Chapter 150: Training. Chance. Payback
....
While Regal remained neck-deep in the whirlwind of his Harry Potter production - shuttling between stages, studios, and script meetings -
Elsewhere in the city, lives he had touched, people he had pulled into his orbit, were spinning in their own strange directions.
One such tale was unfolding in the shadowed corners of an old downtown rehearsal hall, between a grizzled actor-turned-mentor and a student who never quite expected to find himself here.
"Tell me the truth." Ross said, his voice uncharacteristically soft as he leaned forward. "Just before that party... you had your first heartbreak, didn't you?"
Andrew looked up, confused and dripping sweat, his limbs awkwardly frozen in mid-motion.
"Or something even worse?" Ross continued, narrowing his eyes, trying to piece together a certain memory, a certain night. "And because you didn't have the guts to jump off the cliff, you used me... provoked me. Wanted me to do it for you."
That last line - there was no doubt in his tone now.
Ross wasn't asking anymore. He believed it. That the drunken chaos Andrew had created during that infamous party months ago, the erratic self-sabotage, wasn't just immaturity.
It was a cry for something more dangerous.
"That wasn't the case, sir..." Andrew's voice broke, half-exhausted, half-stammering. "It was just... a mistake. I wasn't in my senses."
He wasn't lying. Not completely. But neither was Ross wrong.