She only has one rule...
[WATTYS SHORTLIST 2022]
A buttoned up bookworm agrees to a fake relationship with a surprisingly literate male model in order to save his career. She only has one condition: No kissing allowed.
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At age 27, Cora Glass ha...
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Jamie had meant to tell the truth. He really had. When he turned out the lights and announced the game, he'd fully expected to confess.
He only toyed with Cora at first to lighten the mood. He meant to ease her into the truth. Make her see it not so much as a lie but a hilarious joke he'd let her in on, hoping she wouldn't feel as though he'd taken advantage of her under false pretenses.
He couldn't say the precise moment when his noble plans had changed. He'd lost his way in the darkness somehow, with nothing but Cora's voice to guide him.
"Do you want me to be a model in real life?" he'd asked just now.
"I could take it or leave it," she'd eventually replied.
He'd assumed as much, but to hear her confirm it only served to further dash his good intentions. After all, Jamie Bowen was nothing if not a people pleaser. He'd made a whole career of it. Ever the chameleon, matching his energy to anyone he met, playing whatever role most suited their whims and desires.
And the truth was, deep down, Cora's whims and desires weren't far off from his own. He didn't want to be a model in real life either. Before this show, he'd spent his long hiatus wondering if his career might be over. Staring into the abyss. Half yearning for the end and half dreading the long descent to the bottom if he didn't find some way to break his fall.
He had no other skills. No other training. No other trade. No other means of survival.
And so he had presented himself when Darius summoned him back from obscurity. He did what he was told, clutching to the tattered remnants of his career like Miss Havisham with her pathetic wedding dress, even as it filled him with self-loathing.
Jamie had read Great Expectations enough times to know the thing by heart. When people heard the word "orphan" they tended to think of Oliver Twist, but Jamie had always identified more with Pip, dreaming of a mysterious benefactor who would come into his life and transform him into a gentleman.
He'd gotten his wish, oddly enough. His very own benefactor had materialized before him at a tube station in Ealing at the tender age of 15. A mere boy on the cusp of manhood, still clumsy and unused to the length of his limbs, the new squareness of his jaw, and the unfamiliar sight of his reflection in the glass. Like the hero in his favorite book, one chance encounter with a stranger had changed his life irrevocably.
"Excuse me, son. I don't mean to intrude, but have you ever considered modeling? You have the look about you."
Young Jamie had thought the man was taking the piss at first. He'd looked around to see if the words were meant for someone else. But the man's eyes were on him, and he thrust a card in Jamie's hand.
Talent Scout G3 Model Management London / New York
In Jamie's fifteen years on Earth, no one had ever expressed to him that he might have a talent for much of anything. The sheer novelty had proven irresistible. Jamie had stashed the card in his pocket with a nod of thanks, and the man told him to call the number on the back if he was interested.
