The show can’t go on.

I stare at myself in the bright-ass lights of the mirror in my dressing room. The words ring in my ears. The show can’t go on. I can’t go on.

For one thing, I am abjectly unqualified to play the lead role in even an off-Broadway show. Rowan made the biggest mistake of her life when she cast me. Though, in fairness, she couldn’t have known that my life would become a complete train wreck a week before opening night.

The world is empty without Wes. I’d take the sight of his shoulders in the streetlight over the nothingness that is my apartment. But what the fuck am I supposed to do? I can’t bring myself to text him. I can’t bring myself to send that message out into the void, knowing that something inside me has broken us irreparably.

God, it’s making me stupidly nostalgic for all those little things about him. The way he’d check the lock on the door before we went to bed for the night, even when he’s the one who locked it when we came in. The way he always insisted on walking on the outer edge of the sidewalk, even if we were separated from the street by planters and trees. He was always on the lookout, and being in that sphere of the things he cared about—it was breathtaking. I watch my stupid face contort in the mirror.

There’s a knock at the door. “Whit, five minutes to curtain.”

“Okay, great!” Can Rowan tell how fucking false I sound right now? Can she tell how miserable I am? I can’t bear it. I can’t bear to see that empty seat in the front row.

I take a deep, steadying breath. This is what acting is. Even though my heart is a wasteland of pain and regret, I will still play the part I’ve been hired to play. This is my dream coming true.

The victory is pretty fucking hollow, I’ll tell you that. It’s a terrible realization, to find out how much I was counting on Wes. On that strength. Even if that strength was getting the better of him.

“It’s for the best,” I say, right as my dressing room door swings open.

“What’s for the best? Oh, my God, you look so good!” Summer is all sleek blonde hair and black date night halter top and joy, and for the smallest moment, I hate her.

Then she throws her arms around me, careful to keep her own face out of my stage makeup, and I love her again. “How’d you get back here?”

“I gave the guy at the door a big smile. And I told him you had to see me before you went onstage.” She takes a step back and looks me up and down. “Whitney, this is so Broadway.”

“Off-Broadway.”

Sunny laughs. “Are you good to go? I just came down to tell you to break a leg. You’re a star, you know that? You’re a legitimate star.”

A couple of my castmates go by the door outside, chanting their last warmups together. I should be out there with them, and there’s a tug at the base of my spine—go, go.

“I’ll be good once I get out there.” With every moment that Summer stands in front of me, the evening comes into sharper focus. I’m about to step onstage on opening night. In front of real people. My stomach twists. “You might want to stand farther away. Now that you’re here, I want to throw up.”

“Oh, don’t do that. Your makeup is flawless.”

I glance back into the mirror. “My makeup is stage makeup. Sunny, I know you say these things with love, but I’m really going to be okay.”

“Okay? You’re going to be amazing. I’ll be right there in the front row, cheering and clapping way too loud.” She takes my hands in hers and squeezes. “I’ll get out of your face. But I hope you know you’re my best friend. And I’m so proud of you.”

It sends a warm glow through my chest. “Thanks, buddy.”

Summer precedes me out of the dressing room and we almost run into the stage manager, Joe. “One minute,” he barks at me, as if I’m not the star of the show. “Let’s move. Move.”

I move.

The moment I’m in the wings, in the dark backstage, clasping hands with Jason, all the jitters go out of my soul.

I sit there in it—the ache. The ache of knowing he won’t be there. The ache of knowing that Summer and Day still came out to see me, to cheer me on. And the hope. God, that little dancing flame of hope. I can’t stamp it out, even though I know it’ll only end in desolate crying on my bedroom floor later tonight.

The announcement about cell phones plays over the loudspeakers. Jason squeezes my hand. The music swells from the orchestra pit and I breathe in the dusty backstage, breathe in the air, weighted with anticipation.

Three, two, one.

That’s my cue.

I step onto the stage, into those lights, and I’m not Whitney Coalport, recently abandoned and smarting with pain. I’m Holly Hamilton, a woman about to set foot in the big city, destined for love. In fact, it’s a love that prevails, despite some real fucking low points in the show. That’ll show me. Someday, someday, I’ll have a love that doesn’t leave me wrung out and ragged, desperate for more.

