Right. I'd done it willingly. Who was there to blame.
I gave a bitter little laugh and lowered my head, eating in silence.
The six of them lost interest, boxed up their food, and wandered off, shoving and teasing each other.
The rice in my mouth tasted bitter and dry, but I still had the auto-show proposal to finish that afternoon, so I choked the meal down through my tears, hurrying.
The lunch break had barely ended when Bruno Nash started pushing Max in the group chat to send out the model cards.
He had reason to be anxious. This wasn't some local auto show. As a dealership, this was our first time exhibiting at a B-level show.
If Bruno botched it, the manufacturer wouldn't let him off the hook.
Max, though, didn't seem to feel any of Bruno's urgency. He answered at his own pace with a hand-over-mouth giggling emoji: "You can't rush a good thing. Our friend is still shooting the photos."
Bruno shot back, irritated: "Fine!"
Then the big group went quiet.
A long while later, Max started spamming stickers into the chat.
"Ready? I promise none of you will be disappointed!"
"3!"
"2!"
"1…"
The second he sent that last "1," the chat exploded with photos.
One after another, half-covered, "sexy" glamour shots came pouring in.
There was nothing artful about the framing. The lens went straight for chests and backsides and the insides of thighs.
The sheer, see-through fabric barely covered skin as pale and smooth as porcelain.
As Max kept posting, the office filled with a rolling wave of sharp intakes of breath.
"That is way too hot."
"My God, look at those bodies. Only sixty bucks a day? They're every bit as good as pro models!"
Patsy Chavez seemed to spot her chance to knock me down again. She dropped a message into the group: "Which just goes to show, on those two- or three-thousand quotes, imagine how big a kickback got skimmed off the middle."
But her message got ignored by every male boss and male coworker in the company.
In a blink it was buried under drooling, leering emojis.
Max kept going: "My friend says this batch of models is exhibiting for the first time, so the price is pretty fair. And after the show, if you want them to join you for dinner, no problem, but…"
Like a man dangling bait, he trailed off on purpose, and everyone pressed him to finish.
Only then did he smugly post a screenshot of his chat with the models' agent.
Max: "Sixty a day, seriously? Can we take them out after the show?"
Agent: "Take them out for what?"
Max sent a raised-eyebrow sticker: "You know. Dinner with the bosses."
"Sure."
"Then we can do a little more than that."
"Sixty a day. I don't care how you use them. But if you play, that's two hundred."
That exchange dragged every man in the group to a fever pitch.
"Two hundred! I've paid more than that just to have someone sing karaoke with me. Max is basically my patron saint."
Some of the bosses even started picking their favorites off the photos, calling out which one they wanted.
Reading the chat made my stomach turn. The whole office felt like it reeked.
I flipped through the girls' photos one by one, and then my hand froze.
Holding my breath, I zoomed in on the pictures, one after another, my fingers trembling.
A thought surfaced in my mind, and after I'd checked it three times over.
I nearly cried out. Every grudge, every score to settle, all of it fell away.
There was only one thought left: Run. Quit right now.
And at that moment, Bruno posted in the group: "Wait. Why do I feel like something's off?"
