girl who thought her heart was stolen and that’s why she couldn’t feel goes on a journey with the help of a boy who shows her what it means to live and learns she had it all along.”
I’m shaking my head before she finishes. “The female lead is nothing like me. She doesn’t have a heart. She doesn’t think she’s missing anything until someone points that out. I’ve never had that problem. I feel way too much.”
“Obviously. But you’re not her. Tyler is.”
I wash the shot glasses and cast a look over my shoulder. She tips her chin down, staring at me as if I’m being deliberately slow.
My hands still in the sink, bubbles filling the basin.
“You’re the other lead,” she goes on. “The boy who shows her what it means to live, and love, and take chances.”
I turn off the faucet and watch the water drain out. The shiny dish soap glints on the surface as the bubbles spiral around and around, finally slipping down the drain.
I set the glasses on the drying rack. When I face my roommate, I brace a still-wet hand on the counter. “That’s not true.”
But my chest squeezes. The next breath is harder than the last.
It’s our story. Mine and Tyler’s. Not all of it of course, but the core.
I cross to the couch and perch on the arm. Elle’s face fills with empathy as she follows. “He’d be proud. You should send it to him.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since you started telling me about it a year ago. Does he know you love him?”
I shove off the couch and pace the width of our apartment. “Yes.” I pause by the window. “But Tyler has always chosen freedom, to do his own thing and rely on himself. New York isn’t what he wants. And I want this show, Elle. Not only for me, but also for everyone involved. For everyone who’ll get to see it if we keep going.”
“You want it enough to let Tyler go? Not that I want to lose you and Beck to LA”—her lips curve in a sad smile—“but you could write.”
I return to the counter for the shot glasses and pour half a glass more for each of us.
“We always stayed true to our dreams, for better or worse, and I love that about us. But a career isn’t made or broken in one perfect moment. It’s hundreds of choices over thousands of days. What if love is the same, Elle?” I think of the ups and downs with my family, my dad. “Maybe we were meant to be apart for a couple of years, and that decision wasn’t wrong, it was just one more choice that helped us grow and learn and become more of who were supposed to be. Maybe we have more choices ahead of us, starting right now, and nothing in the world can keep us apart if I find ways to choose him.”
The ideas start coming in a rush, all at once. “If I can find the right person to play the female lead, I can finish the show without having to be in it.”
Her eyes widen. “You’d give up playing the lead for Tyler.”
A surge of energy takes me over, and I know in an instant what I’m thinking is right.
“I wouldn’t be giving up something I want. I’d be choosing something I don’t want to live without.”
He’s my best friend, the only man I’ve ever loved.
The only man I will love.
Taking up a Broadway stage might have been my dream, but I have another dream that matters every bit as much.
Us.
20
I get my bike out to ride to Santa Monica, navigating the ever-present traffic on the way to the address I know by heart.
The property’s a house with ocean views—three bedrooms, white stucco, sunshine for days. When I get there, Beck’s leaning against his car.
“Nice of ‘em to let you come see the place again,” my friend comments.
I pass him to get to the door, punching in the code the realtor gave me. “For the price, they should.”
I put an offer in last week before the house was scheduled to go on the market, but we built into the conditions that I get another look at it.
He follows me inside.
It’s beautiful, open concept with high ceilings. Too much white, but something tells me that’s by design.
I never pictured myself living in something so stunning.
I head through the living room to the patio on the other side, a pool and a deck with