A/N: Thank you for the reviews! I always appreciate feedback. Writing this fic is helping me deal with my post-season-2 Cartwills feels, so thank you for reading! This chapter will be from Derek's point of view, and I will most likely continue to alternate between Karen's and Derek's POVs.
Derek stared into his drink as he sat at the bar. He found himself really thinking about everything that had happened in the last year. That was something he never used to do. He always moved forward; he never looked back.
Now he thought about the past so much more. The bad things that he had done kept coming back to haunt him.
That was what being forced to take a break from working was doing to him. He kept thinking about the many women he had invited to his apartment during callbacks over the years, the ones who had gotten the roles and the ones who hadn't.
"How are you doing?" Karen asked him as she sat down on the stool next to him.
Derek shrugged. "I'm alright, I suppose."
It usually took a few drinks before he would talk to her about how he was really doing.
Karen ordered a drink, and they sat in silence for a few minutes. Eventually she started chatting about "Hit List" and how everyone in the cast and crew there was doing. He listened, but he wasn't in the mood to respond that much. Karen had to be used to that by now.
Derek could tell that she was really going to miss being in the show. After all, this was the first time she had been in a Broadway show, so this would be even harder for her.
Still, moving on was a big part of the business. It was certainly nice for Derek to be moving on from this break. He didn't want to take another one anytime soon.
He still wasn't sure what he had been thinking when he slept with Daisy of all people. Maybe he had just been so hurt at being rejected by both Karen and Ivy that he was desperate to go back to his old ways. It was so much easier when he didn't care, and Karen and Ivy had changed all of that.
Having such strong feelings for these two women had really caught him off guard. He had been so used to meaningless flings, and it was so strange that the universe had sent him two women that he ended up caring so much about at the same time.
Of course, only one of these women shared those feelings, and it wasn't the one sitting next to him right now.
"Derek?"
Karen was frowning at him. Apparently he hadn't been listening as well the past couple of minutes.
"Sorry, love, I guess I just got lost in my thoughts," Derek said.
Now Karen was giving him that concerned look again. She had been giving him that look a lot lately.
It had been a rough several months, and Karen now seemed to be his confidante when he needed to talk. He wasn't sure that he really wanted to talk about the past tonight, though. He was tired of that. He wanted to get back to focusing on his work and on the future.
Of course, that might be easier said than done since he would be working with both Karen and Ivy again. He was getting along well enough with Ivy despite everything that had happened between them-the miscarriage and the fights that had come afterward. Still, he hadn't worked with her in quite awhile. He was sure they could be professional, though. The bigger question was whether they would be able to have the kind of friendship he would like to have with Ivy. He knew now that a romantic relationship with her wasn't the best idea.
He would be working with Tom, Julia, and Eileen again as well. Hopefully this show would go a bit more smoothly than "Bombshell" on its road to Broadway.
This would be the third project in a row he worked with Karen on. It seemed that they even ended up working together when he wasn't necessarily seeking it out.
Karen touched him on the shoulder. Those little gestures had been slowly coming back over the last few months. That didn't mean anything more than Karen caring about him as a friend, though. He knew that now.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Karen asked.
Derek shook his head. "It's just been a very long few months-a long year, really."
"I know."
Derek got up from his stool. "I have work that I need to get started on. I think I'm just going to head home for the night."
Karen nodded, though he thought she looked a little disappointed. "Are you going to come to my final 'Hit List' performance?"
Derek smiled. "Of course. I wouldn't miss it."
