Chapter 13: Clueless

“How bad is it?” Aidan asked, as his publicist perched herself on the edge of the hospital bed and pulled out a laptop.

“Why don’t I just show you the clip,” Annette responded.

Kate stood in the doorway, looking at the two of them uncertainly. Should she leave the room? She had the strangest feeling that she’d just been dismissed.

“You’re probably going to want to see this too, Kate,” Annette called over her shoulder. Aidan looked up and held out a hand toward her. Not dismissed, then. Kate went over to the bed and took his hand, letting him draw her to a spot by the head of the bed where they could both see the laptop screen.

Annette clicked Play, and the screen was filled with a shot of two paramedics knocking on Aidan’s front door. The door opened, and Kate was clearly visible in the doorway, dressed only in a towel. Annette paused the clip as the camera zoomed in for a close-up.

“Oh my God,” Kate said, pressing one hand to her mouth in horror.

Aidan glanced up at her. “Could be worse.”

“How? I’m in a towel, Aidan.”

He smirked. “You look pretty good in a towel.”

She glared at him, and he flashed her a grin. “Hey, at least you remembered the towel,” he said. “Things could have gotten really pornographic.”

“Oh my God,” Kate said again, burying her face in her hands. “This is on every channel?”

Aidan addressed Annette. “So she’s in a towel. What’s the big deal?”

“You haven’t heard the rest,” Annette said, advancing the clip a few frames and then clicking Play again. “They have the 911 tape.”

Kate looked up. The shot of her opening the door had been replaced by footage of Aidan being carried out of the house on a stretcher. She heard her own voice on a staticky phone line, talking to the 911 operator, with the text of the conversation transcribed at the bottom of the screen:

Dispatcher: 911. What’s your emergency?

Morgan: Help! I need an ambulance!

Dispatcher: Please tell me your location [Pause] Ma’am? Ma’am, are you there? I need an address.

Morgan: [Unintelligible]

Dispatcher: Can you say that again, please?

Morgan: 3120 Ledgewood Drive in Hollywood. Please! Please hurry—

Aidan sucked in his breath with a hiss as Annette paused the clip again. “Shit,” he said.

“I don’t understand.” Kate was looking back and forth between the two of them. “How do they even have the tape? Does 911 just give out tapes like that?”

“They didn’t get it from 911, dear,” Annette responded.

Kate looked at her in confusion.

“Let me guess,” Aidan said. “You used the leaky the phone?”

“The leaky phone?”

“The number I give people when I don’t trust them not to leak it to the media,” he explained. “That phone’s been hacked by every gossip reporter in town.”

Kate shook her head. “I called from your cell phone. You’re telling me you have two different cell phones?”

“He has three different cell phones,” Annette said. “The real phone, the leaky phone, and—“

“—the bat phone,” Aidan completed her sentence.

Kate looked at him with widened eyes. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“Nope.” Aidan shook his head.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Because I could swear it sounded like you just tried to tell me that you’re actually batman.”

He chuckled at her in spite of himself. “I didn’t say I’m batman. I said I have a bat phone. It’s the phone I never turn off, no matter what. For calls I can’t miss. Only three people have the number.”

“Let me guess,” Kate said, tilting her head at Annette. “She’s one of them?”

“Annette has it, yes. And my personal assistant, Dean.”

“And the third person?”

“My mom,” he replied.

“So the cell number you gave me – that was the leaky one?”

“No,” he said, putting a hand on her arm to reassure her. “I gave you my real number.”

“Well, this is really lovely, you two.” Annette looked up at them from the computer screen where she’d been typing as they spoke. “Let me just go put on the tea kettle and we can make a whole afternoon of it…”

Kate furrowed her forehead uncomprehendingly. “Tea?”

“She’s being sarcastic, Kate.”

“I don’t understand.”

Annette let out a exasperated sigh. "Let's rewind," she said, as she backed up the clip and played a snippet of it again:

Dispatcher: Can you say that again, please?

Morgan: 3120 Ledgewood Drive in Hollywood—

“What?” Kate said. “They needed his address.”

“It’s all good.” Aidan shrugged. “I was sick of that house anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

Annette answered for him. “I drove by an hour ago. They’re camped out all the way down the block.”

“Who is?” Kate asked.

“Who isn’t?” Annette responded. “Paps, TV trucks, fans… I’m pretty sure there was a tour bus pulling up when I was leaving.”

Kate’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”

“Well, that’s what happens when Aidan Sands’ home address gets broadcast on every media outlet in the country simultaneously.”

