Page 53 of Pink

TWELVE

“GIGI!”

“Miss Rey, could we get a picture!”

“Gigi, over here!”

“Gigi!”

“Give us a smile, sweetheart!”

“Welcome home!”

“Gigi!”

“Look this way, Gigi!”

“Gigi!”

She never thought there would come a time when she became tired of hearing her own name, but here it was. It was far worse whenever she made a trip to the states because America was nothing like Europe when it came to celebrities, the rich and famous, or just a recognizable face.

Overseas, Gigi could do whatever she wanted without much bother even though one couldn’t turn a corner in a major city without seeing her face on a billboard or in the magazine stands on a cover. Stateside, paparazzi made a game out of chasing anyone with a little bit of clout. Even leaving a hotel for a coffee down the street became a game of cat and mouse if it wasn’t a well-planned endeavor.

Here, she couldn’t even use her real last name—and sometimes, her agent even booked her rooms under the names of her assistant or someone else on the team—just to give them a bit of legroom to breathe.

Although she ignored the fucking hoard of paparazzi, and their constantly flashing cameras on the way up the stairs to the entrance of the Manhattan Hilton, she did stop at the sight of the teenage girl standing just behind awaiting security. One of three security guards on her team for this trip to New York that would last a couple of months. Between the upcoming shows that she would be walking in for Fashion Week, the campaigns she had to do, and trying to just … see her mom and visit with old friends, it was going to be busy. She needed her entire team to make it work.

Not that it was anything new.

She had come to learn in the five and a half years since she took that deal for Paris that to most of the people in her circle, all she was to them was money. Success. A way to survive and thrive. Every contract she signed to sell her beauty and fantasy for another campaign paid a lot of people, not just her. If she had to guess how many of the people in her team actually gave a shit about her on a personal level, and how many were only there for what she could give … it was probably fifty-fifty.

Just to make it fair.

Hell, even the designer who made her face a household name in Europe in the first year of working with him didn’t care much about who she was—just what she could give to him. He called her his muse but made her a doll that moved and behaved at his demand and will. She hadn’t even been able to keep her name the way she wanted it under his contract. Gone was Gigi Rey Parker, the girl from a small New Jersey town. In her place came the untouchable, unobtainable beauty of Gigi Rey.

Who was Gigi Rey?

It didn’t matter.

Because nobody could be her. Or that was the slogan her agency liked to sell.

But who was she to complain? Wasn’t this what she signed up for?

The security guard already had the door open and ready for her; she could have walked right in past the waiting teen, but the magazine clutched in the girl’s hands that she held at her chest, cover facing out so Gigi could see it, made her stop.

It was her face.

Her latest cover—she stopped keeping count after the first hundred.

GIGI REY, the cover read under her tilted face. With her lips set into a pout, wet hair and mused, and smudged makeup, it looked like she had just gotten out of a pool. THE MUSE OF THE LAST HALF DECADE SPEAKS ON WHAT IT’S LIKE TO DO WHAT SHE’S DONE IN JUST FIVE AND A HALF YEARS.

In smaller print under the headline and her name read in quotes, taken from her own words, “I’m only trying to find happiness—don’t expect me to provide yours.”

It was the only message she cared to be heard in that particular interview, and she knew the second the interview and shoot finals passed through her agency for approval because every member of her team let her know it.

She didn’t care then.

Didn’t care now.