Jayden never sat in the audience to watch his plays.
Dad was down there somewhere, and Uncle Andy. (Secretly, Jayden thought Uncle Andy had a thing for Joy, one of the regulars at Stars, but he never did anything about it.) But Jayden never watched his own plays from the audience. He watched from the stairs to the lighting box, hidden in the dark, and mouthed the words along with the actors, noting every slip, every ad-lib, every deviance. Sometimes, Mum could distract him, because she was an amazing actress and she always drew focus in scenes, but even that didn’t last for long.
This time, he watched none of that.
Darren had every right to be nervous, because he was on the stage for the entire time. Cooper was the protagonist: there wasn’t a single scene when he was off the stage, and
