Unfinished - Plain White Crop Top

​This is the start of a planned sequel for my story Plain White Tank Top. Be warned, there's nothing sexy written yet. I have a fair amount of it planned out, but haven't gotten around to finishing it.

**

"I'm actually in the dressing room right now. I think I go on in fifteen..."

​Henley sat in front of the large mirror, finishing up her makeup. The room was brightly lit with a dozen bulbs surrounding the perimeter of the mirror and multiple spotlights in the ceiling above. Even if Henley wasn't looking for blemishes or imperfections in her complexion, she'd find them. She could even see the roller lines left behind by whoever had painted the white walls around her. There was an uncomfortable-looking, green armchair in the corner on which she had deposited her purse and duffel bag, and an empty clothing rack pushed against the wall adjacent to the door.

Her phone sat on the desk in front of her amongst a myriad of makeup brushes and palettes. She had one earbud in so she could chat with her mom and still have both hands free. It struck her as odd that a company willing to pay her an exorbitant amount of money for a trial run wouldn't also have a makeup artist on hand, but Henley was actually okay with it; she didn't need to argue with some cake-faced princess that her brand was about looking natural. The small amount of makeup she wore was only to reduce any shininess from the studio lights.

​"No, I'm not nervous at all! It'll be just like any other livestream." Henley looked at her reflection and gave herself a look. Hopefully, her mom didn't catch the apprehension in her voice. She secretly hoped that saying it enough would make it come true, but this was not going to be anything like the livestreams she broadcast from the studio in her condo.

​In fifteen minutes, she would be in a much bigger studio with much brighter lights. Three cameramen, a bunch of PAs, and the director would all have eyes on her—not just her phone set up on a tripod. And that didn't even cover the money that was at stake. They were willing to pay her six figures for a fifty-minute trial run; if she tested well with the audience, they’d offer her a contract and a permanent spot in their community. With all her other sponsors dropping her for hotter, younger, more risqué influencers, this opportunity felt like some kind of divine intervention.

​A knock at the dressing room door caught Henley's attention, and she put down her foundation brush. "Oh, someone's knocking, Mom. I gotta go," she said as she picked up her phone and stood from her seat. "Yep, I'll ask. Bye!"

​Henley ended the call before her mom could say anything else. "Come in!" she called out.

​The door opened swiftly and a woman strode in with a beaming smile. She had a flowing red mane of hair, a sleeve of bright tattoos, and a pair of the biggest breasts that Henley had ever seen on a frame that small. She didn't normally gawk at other women's chests, but the woman's low-cut black tank top made it hard to ignore.

​"This is your outfit for the livestream. You're going to be, like, so hot." The woman spoke with an air that made it hard to imagine her engaging in an intellectual conversation. Henley tore her eyes away from the woman's chest to look at the two hangers in her hand. One had clips on it that held something small and black, the other was a typical shirt hanger with a tiny white top on it... if you could call it a shirt. She was certain that for something to be classified as a shirt, it would have to be made of significantly more material. The top had no sleeves and it had an angled hemline cut so high that she wasn't sure if it would fully cover the bra on her right side.

"Are there any other options?" Henley asked.

There were so many things wrong with that top; she couldn't wear it. Firstly, it was white—glaringly white. It was so bright that the dressing room walls looked cream in comparison. With her naturally pale skin, dirty blonde hair, and minimalist makeup, a bright white shirt would be a disaster on screen. She had worn a white top on a livestream once before and it had washed her out completely; she’d received dozens of comments asking if she was ill or if she was eating enough.

Secondly, the cut was just inappropriate.

The redhead scrunched her face. "Were you hoping for the one with the cute, like, words and letters and stuff? We don't make those anymore, but this is the same fabric. It'll feel so good and, like, magical."

Henley had no idea what the woman was talking about, but she didn't have time to decipher it. "No. Are there other colors? Other cuts? Other styles?"

