Chapter 28: Great Expectations

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.

"I haven't got a phone, sir," Jamie told the man.

"Borrow your mum and dad's then. You'll have to get their permission anyhow if you're under eighteen."

"But I haven't got a mum or dad either."

The man had meant to walk on and leave him, but this last got his attention. No doubt he'd handed that card to many other boys in many other tube stations, but something in young Jamie's words sparked his interest—enough to buy him a fish supper at the chippy and listen to his tale. In the end, the man had called the number for him. His mysterious benefactor had set Jamie up on his very first go-see. Told him what to wear and what to say.

It went well. Even then, Jamie had a knack for showing people the parts of himself they wanted to see and keeping the rest hidden. Not lying per se. At least, Jamie didn't consider it lying at the time.

"Lies of omission," as Cora's voice had accused just now. "Great big gaping chasms of omission."

Perhaps.

In this case, the fine people at G3 Model Management wanted him to be old enough to leave school and sign a contract without a guardian. They'd assumed what they wanted to be true, and Jamie hadn't contradicted them. Only off by a few years. No one bothered about it anyway, once he had an airplane ticket to New York and instructions to seek out an agent by the name of Darius Dawes.

Jamie had straightened out the question of his age eventually. The truth of his education, however, had been lost to the sands of time. That particular fact had never been listed in any version of his bio. Jamie could only imagine how it might look to the woman in his arms, with her double doctoral degrees, if she saw the truth printed on that final card.

******
FACT
Highest educational degree:
Secondary school, Year 9
*******

Jamie was too much of a coward to admit this to Cora, even under cover of darkness.

"We beautiful people don't belabor the truth," he said to her instead.

He didn't see the point in honesty. He could disillusion her, but what would either of them gain. She didn't want the reality. No more than the fashion houses who captured his image for their ads. They wanted the same thing Cora did: one of the beautiful people, living a charmed existence. It had become his purpose in this world, to play that role in one form or another.

No wonder he found a comfort in the pages of that book. Great Expectations. He'd bought it for himself at age 15, at an airport kiosk, and read it on the flight to his new life. He'd memorized it cover to cover by the time he landed his first big contract with Calvin Klein. To this day, Jamie could call up the image of the pages in his mind and recite it, chapter and verse, inside his head.

It made him feel less alone, he supposed, to see himself in a book character. Poor young Pip, hopelessly out of his depth, hired to play parlor games with proud Estella.

And here he was, years later. Still out of his depth. Still playing games.

Such was his lot in life. Jamie couldn't complain. He might have done far worse. He fully recognized how lucky he had been to find a way out of his childhood. His life thus far could only be considered a raving success, compared to the fates of the other former residents of St. Christopher's Home for Boys.

Still, if he dared to look within himself and plumb those murky depths, Jamie found only questions lingering there, unanswered and unanswerable.

What might have been?

It haunted him. He supposed it always would. If he hadn't been standing at a particular tube station on a particular day in May, could he have become a different person altogether? He'd always had a keen mind for his school books, although he did his best to hide it. If he'd received a single ounce of encouragement from any teacher... If anyone had expected anything out of him, anything at all, great or otherwise...

What might have been? Would he have graduated? Found his way to university and beyond? Made something more substantial of himself?

But it didn't matter now. Not to Jamie, and certainly not to his bedmate of the moment. No, in fact it would be an act of kindness not to burden her with reality, as dreary as it was. Much better to live the lie. Be the man she wanted, worthy of her kisses, for as long as he could keep the fantasy alive. She'd never be the wiser. Once they left this beach and returned to the real world, he would never see her face again.

Cora turned in his arms. Restless and dissatisfied with his dissembling. Her hand found his cheek as if to read the answers to her questions in the contours of his face.

"Here's what I don't get," she said. "It doesn't make any sense. Why would someone like you be so worried about some modeling agency dropping you?"

"Why indeed. An excellent question." Jamie turned his head before she could poke him in the eye. "I've often wondered the same thing myself."

Cora huffed at this non-answer. "Was it all fake? Did you make that whole story up just to mess with me?"

Jamie rested his forehead against hers. He looked into her eyes, drained of color in the darkness. He could see that little light again, reflecting back at him. Two days ago, he had thought that little light might lead to his salvation.

He had hoped. Here in the darkness, away from all the cameras, with no one looking on or listening in. With no one but a beautiful schoolteacher who couldn't see his face, he had seen a chance to answer the unanswerable.

Jamie felt a weight upon his chest now, crushing out the air. A deep sadness overtook him—the sense of loss when the greatest expectations end up dashed upon the rocks.

"Of course not," he said. "My career was at stake. My only source of income? Even the beautiful people need silly things like money to survive, you know."

"Please," she answered. "You could get another job."

"What would you suggest?"

"I don't know. I mean, you have a doctorate. You could always teach."

Oh, the irony. He could almost laugh. He could almost weep. He could almost believe that he was someone other than himself. "No," he told her blithely. "You're the schoolteacher in this story. Not me."

"I'm not—"

"I don't care if it's not true. You're a schoolteacher to me. You have been from the start. And I intend to earn full marks for my efforts."

He stamped his words with a kiss. Cora didn't turn away. Her mouth melted against his, and Jamie soaked it in. Like Pip with his Estella, he savored those forbidden lips if only in his dreams, basking in her astonishment at the fine gentleman he'd become.

Dear Readers:
If you're enjoying the story, please let me know with you VOTES and COMMENTS. Thank you!