James collapsed into the driver’s seat of his car and tried to get his heart rate back under control. Nobody had warned him about the difference between auditioning for a student film or your college’s fall theatre production, and auditioning for a professional, independent film that was obviously poised to win awards. Professor Thomas had got him the script to read, and man, the role of Tyler was a fantastic one, especially for someone just starting out.

Jack Wallace was a young actor’s dream come true. He’d been the darling of the school before graduating and since then had gone on to make two independent films that had swept Sundance. Personally, James thought Wallace had been cheated out of the Grand Jury prize last year when a more well-known director’s film had won, but if he thought too much about the politics of the film industry he’d throw himself off a cliff, so he just avoided dwelling on it. Wallace’s previous two films were comedies, one about how nine millennials rent out a two-bedroom apartment together and somehow make it work, and the other about a mother who lies about having cancer to get her children to come home for the holidays. James had been curious to see what Wallace would do when tackling something as opposite from a comedy as a horror film, and a psychological one at that. What he’d seen of the script so far had him all but drooling.

The other guy in the room had been a dream come true as well, but in an entirely different way. James didn’t know who he was. The blonde woman, Mary Kowalski, was the casting director; he’d spoken with her previously. Jack Wallace was, obviously, the director. Maybe the other guy was a producer or something? James hoped that he wasn’t, from what he’d heard producers weren’t on set much, and he was really hoping that this guy would be on set. James hadn’t been able to tell what his height was because he was sitting down, but the guy had a lean, fit body, with dark, slicked back hair and piercing eyes that were so dark they’d looked almost black. His face had been sharply defined, cheekbones and an angled jaw and thin eyebrows, all of which looked like they’d been carved out of glass, ready to cut you. He looked logical and calculating and like the brains of the operation—if it had been a mob audition he’d walked into, James would have pegged him for the boss.

Just his luck that one of the men involved in this project was gorgeous. And he wasn’t being sarcastic when he said that. If he got a chance to finally find someone, someone gorgeous and smart that he could actually date instead of getting just one-night-stands that didn’t mean anything…that would be perfect.

Now he was fantasizing about entering a relationship with someone that he’d only seen for about thirty seconds and only really paid attention to for ten seconds, because when he was doing his monologue he honestly wasn’t seeing the people looking at him, he was seeing the characters and his need. In the case of Tyler, that need had been to prove his sanity, offset by his fear that he was actually insane and committing the murders himself. But just ten seconds of seeing this guy and already he was fantasizing about a possible relationship? James shook his head and started his car. He had to be desperate.

Maybe it was just his mind’s way of deflecting from how nervous he’d been during the audition. His previous auditions hadn’t prepared him for walking into the room knowing that this could be his big break. His legs had felt like jelly. He was confident that he’d done well with the monologue, but had he done well enough? Was it enough to beat out the others who’d auditioned? He had no idea how many people they were seeing. He knew that Thomas had sent some of the other guys towards Wallace, but James didn’t know how many of them Wallace had actually asked to audition.

At least with this audition James didn’t have to worry about going up against the likes of Academy Award winners or something. Wallace wasn’t that big of a heavy hitter, not yet, so James could pretend that he had a shot at this lead role.

If he could just get this role, though…the amount of his student debt sprung into mind, and James groaned, pulling out onto the street to let the LA traffic distract him from the gut-wrenching fear that gripped him whenever he thought about how much he owed. A role like this, with starring credit, would not only pay marginally well but would help him get other roles in other films, and soon he’d hopefully have a steady paycheck coming his way instead of having to pull a double shift at the hotel to put gas in his car or keep the electricity running.

He tried not to get his hopes up too much. He’d gotten them up before only to have them dashed, and it sucked every time. But it was so hard when it felt like what he wanted was so close, almost within his grasp.

James grinned to himself, for once not minding the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Fairfax. If he could manage to snag a gorgeous man while he was at it, well, so much the better. There was no harm in a little fantasy, right?