CHAPTERONE
JAE
“It’s a sign!”
“What is?” Dillon asked as he looked out of his bathroom. He had a toothbrush in his mouth and was naked except for a towel wrapped around his waist.
I gestured to my laptop, which I was working on while he took forever to get ready for our night out. “There are five open calls for male models in London next month. Five!” I clenched my fists and did a happy dance on Dillon’s sofa. “This is it, Dillon. I’ll go to them, and one of them will offer me a contract.”
“One or all?”
I rolled my eyes and waved my hand. “While that would be amazing, I don’t want to get my hopes too high. But one out of five has to want me, right?”
“Without a doubt.” Dillon ducked back into the bathroom for a few seconds. When he reappeared, he’d got rid of the toothbrush and had an aerosol deodorant in his hand. “Are they all around the same time?”
My smile faded as I checked the dates. “No. Two are in the same week. The rest are spread out across four weeks.”
I opened a new tab and looked up train prices. It would be possible to get to London and back in one day if I got the earliest and latest trains. The only problem was that five round-trip train fares would add up to an astronomical amount.
“What’s wrong?” Dillon asked as he doused himself in deodorant.
“I can’t afford to go five times.” I was fresh out of uni, jobless, and back to living with my parents. “I’ll have to go to the one I think I have the best shot at and cross my fingers that they want me.”
“Can you ask your parents to help you out?”
I pouted. “They won’t. They disapprove. They think I should take my head out of the clouds and get a proper job.”
Dillon walked past me and into his room. He left the door open so he could carry on talking to me.
“I’ll check my bank account when I’m dressed. Maybe I can help you out.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
Dillon was in the same position as me, minus wanting to be a model. Plus, his parents had converted their garage into a granny flat, where he lived. They’d converted it for his grandma, but she steadfastly refused to leave the home she’d lived in for the last fifty years. She was more active than most twenty-one-year-olds.
“How much are we talking?” he asked.
“About ninety pounds per round trip.” I grimaced. Saying it aloud made it seem even worse.
Dillon walked out of his bedroom, wearing faded jeans and in the process of putting his T-shirt on. “That would be almost five hundred in total.”
“I know.”
“Plus, you’d need to pay for the tube to get around once you’re there.”
“I know.”
“I don’t need to look to know I don’t have that kind of cash. I’m sorry. But maybe we could get you to two of them between us?”
I waved my hand. “It’s fine. I wouldn’t have asked anyway.”
Dillon clicked his fingers. “Do you know what you need?”
“To win the lottery?”
“Do you even play?”
“No.”
