IRIS
The bustling sound of New York City out the window of my shoe-box apartment is a far cry from the quiet surroundings of my childhood home. It was hard leaving Willow Acres, but knowing that Adele and Birdie are running things in my absence helps me rest easier at night. Birdie has decided to hold off on moving here with me for now because she loves her night shift job at Angel’s, and she knows I’m depending on her to help Adele with the trailer park. I trust both of them implicitly. They’re my family—blood or not—and they’re all I’ve got.
When I went to Tanner’s office three days before my scheduled flight back to the city to tell him that I wouldn’t be able to come up with the money for the taxes, I was shocked to find they had already been paid. I didn’t figure Ace would still do that for me, considering I hadn’t heard from him for at least three weeks at that point.
I went on national television, practically begging him to come back, or at the very least call me, but I never heard a peep from him. I find myself not only hurt by the fact that he didn’t even make an attempt to contact me, but pissed. It makes me wonder if the romantic nice guy who made me lots of poetic promises was full of nothing but shit. I think after pouring my heart out in front of millions of people, I at least deserve a phone call, even if it is just to tell me things are over and to move on with my life.
So, needless to say, I was surprised that he’d followed through with helping me out by paying the taxes.
I’ve been working my ass off ever since then to save the money to pay him back. I have around two thousand dollars saved, and I will pay him back every penny . . . once I figure out how to get in contact with him, that is.
It’s been a little over five weeks since I last saw Ace in person. Sure, I’ve seen him from time to time like the rest of America on the covers of tabloid magazines and on television when Linda Bronson updates her viewers on Ace’s comeback. He never mentions me willingly. If my name is ever brought up in an interview, he refuses to comment, so I figure he’s still hurt that I wouldn’t leave with him.
“Are you nearly ready?” Darcy, my roommate, asks.
“Yes,” I tell her as I finish the last coat of my mascara. “Let’s go.”
Darcy pulls her dark, curly hair into a ponytail, showing off her slender neck and perfectly round face, before grabbing her purse.
I follow her out the door and wait on her to lock up before we head to the elevator.
I met Darcy nearly a year ago when I first moved into the city. She and I worked together at Flows and immediately hit it off. Like me, Darcy moved here to make it in theater, but her dream is to be a prima ballerina. When I decided it was time to come back to New York, she was the first person I called, and I have been crashing on her couch for the last two weeks.
I was ecstatic to get my old waitressing job back here at Flows. That place was like a second home to me, so I am grateful for the familiarity. Everything fell back into place just as it was a few months ago, and it’s like I never left.
I pick at my nails, noticing I desperately need a manicure, but am determined to save every penny until Ace gets his money back.
“How’d your audition go yesterday?” I ask Darcy as we walk down the busy street on the way to work.
She shrugs. “They didn’t seem superenthused by me, so I doubt I’ll get a callback.”
I nudge her shoulder with mine. “Don’t be such a negative ninny. I’m sure you did fantastic.”
“This is a tough, tough city to catch a break in. It’s hard to always keep positive.” She turns toward me. “Speaking of positive, are you ready for tomorrow?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be. I’m ready to get back in the audition saddle. I think I’ve picked up a few new tricks over the last few months that will really help.”
Darcy smiles at me knowingly. “Are we talking about the tips that a certain beautiful rock star gave you about connecting to the crowd?”
I blush and tuck a stray lock of hair from my ponytail behind my ear. “Yeah. He really helped me open up.”
She laughs. “I bet he did.”
I laugh too, but deep down, the overwhelming sadness that exists in my heart curls its way up into my chest. It hurts that I haven’t heard from him. After everything we went through—the things we said and the promises we made to each other—I thought I meant more to him. I figured it might be a few days before I heard from him, but when it turned to weeks, I had to reach out to him through the media because I had to apologize.
The final strike to my heart was when he resurfaced in the public eye and didn’t make an attempt to contact me. That was when I began to doubt if what we shared was even real.
“He still hasn’t called you?” Darcy asks when she notices my sudden silence.
My lips pull into a tight line. “No.”
She grabs my hand. “If he’s as smart as you say, then he will, because he would be stupid to let someone as great as you slip through his fingers.”
