Aniya Rossi sighed. She was correcting a tiny deviation in her perfectly drawn lip liner, but the limousine that was driving her trembled because of a bump on the road, and her lip pencil made a weird line on her left cheek.
She pressed the console at her front and opened the privacy-shadowed mini window.
Her personal driver noticed the movement and squeezed the steering wheel, getting ready for one more of her usual rants.
“Davis, do you mind not driving like a toddler on his tricycle? You ruined my make-up! Just look at me! I look like a total freak!”
“I am really sorry, Miss. There was a hole in the road, and I couldn’t-“
Aniya waved her hand while making a despised look. “Do I ever care about your excuses, Davis? Pull over! I need to fix this and I don’t want you to make the matter even worse!”
“Certainly, Miss, let me search for a safe spot to-“
“Again with the excuses? Pull over right now!”
As the driver quickly signalled and parked in an empty spot in front of a hydrant, Aniya grumped, “The staff is getting worse every year... I need to have a serious talk with my father. I don’t need stupidity near me!”
Aniya grabbed a wet mini towel from the compartment on the left door and quickly cleaned the line on her cheek. She put a new base on that area and corrected, once again, the line surrounding the lip gloss.
She looked at the small mirror again and frowned. “It looks different. I need to remove all the base and start all over! I don’t have time for this. I want to see the new Dior collection!”
She closed the little mirror encrusted with precious stones and threw it into her tiny purse, annoyed because she didn’t like what she saw, but couldn’t waste any more time because she wanted to try all the new dresses of the season. She signalled her driver to continue and looked out the window.
The City was always the same. Pedestrians walking on the side-walk, beggars sitting in a corner with cups or hats in front of them, kids on skateboards, surfing the crowd.
Aniya frowned. She preferred it if all the beggars were hidden from sight, and everyone wore the latest fashion clothes. All those casual clothes walking around annoyed her, and she averted her eyes to the phone on her lap.
She took a quick look at her I.nstagra.m account, ‘aniya_rossi_official’, one thousand new followers. She clicked on a random profile and twisted her upper lip in a grimace. A random guy’s profile photo with a naked chest.
“Yuck! Gross! You just earned a block, stupid!”
She threw her phone into her purse and faced the window again. The limousine was almost there, but it got stuck in traffic, and then she saw him, standing on the sidewalk, staring at her.
Aniya knew no one could see her through the smoked window, but it was as if that amazing, handsome guy was staring at her soul. Without even realising what she was doing, she touched the button and lowered the window. Their eyes met, and for a few seconds that, for her, seemed like a lifetime, she couldn’t stop staring.