In The Light of Destiny

Third Female Lead

The voice on the other end of the line was smooth and professional, the kind of voice that belonged to someone accustomed to being listened to.

"Hello, Miss Lia?" it said.

Lia shifted her weight from one foot to the other, still standing in the middle of the living room with her jacket half-draped over the couch. "Yes, that's me," she said carefully, the way she always answered unknown callers — present but guarded, giving nothing away until she knew who she was giving it to.

"My name is Kylen Roy."

The name landed like a stone dropped into still water. Lia's entire body went rigid. For a full two seconds, she simply stood there, her mouth slightly open, staring down at the screen of her phone as though she expected the name to disappear from the display if she looked at it long enough. Kylen Roy was not just a name in this industry. He was the name — the kind of man whose signature on a contract could change the entire trajectory of a career, whose phone calls were the things people in waiting rooms all over this city fantasized about while they were being told, yet again, that the producer was in a meeting.

"Kylen Roy?" she repeated, her voice shooting up at least half an octave. She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it again, as if the device itself needed to confirm what it had just told her. "Am I dreaming? Are you serious right now?"

There was a soft, warm chuckle from the other end of the line. It was not the chuckle of a man who was surprised by the reaction. He had clearly heard variations of it before. "Quite serious, I assure you," he said. "Our office received an audition tape of you a few weeks ago. We sent it out to several casting offices we work with on a regular basis."

Lia pressed her free hand flat against her sternum as if to physically hold her heart in place. "Okay," she managed. "Thank you, sir." Her voice had dropped to something more careful, more controlled, but her fingers had found the fabric of her sleeve and were gripping it tightly. She bit her lip. Waiting.

"Well," Mr. Roy continued, and she could hear the deliberate, measured quality of his tone — the tone of someone who understood the power of a well-timed pause, "the good news is that one of the companies we sent your tape to liked what they saw."

"They liked it?" The question came out before she could temper it, naked with hope.

"They did, yes. In fact, they were quite impressed. So much so that they would like you on set as soon as possible — provided, of course, that you're not currently committed to another project."

The living room tilted slightly. Or at least it felt that way. Lia grabbed the back of the couch with her free hand and gripped it to steady herself. "I am not busy," she said, and the words came out with the speed and certainty of someone who would have cancelled anything and everything to make that sentence true. "I am absolutely not busy."

"Excellent. I'll inform them that you'll be available. You'll need to be on set this evening at eight o'clock."

Lia's mouth dropped open. Tonight. Not next week, not pending a callback, not after three more rounds of auditions and a waiting period of indeterminate length. Tonight. The word was so immediate it barely felt real. She had been waiting for something like this for so long that the arrival of it felt surreal, like stepping through a door she had knocked on so many times she had stopped expecting it to open.

"I will be there at seven-thirty," she heard herself say. "Just to be early."

"Very good, Miss Lia. Have a wonderful evening." And with that, Kylen Roy ended the call.

Lia stood in the living room for a moment that stretched impossibly long. The phone was still pressed to her ear even though the line was dead. The fairy lights above the window blinked their soft gold rhythm. Outside, the city hummed with its ordinary, indifferent noise.

Then Emma appeared in the hallway doorway, her hair already half-unraveled from the style she'd worn it in all day, one hand raised absently to untangle it. "Lia, have you seen my necklace? The silver one. I left it on the—"

Lia spun around and held a single finger to her lips with such intensity that Emma stopped mid-sentence, her hand frozen in her hair. She stared at her roommate, reading the expression on her face — something wild and barely contained — and immediately fell silent, pressing herself against the doorframe and watching with wide eyes.

Lia lowered the phone slowly from her ear. She set it down on the coffee table. She looked at Emma.

"That," she said, with the deliberate, breathless weight of someone delivering life-changing news, "was Kylen Roy on the phone."

Emma's eyes went wide. "Kylen Roy."

"Kylen Roy." Lia nodded. And then, because she could no longer contain it: "I got a part, Emma. He sent my audition tape to one of his partner companies and they want me. On set. Tonight." The last word came out in something between a laugh and a scream, her hands flying up to cover her mouth for a moment before she let the smile take over her entire face, wide and bright and entirely unguarded. "They want me tonight."

Emma crossed the living room in three steps and threw her arms around her friend. Lia grabbed her back just as fiercely. They stood there in the middle of the small, cluttered living room of a girls' dormitory on a side street in the middle of a city that had been telling them no for months, holding each other and laughing the kind of laugh that was really crying that had decided to go a different direction.

"That is incredible, girl," Emma said into her shoulder. "That is so beyond incredible. We are celebrating when you get back tonight, I don't care how late it is." She pulled back and gripped Lia by both arms, looking at her face with an expression of pure, uncomplicated joy. "You better get ready. You are not showing up on your first night looking like us." She gestured broadly at both of them, and they dissolved into laughter again.