“Thank you,” I whisper and squeeze her hand. “Sometimes it’s easy to give up hope that he ever really loved me.”
The rest of the day I busy myself taking orders and serving up some of the best burgers that New York has to offer. Flows is a block away from Times Square, so we’re always hopping and we’re always open. The tourists flood in here, and we’re even busier than normal since one of those food television shows featured us as having one of the best burgers in the United States. So it’s easy to block out the nagging heartbreak that’s always on my mind while I’m here.
“Your order is up, Iris,” Jason calls from the kitchen.
I smile at the tall, good-looking cook as he slides my cheeseburger platters toward me through the opening in the wall. His magnetic blue eyes sparkle, appearing even lighter today against his dark hair and tan complexion. Jason, like most of us working here, has come to the city to make it in show business. He’s got the looks to make it for sure, but his voice—that’s what he’s been working on polishing since I met him last year.
“Thanks, Jason.” I set the plates on my tray.
“Iris, I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me and a couple friends tonight.”
I frown. “Oh, I don’t—”
He holds his hands up and smiles. “No pressure. I just thought you’ve looked sad lately and I wanted to cheer you up. You can totally bring Darcy along, and we’ll go out for a late dinner and just hang out.”
“Did I just hear my name?” Darcy asks as she slides up next to me and throws a flirty smile in Jason’s direction.
“I was just inviting you and Iris to come hang out with me and a couple of my buddies tonight.” He shoots her a heart-stopping smile and her cheeks noticeably redden.
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.
After I’m only about five blocks from the theater, I spot a familiar face passing by me on the street. “Shane?”
Today he’s dressed in a fitted black suit and gray tie, looking pretty hot in his business attire.
He smiles the moment his hazel eyes meet mine. “Iris? Hi. How are you? Did you have your audition yet?”
I return his smile with one of my own, flattered that he remembered. “Yes. I just came from there, actually.”
“How’d it go?” he asks with genuine interest shining in his expression.
I shrug. “I won’t know for a week or so if I get a callback, but I feel like I did my best.”
Shane nods. “That’s all anyone can ever ask for, right?”
It’s hard not to get caught up in his positivity. I can’t stop smiling at him. His happiness is infectious. “So what brings you out this way?”
He motions to the restaurant behind him. “I had lunch with a friend and I was about to catch a cab back to work; do you want to share one?”
I shake my head. “I’m heading home to Brooklyn. That’s completely out of your way.”
“I don’t mind,” he answers instantly with an easy smile on his face. “I’ll happily ride in the back of a cab around the city if that means I get to talk to you more.”
Heat floods my cheeks and I know without a doubt I’m blushing fiercely. I chew on my bottom lip while I gaze up at Shane’s hopeful expression. He’s a really nice guy—maybe the nicest man I’ve ever met in this city. I want to give him a chance but I’m not ready to date. I am, however, ready for a friend.
“If I say yes, can this just be as friends?” I ask, hopeful that this doesn’t offend him.
His lips pull into a smile. “I would love to be your friend.”
Twenty minutes later the cab pulls up to a stop on my curb and I push my door open. Shane slides out behind me, asking the cabbie to please wait for a moment.
He turns to me. “Iris, I’d really like to see you again. I know you’ve been hurt, and when you’re ready to date again, please call me?”
I nod. “I will.”
“Great. Oh, and congratulations on doing well on your audition. Let me know if you get the part. I’d love to watch you perform.”
I place my hand on his forearm and give it a slight squeeze. “Thank you.”
Touching him wasn’t exactly meant to be an invitation, but Shane seizes the opportunity to place a light kiss on my cheek. He bites his lip as he pulls back with a bashful expression. “Congratulations . . . again. I know you’ve landed the part, and I can’t wait to watch you perform on opening night.”
I blush and tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I’d love for you to be there. It would be nice to have a friendly face in the audience.”
“Then you can count on it. See you around, Iris,” Shane says before he slips back into the cab.
I watch with my arms wrapped around me as the cab weaves in and out of traffic, eventually disappearing out of sight.
Things would be so much easier if I could just talk to Ace. Maybe if I had closure on our relationship, I could move on with a nice guy like Shane.