With wide eyes and an open mouth, a wave of realization washed over the redhead’s face. "Oh! No, this is what you have to wear."

"I'm not wearing that," said Henley. "I can't wear that. The white is going to completely wash me out on camera, and the cut exposes way too much."

The busty redhead looked a little sheepish and placed the hangers on the clothing rack. "Oh, well, I think it's in your contract or whatever," she said. "But I’ll go get John."

She left abruptly without another word. Only then did Henley notice the woman was wearing tiny denim Daisy Dukes that failed to cover her substantial backside.

Henley shook her head; maybe this wasn't a sponsorship she wanted after all. She looked at herself in the mirror, wearing her loose-fitting dark blue t-shirt and black leggings. It was important to her not to body-shame, and her clothing choices reflected that. She was fit, toned, and thin; she could absolutely pull off the crop top hanging on the rack, but her brand was about providing a safe space for women to improve their fitness far away from harmful beauty standards.

She had always felt like a black sheep in the "fitfluencer" community, often turning down potential sponsors because they didn't align with her values. She couldn't help but feel like that's what had gotten her into this mess in the first place—strapped for cash and so desperate for a sponsorship that she’d fly to another city just to audition for some sleazy clothing company.

The bright white of the crop top caught her eye again. She’d need a completely different foundation and some blush just to not look like a corpse in that thing.

There was a heavy knock at her door. "Come in," she called out, barely able to hide her irritation.

The door opened and John walked in. [Insert description of John here]. His head was down, his eyes on his phone, and his thumbs were tapping away incessantly—just as they had been when she first met him earlier that day.

"Sarah tells me you're having second thoughts," he said, finally looking up. It wasn't a question so much as an assertion, treating her dedication to her brand like a mild nuisance.

"No, not second thoughts," Henley said firmly. "But I need a different outfit. I can't wear that."

She gestured aggressively at the clothing rack, but John didn't even look.

"It's in the contract you signed that you would wear an outfit produced and provided by Alterletics." His response was monotone and bored, like a script he’d rehearsed many times before. Finally, he looked her dead in the eyes. "If you don't want to wear it, you can leave. But you won't be paid, and your in-town accommodations will be canceled."

"What?! But my flight home isn't until tomorrow afternoon! Where will I stay?"

"That would be a problem for you to figure out," he said coldly. "So, are you going on, or do I need to prepare a backup to go on in ten minutes?"

Panic washed over Henley. No, no, no. "I’ll do the show. But is this really the only option? Alterletics has to have other styles, right?"

​"No," he said. "To keep it fair across the board, everyone has to wear the same outfit."

​"Fair? What do you mean?"

​John sighed and looked at his watch. "This is an audition livestream to see if you have what it takes to be a regular host, right?" Henley nodded. "Well, obviously we're doing other auditions with other girls, each one in front of an audience curated from our community. The ones who receive the most tips from our audiences will be offered a position. We don't want to skew the stats by giving one person a better outfit than another."

​Henley glowered at the outfit hanging on the rack. What he said made sense, even if the white gave her a serious disadvantage.

​John grabbed the hangers from the rack. "What's wrong with it, anyway? It's a pretty typical outfit for a workout video, isn't it?"

​Henley shook her head. "No, it's way too revealing for my community, and the white will make me look like a ghost on screen."

​"Too revealing?" John asked incredulously. "Didn't you think to familiarize yourself with our products before signing on? This is pretty tame."

​Henley shook her head. "Let’s be clear: your team approached me. I just figured that you were branching out to market to more body types, but I can't have anyone in my community see me wearing something like this. It would destroy my brand."

​John scoffed and chuckled simultaneously. "Okay, we apparently got some wires crossed. If you're worried about any supporters seeing this, don't be. As I said, this livestream is only being broadcast to a curated audience from our community. Exactly fifty people are going to watch this. They have all been vetted, and none of them have any prior knowledge of you as a content creator."

