of them into a seat.
    “I just wanted to say it’s such an honor for us to have a chance to work with both of you,” Sophia told them. “We’re really big fans of your work.”
    Ohlfons sniffed. “How touching.” He took up a position behind their chairs, crossed his arms, and glared at them in the mirror for a full minute.
    “Is something—” Ava started to say.
    Ohlfons made a quick karate-chop gesture through the air with one hand. “ Pfut! Quiet. I am thinking.”
    They waited in silence for another full minute, his glower growing deeper and deeper. Ava tried to get Sophia’s attention to see if she thought this was ridiculous too, but Sophia was watching him with rapt attention as though he was a magic trick that was about to dazzle her.
    Moving behind Sophia’s seat, he took her chin in his hand, turned her face left and right, and scowled. “Bland bland bland,” he pronounced in his complicated accent. He sighed and gave a dramatic shrug. “ Fine . We’ll do what we can.”
    Ava was outraged. She sat forward in her chair and was about to say something when Sophia caught her eye in the mirror and shook her head once, definitively. Ava scowled at her but Sophia was immobile.
    He repeated the head turning with Ava, muttering to himself about how an artist deserved better material, then he strapped on a leather holster filled with makeup brushes and set to work. “So you think you can do my job?” he asked as he mixed lip pigments together on a little palette.
    “Not at all,” Ava