Darcy has had a thing for Jason since our manager, Ester, hired him. Darcy will kill me if I don’t agree to this so she has a chance to spend a little time with him outside of work.

“Okay, sure. Why not? It’ll be fun,” I say.

Jason smiles. “Awesome! Pick a place that you want to meet at tonight.”

Darcy takes a couple steps back so that Jason can’t see her face, and she grins and mouths “thank you” before licking her lips in a seductive way that tells me her thoughts are solely focused on our handsome chef.

That night Darcy and I meet up with Jason and his friend Shane, who is equally as attractive as Jason but has no interest in theater whatsoever. Shane’s a day trader, hoping to make it big on Wall Street. I guess everyone who comes to New York really does have a dream.

Darcy leans into Jason as they sit across from me and Shane in the booth, putting on her best come-hither expressions for the guy she’s been too shy to ask out directly for nearly a year but has been mad crushing on. She’s in seventh heaven right now.

“So, Jason tells me you have an audition tomorrow?” Shane asks as his warm, hazel eyes focus on me, giving me his undivided attention.

Shane’s cute in that uptight businessman kind of way. His face has strong, masculine features like a chiseled jawline with a nice clean shave and a perfect smile. His kind eyes are evenly spaced and placed below perfectly trimmed eyebrows. The dark hair on the top of his head is cropped short but has a bit of gel in it for style.

I take a sip of my lime margarita and nod. “Yes. It’s just a small role with only a couple lines, but I’d get to join in the cast in a few songs, so I’m excited.”

He grins. “Hey, everyone has to start somewhere, right? And I’m sure you’ll whomp it over the fence.”

I laugh at his mixed-up metaphor. “You mean knock it out of the park, don’t you?”

“No.” He laughs. “I hate using the same old boring lines to express things, so I tend to mix things up a little on purpose. It’s just this weird thing I like to do.”

“That’s cute,” I tell him.

“You’re cute,” he immediately says with hopeful eyes, and I blush. “You know, Iris, if you need some moral support for tomorrow, I would be happy to go with you.”

I lift my eyebrows. “Really? Wow. That’s very nice of you, but totally not necessary.”

Shane nods. “A little too forward on my part, I apologize. I tend to do that sometimes too.”

“It’s okay.” I pat his hand. “It was a kind gesture.”

His eyes flit down to my hand and then back up to my face. “Maybe you’ll give me another chance sometime to not screw things up with my too-forward first impressions.”

Shane seems like a supersweet man, and if this would’ve been prior to me meeting Ace White, I might’ve actually been interested, but Ace has ruined me for all other men. I can’t help but compare Shane now, and my heart just isn’t feeling anyone who isn’t Ace. Maybe someday that will change, but for now, I just can’t imagine dating anyone else.

“Perhaps, someday. I just had my heart broken, and I’m just not ready to date yet.”

“I understand.” Shane gives me a sad smile like he’s disappointed but doesn’t push me any more. “Now let’s just enjoy the rest of the night and pretend like I didn’t just make this awkward as hell for us.”

I spend the rest of the night with my friends and my new companion, Shane, relaxing and laughing, doing my best to ignore the fact that I have an impending audition looming over me. I want to land the role so bad, and the one person I desperately want around for moral support won’t be there.

“Iris Easton, you’re up,” the stagehand announces to the group of over fifty women that I’m up against for this role.

I nod and push myself up off the stage floor, make my way over to the center mark, and acknowledge the director and his crew, who are sitting in the first row, centered in the auditorium. “I’m Iris Easton, and I’ll be auditioning for Sylvia.”

“Proceed with the song choice that you’ve prepared for us,” the director calls out.

I nod toward the pianist, and the petite woman with blond hair begins playing the notes for “I’m Not That Girl.” My natural instinct is to close my eyes and sing, but all of the performance things I’ve worked on with Ace rush back to my mind, and I’m reminded that I need to connect with the audience instead of shutting them out like I have the habit of doing.

I take a deep breath and make eye contact with the director, lifting my head, showing him that I’m proud of my ability to sing this song. When I open my mouth, the words flow from me, and there’s no faking the emotion of feeling broken. It’s real, because this song reminds me so much of Ace that it physically hurts.

On the last lyric of the song, my voice wavers as I’m overcome with emotion and allow the tears to fall down my cheeks.

I sniff and wipe my face just as the director says, “Okay, we’ll be in touch. Next.”

I clutch my chest as I walk off stage, knowing that even if I don’t land this part, I put every bit of emotion I had into it and left my heart lying out there on the floor. I have no regrets about what I just did out there.

I close my eyes, wishing that I could pick up the phone and call Gran or be able to run into Ace’s arms and tell him how well that went, but I can’t. Both of them are gone out of my life, and I’m all alone.