​Henley eyed John skeptically. Why was she being paid such an exorbitant amount to livestream to only fifty people?

​"On top of that," John continued, "we have extremely robust anti-piracy measures in place. Everyone's privacy is extremely important to us. No one will be able to take so much as a screenshot."

​Henley looked away from John, back at the outfit hanging on the rack. Her arms were crossed, but her body language had softened.

​"Look, I know you can use the money. I know you need the money. Otherwise, you wouldn't have flown out here to take a chance with our brand." John's voice had also softened considerably; it was obvious he knew how to talk people down from a ledge. "I know you don't want to spend a night outside alone in a strange city. Just put on the clothes and run a workout. And if it makes you feel better about your complexion, I'm sure Sarah has some blush somewhere, but just trust me and my team to make sure the camera sees your best side."

Henley could feel that her jaw was still tense, jutting forward like a physiological symptom of her displeasure. She consciously forced it to relax. She still didn't like the idea of being broadcast wearing such a skimpy thing, but John had made some convincing points. If she went through with it, by tomorrow it would be nothing more than a memory, and she'd be flying home with a few extra zeros in her bank account. At this point, signing a long-term contract was out of the question; even if the audience liked looking at a washed-out ghost, Henley knew that Alterletics wasn't a brand she wanted to represent.

​"Fifty people?" she asked, her voice low and still unsure.

​John looked her in the eyes and nodded. "Fifty people," he said reassuringly, before adding, "and the crew, of course."

​"Okay. I'll do it."

​"Excellent!" John exclaimed with a smile. "I'll track Sarah down to bring you some blush or whatever." He walked out, closing the door behind him and leaving Henley alone with her thoughts.

​She knew that in the grand scheme of things, it really shouldn't be such a big deal, but she couldn't help but feel like she had just sold her soul to the devil. Her phone chimed as she stripped off her navy t-shirt. It was a text from her mom, "Any luck?"

​Henley tossed her shirt onto her bag and replied, "Haven't spoken to the producer yet. Not sure if I'll be able to, but I'll send you a link if he gives it to me." It was a lie, but after his big spiel about security, there was no way John was going to give out a viewing link, and Henley absolutely did not want her mom to see her wearing what they had provided. She would just have to lie afterward and tell her everything had been a whirlwind. Henley set her phone back down on the counter and grabbed the white top off the rack.

​"May as well get this over with," she said aloud.

After a quick outfit change, a smattering of blush from the overly busty Sarah, and a very rushed debrief, Henley found herself in the studio with three cameras pointed at her. John sat in a chair off-stage, front and slightly off-center. He was in his usual position with his gaze downcast at his phone. The studio was smaller than she had imagined; the stage where she stood took up half the room and was hardly big enough to have a second person up there while she worked out. The rest of the room was dedicated to the cameramen and their equipment, a few people holding boom mics, and, of course, the lighting.

​If she was moderately worried about being washed out before, now she was entirely certain of her fate. Not only were the lights so blindingly bright that she felt like she could make out every vein in her forearm, but she was also backlit by a wall of blindingly white LED displays. Allegedly, if one of the audience members tipped high enough, they could have their message and name displayed on the screen, but looking like a specter masquerading as a human made Henley doubt that would ever happen.

​Before long, Sarah, the voluptuous production assistant, rushed over to a marked spot on the floor just in front of the stage. She turned to face the cameras and quickly fixed the few strands of her long red hair that dared to be out of place. Another PA, a man dressed in all black, calmly strode to a spot beside John’s chair and announced, "Okay everybody, we're going live in five, four, three..." He then silently mouthed two and one before pointing at Sarah.

​Henley felt her heart begin to race as her nerves took over, but she took a deep breath to regulate her system. There was no going back now.

​"Hi everyone!" Sarah announced to the center camera. "Welcome to the Alterletics Talent Scout series! I hope you're ready to get your blood pumping, because today we present... Alluring Alara!"