“They needed his address,” Kate protested. “What was I supposed to do?”

Aidan looked at Annette. “Lay off,” he said. “She didn’t know.”

“Know what?” Kate asked.

Annette looked up at the ceiling.

“You called 911,” Aidan said quietly.

“You were unconscious and bleeding!” Kate exclaimed. “Was I supposed to let you bleed to death?”

“It’s OK,” he said to Annette.

Kate looked back and forth between the two of them, waiting for someone to explain.

“911 is for the general public,” Annette said at last. “Aidan is not a member of the general public.”

“There’s a special number,” Aidan explained. He turned back to the publicist and said again, “She didn’t know.”

“What?” Kate asked. “Like a what—a VIP section for 911?”

“Yeah.” Aidan nodded. “Kind of like when I bump my head the chief of neurology is my doctor. There’s a VIP section for just about everything in this town, if you haven’t noticed.”

Kate looked down at the bed. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s OK. Seriously, I’ve been meaning to put that house on the market anyway.”

“You’re kidding.” Kate looked at him incredulously. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

“I checked you into the secure suite at the Beverly Hilton,” Annette said by way of response, handing Aidan a pair of hotel key cards. “You can go there for now.”

“We can’t go back to his house?”

“Is she always this quick on the uptake?” Annette muttered to Aidan, over Kate’s head.

He shot his publicist a warning look.

“No, my dear,” Annette said to Kate with a forced smile. “He can’t go back to his house.”

Kate sat down heavily on the bed and rested her forehead in her hands. “Aidan, I am so sorry.”

He put his arm around her shoulders. “It’s OK, little girl,” he said. “The Beverly Hilton is fine. You'll like it.”

“Can we talk about the other thing now?” Annette continued.

“There’s more?” Kate asked, her face still buried in her hands.

Annette turned back to the laptop and advanced the clip a few frames further:

Dispatcher: Do you have any sense for how long he was unconscious before you found him?

Morgan: I didn’t find him. I was there when he fell.

Dispatcher: You were in the bathroom?

Morgan: I was in the shower with him.

“So we were in the shower together,” Aidan said to Annette. “Big fucking deal.”

“Are we still not confirming the nature of the relationship?” Annette responded.

“I think it’s pretty obvious at this point, no?”

Annette gave an exaggerated sigh and then spoke slowly and deliberately, as if explaining something to a small child. “When a reporter calls and asks me to confirm, what do you want me to say?”

Kate looked down, avoiding Aidan’s eyes. She felt sick to her stomach. From the moment she saw the paramedics carrying Aidan to the ambulance this morning, she’d known she was just kidding herself about getting on a plane back to New York. She couldn’t just hit rewind on her life – go back to the way it was before she started seeing him again. There was no going back. She loved him.

But she saw now, clear as day, that she had absolutely no business being a part of his life. She didn’t belong here. She didn't know the first thing about crop-tops, and clubhopping, and VIP sections. She’d been here less than 24 hours, and look how much damage she’d already managed to do. He was being a good sport about it now, but she knew he must be regretting ever asking her to come out here to visit. He probably regretted even giving her his real phone number. The leaky phone would have made more sense. The one for people he couldn’t afford to trust.

“You know how this goes, Aidan,” Annette was saying to him. “What are we calling it? There’s ‘friend.’ There’s ‘close friend.’ There’s ‘close personal friend.’” She paused a beat. “And then there’s girlfriend.”

Aidan glanced at Kate. He knew which choice he wanted to say. In fact, the one he really wanted wasn’t even on the list. Fiancee had a nice ring to it. Wife sounded even better. But of course he couldn’t say either of those. At least ‘girlfriend’ would be a step in the right direction. He watched Kate’s face for a moment, hoping she would give him some kind of signal, but she was looking down, playing with the corner of the bedsheet – carefully avoiding his eyes.

He let out a long breath. She’d been in LA for less than 24 hours, but the plan to convince her to stay couldn’t possibly have gone any worse than it had so far. She wouldn’t even look at him right now. Forget ‘girlfriend.’ Forget even ‘close friend.’ Were they friends at all right now? At the rate they were going, would they even be on speaking terms by the end of the day?

Look at me, Katie, he said to her inside his head. Give me a sign.

Her eyes remained firmly fixed on the bedsheet.

“Aidan?” Annette prompted him again.

“No comment,” Aidan muttered, tearing his eyes away from Kate’s face and meeting Annette’s gaze instead. “When they call and ask you to confirm, you just tell them ‘No comment.’”