Push to the Limit (the sixth book in the Glee series)

Chapter 8: I Will Be

I wrote this all out of order so I hope it makes sense. Have fun reading! 
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"Where's the photographer?" asked Kurt as he paced Bree's living room. It was 7 in the morning on a Monday, officially too early for him to be working. Adding to his frustration, the new actress they'd hired to model for their line was almost done getting ready for their first test shots but the photographer they'd hired had yet to arrive. 

"I don't know," Bree sighed, taking a sip of her water and wishing she wasn't as pregnant as she currently was so that she could enjoy coffee instead. "But at least the actress is here. What do you think of her by the way?"

"Of Cleo?" Kurt asked. "She's fabulous! So beautiful and glamorous. She looks like someone you'd spot at Coachella with a Kardashian or something. I—"

The doorbell rang and Bree exclaimed, "Oh, she's here! I'll go get that." She handed her cup of water to Kurt and rushed to the door. When she opened it and Amity was standing there, holding her camera around her neck, she said, "Yay! You made it! I was starting to think you weren't going to show. I know it was really last minute."

"Are you kidding me?" Amity asked. "I was so glad when you asked me to do this photo shoot. Any opportunity to help out my friends and get to use my camera again is one I will not pass up. So where's the new girl?"

"In the living room," Kurt said. "We've transformed it into the hair and makeup area."

"Ok," Bree said, putting an arm around Amity and leading her there. "We just want today to be really understated but effective. We'll go around Lima with Cleo wearing some of the new clothes to get a feel of how she looks in them and for her to get a feel of the city and our company."

"Good luck with that," Unique said, walking out of the living room to join them. "I think I'm wasting my day on this shoot."

"What?" asked Kurt. "Why?"

"That girl is not a model," said Unique. "She isn't going to stick around, ok; you're wasting your time on her. I just saw her practicing her walk in front of the mirror and she's an absolute disaster. Very pretty. But a disaster."

"I don't understand," Kurt said as Bree went to the living room to see for herself. There she saw Cleo walking towards the mirror and away from it, and just as Unique had described, she was a disaster. She simply could not walk gracefully. 

"She's like a horse or something," Bree told the others. "This is a mess, Kurt. We hired an actress to be our model and she can't even walk."

"But you're not putting her on a catwalk," Amity said. "You're doing photo shoots, which you already made sure she was good at before hiring her."

"She's right," Kurt agreed.

"But we're investing on someone who we can groom for longevity with the line," Bree told them. "She'll need to be able to walk the runways gracefully eventually. Man, I really wish we had one of the Rhythmix girls. Any of them. This is awful."

Cleo saw them all standing outside of the living room and smiled. "Hi," she told them, her blue-green eyes shining at them. "Is something wrong? Why is this taking so long?"

Unique turned to Kurt and Bree. "What do you want to do?" she asked them. 

Kurt looked pleadingly at Bree, who rolled her eyes and said, "Well, we don't really have any other options right now so... I guess we'll proceed as planned. She'll have to learn how to model."

***

"Ok, that's good," Amity said, snapping a couple pictures of Cleo holding a Lima Bean cup outside of the establishment. "These street shots are so nice." She looked around and said, "Why don't we get a few right over there by that brick? It'll really help the yellow top pop." Cleo nodded and Unique walked over to her to reapply her makeup. Meanwhile, Amity turned to Kurt and said, "I need to do a few test shots so get in there and model for me."