We move into the first act. Singing. Dancing. I feel completely dropped in. I’m in that magic space when the play is real. When I see Jason’s face for the first time, it’s really the first time, and I gasp a little at the sight of his cut cheekbones in the spotlights. To Holly, he looks like an angel sent from heaven. He lights her on fire and I feel it down to my fingertips. Down to my bones.

It’s so real, even the singing, that I don’t look out into the blinding lights. I don’t look down into the audience, even at the first row, which is about all I can see when the stage lights are up.

I just don’t look.

Not even at intermission, when the curtain drops down beneath me and I’m abruptly shoved back into the real world.

Twenty minutes of the real world, anyway. I can hear Summer screeching her cheers on the other side of that thick velvet curtain, but not Wes.

“That was fucking amazing.” Jason’s face swoops in close, a fine sheen of sweat over his features. “We gotta bring it for the second act.”

Rowan rushes in too, her eyes wide and shining. “This is going very well. The critics in the third row nodded several times during Act One. Whit—come with me. There are a couple things I want to tweak…”

She talks for the next twenty minutes. I don’t even have time to pee. Ah, but what are human bodily needs when there’s a show to put on? What’s a full bladder when it comes up against the eternal glory of getting a good clip in tomorrow’s Post?

One moment, I’m singing the opening to the second act and the next moment, we’re breaking up. Jason and me. Our characters are breaking up in the show, and God, it hurts. It hurts. His words burrow into me like spears and my throat almost tears on mine.

“Don’t you see what I’ve done for you?” My own arrow flies true, wounds him, and I get a strange satisfaction from it. I wanted to wound Wes that night for walking away from me, and I never got the chance.

But Jason doesn’t walk away. “What you’ve done for me?”

“Yes. Everything I’ve done. Don’t you see?” I raise my hands to the city set around us and take a big breath, cheating toward the audience. “Don’t you see how beautiful we’ve made it?”

“You want to know the truth?”

“What’s the truth? Tell me, now, before I walk away.”

“All I see is you.”

He kisses me.

It’s the most romantic fucking thing in the world, except for the fact that he tastes like stale Trident and nerves, and the shape of him is all wrong. I lean in anyway. I lean in and there’s a collective gasp from the audience, and then the clapping starts. Whooping. Cheering. The sound breaks into the fantasy I’m living in here onstage.

There are two more numbers. One of them is a wedding scene. And then there’s us, in real life, arguing in the kitchen. Good-naturedly. The show ends on a gentle note. Gentle, and powerful, and lovely.

Then a burst of music—a burst of applause. The curtain plummets toward the stage, then sweeps back up, and I am all joy, except for a black pit of despair where my heart should be. I can’t avoid it now. I can’t avoid looking at the first row.

The rest of the cast bows first. That’s how it goes—groups of two and three, the main chorus, everybody. They all go first. Does the music always play so fast? Jason strides downstage, waves, bows. My throat sears with happiness for him—the audience is loving him. Loving him. His parents are right in the front row, along with his younger sister.

He turns, his hair ablaze in the light, beaming, and throws his arm out wide.

It’s my turn.

I feel it, but I don’t let it show—that last urge to turn and run, into the curtains, into the backstage, and away from all of this. Away from that empty seat. I can’t face it. But I have no choice. It’s opening night, and this is my final bow.

I keep my eyes toward the back of the house, the applause reverberating off the concrete walls backstage and filling my ears. It’s warm under the lights, so warm, but that cold pit of fear at the bottom of my stomach anchors me to the stage, my feet heavy.

I bow.

I take Jason’s hand.

We bow together, and I raise my head and I fucking forget.

I forget not to look at the front row. I forget the dagger of pain that’s been hovering over me, waiting to strike.

There are three empty seats.

And in the very center, with an enormous bouquet of flowers, all alone, stands Wes.

Looking at me.

My heart shatters and the pieces fly out into the far reaches of my soul and back again. There are hot tears on my cheeks—where the hell did those come from?

“Wes,” I say, even though I know he won’t hear over the orchestra and the surge of applause.

“Whit.” I see his mouth shape the word. I see the set of his jaw. I see the ferocity in his eyes.

And the next thing I know, he’s gone.