Chapter 9: Swingers

Kate took a deep breath as the cab pulled to a stop in Aidan’s driveway. During the whole drive over from Beverly Hills, she’d been rehearsing in her head exactly how to play it. She couldn’t let him see she was upset. That much was essential. In her texts to him last night, she said she left with other people and gone to another club, and she needed to stick with that story. She’d been out all night clubhopping. And whether or not he’d brought another girl home last night – it didn’t matter to her in the least. Nope, not at all. She couldn’t care less.

That was the story. She just needed to keep it up long enough to pack her suitcase, charge up her phone, and get out. There’d be plenty of time to fall apart once she was back on her way to the airport.

She pasted a smile onto her face now as she stepped out of the cab and squinted into the glare of morning sunlight. There he was in the doorway, watching her walk up the driveway toward the house. He looked like he hadn’t slept – still in the same dark jeans and grey t-shirt. He must have had a fun night.

“Good morning,” she said, forcing her mouth to smile even wider when she came to a stop in front of him.

He wasn’t smiling back. He was just standing there, watching her with his head off to one side, resting against one of the doorposts. Just leaning there, like he didn’t quite have the strength to support his own body weight. He must have had a very fun night.

They stood studying each other for a moment, and she wondered if he was going to let her come in. Was there something inside he didn’t want her to see? Something, or someone?

Didn’t matter, she told herself, feeling her smile start to waver. Didn’t-matter-didn’t-matter-didn’t-matter.

“Should I come back later?” she asked.

Aidan struggled to gather himself as he stood watching her standing in front of him. She was still in the same clothes from last night. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup now and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but otherwise she looked just as she had the last time he saw her. No bruises. No blood. She was fine. She was smiling, even. He closed his eyes for a moment, sending up a silent word of thanks to whomever might be listening.

He reached out toward her, wanting nothing more than to take her in his arms and squeeze her tight with every ounce of strength he had left. His hand just brushed her arm as she side-stepped and moved past him through the doorway into the house.

“You look like you had a quite a night!” she said to him over her shoulder as she entered the living room.

Quite a night, he thought. That was one way to put it.  “Are you OK?” he asked as he turned and followed her inside.

“Of course!” she said brightly. “I had so much fun last night!”

“You weren’t answering your phone.”

She pulled the phone out of her bag and showed him the blackened screen. “Out of power,” she explained. She reached the door to his bedroom and put her hand on the knob.

“Wait!” he said, stumbling after her and reaching out toward her again. “Kate, just—wait. Just come here.” He needed to touch her right now. He needed to run his hands down the length of her body, from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, to reassure himself that she was really there. She was fine. She was safe. She’d just run out of power.

Kate ignored his words and pushed the bedroom door open, bracing herself for whatever it was he didn’t want her to see on the other side.

“Come here,” he said again as he followed her through the bedroom door. “Where are you going?”

“To charge my phone,” she responded. She briefly scanned the room. At least the bed was unoccupied, she saw with some relief. There was no one else in the house. If someone had been here last night, they hadn’t stayed for breakfast.

Aidan froze the moment the words were out of her mouth. “To charge my phone.” Her phone. The phone that had been out of power all night. The phone he’d been calling and texting nonstop for the past five hours. How many texts had he sent her last night? How many voicemails? Too many to count. He stood paralyzed, powerless to stop her, as she took her charger from her suitcase and plugged it into the wall.

Kate left her phone on the bedside table to charge, and then hoisted her suitcase onto the bed, unzipping the main compartment. Get in and get out, she thought. She hadn’t unpacked much yesterday, so it shouldn’t take too long to gather her things. She headed toward the bathroom to round up the toiletries she’d left by the sink, keenly aware of the fact that Aidan was just standing there, saying nothing. He just stood there with a look of horror on his face like a kid who was about to get caught with one hand in the cookie jar.

Someone had been here, obviously. The evidence was probably here in the bathroom. Kate shook her head. Didn’t matter, she told herself again. Just get your stuff and get out. It didn’t matter if he had another girl here last night. Didn’t-matter-didn’t-matter-didn’t-matter.

“So did you have a good time last night with Cha-Cha?” she heard herself ask him.

"Who?" Aidan looked through the bathroom door toward her. He was so screwed right now, he thought to himself. So completely and utterly screwed.

He had broken a cardinal rule. The Multiple Voicemail Rule. The one where you never leave more than one message at a time on a girl’s phone. Never. No exceptions. Every guy knew that. Leave a second voicemail on a girl’s phone before she responded to the first one, and you just kissed goodbye any chance of ever sleeping with her. Ever. Anyone who knew anything about women knew that.  They’d even put it in Swingers. Swingers! That movie was friggin’ about him! Except he had always been Vince Vaughan, the smooth operator. He was never Jon Favreau, the loser – the guy who’s so twisted in a knot by his ex-girlfriend that he completely forgets everything he ever knew about women. When had he turned into Jon Favreau? Worse than Jon Favreau! Jon Favreau left maybe five voicemails, tops, when he struck out with that girl. But ten voicemails? Twenty voicemails? So many voicemails that you overflowed her mailbox? That wasn’t even in the rule book. Aidan didn’t even know what that would make a girl do. Probably back out of the room slowly and make a run for the nearest police station.

“The one you were dancing with,” he heard Kate say.

Aidan furrowed his forehead in confusion.“What?” He was struggling to concentrate on what she was asking him. “Cha-Cha? Who? You mean Koko?”

“Koko?” She raised her eyebrows. “Just Jared said her name was Lola. Who’s Koko?”

“Who’s Cha-Cha?”

Kate just shook her head, not answering as she gathered her things off the counter and moved back into the bedroom where she had left her suitcase. She unzipped the toiletry compartment and concentrated on packing her items neatly inside. He still hadn’t moved. He was just standing there, watching her. Not that she needed him to spell it out any further. Message received, she thought. He’d spent the night with someone named Koko. And now she was packing. And he sure as hell wasn’t stopping her.

Oh, this was bad, Aidan thought to himself with a shudder. This was very very bad. He couldn’t let her see those messages. He couldn’t let her charge her phone. She was fiddling around with the suitcase on the bed, but his attention was on the bedside table just behind her. Her phone was sitting there on the table. The screen was still black. He had about 30 seconds before it would be charged up enough for her to turn it on.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing in the living room. He ignored it, desperately casting about for some way to distract her.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” she asked.

He didn’t move. He knew from the sound of the ringtone that it wasn’t an important call. Anyway, he couldn’t leave her alone in here. He had about 15 seconds now.

“Aidan?”

“Yes!” he exclaimed. He bounded for the doorway toward the living room, pulling the bedroom door shut on his way out. The ringing was coming from the pocket of the blazer he’d been wearing last night, but he ignored it. Instead, he flung himself toward the far end of the room and reached for the grey metallic cabinet just left of the kitchen sink. The circuit breakers. He pulled the cabinet open and flipped the main switch, letting out a gasp of relief as the lights around him all flickered off in unison.

Aidan heard Kate’s voice call out behind him a moment later. “Did you blow a fuse?” she asked.

He took a deep breath and shook his head as he closed the metal door and turned around to face her.

“No, it looks OK,” he said with an innocent shrug. “Must be some kind of a black-out.”