Chapter 23: Indecent Proposal

Aidan stood barefoot in the elevator, holding his shoes in one hand, as he waited for the doors to open onto the penthouse floor. His hair was still wet from the pool, and he ran his fingers through  it absent-mindedly to smooth it down.

He had tried his best to have a good time with the others, cavorting around the pool, but his heart hadn’t really been in it. Kate had managed to spoil what should have been a fun night. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, no matter how hard he tried to distract himself. His mood kept wavering back and forth from worry to anger and back again.

It didn’t help that Paul and Ritchie kept bringing her up. They’d been ribbing him about her all week – a sure sign of approval that she was back in the picture. The whole reason he’d invited everyone over here tonight was to show her off in front of his friends. So much for that plan.

They’d asked after her when she didn’t come swimming, and he’d lied and said she wasn’t feeling well. But he couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d really said to him up in the suite earlier. “Tell them I said I was too old to go skinny dipping.”

What the hell did that mean? She thought he and his friends were immature? Was that it? Since when did she have such a stick up her ass?

He was at the doorway to the suite now, and he opened it to find her curled up on the living room couch with her laptop propped in front of her and a half-eaten slice of hotel pizza in one hand. Someone had cleaned up after his guests while he was gone – all the empty beer bottles and food containers were gathered up in a garbage bag next to the door.

“Did the maid come?” he asked her.

She set down the uneaten portion of her pizza on the room-service tray before she replied. “It’s eleven o’clock at night, Aidan. No, the maid didn’t come.”

“You didn’t have to clean up.”

She shrugged and turned her head to look back at the book she was reading. Was she giving him the silent treatment now? Why? Because his friends had left a mess?

“What, Kate?” he snapped at her. “Are you going to tell me what's wrong, or do I have to stand here like a jackass and guess?”

That got her attention at least. She finally looked at him for the first time since he’d entered the room.

“So I cleaned up!” she said. “Sorry. I guess I’m not used to having a whole staff at my beck and call, all hours of the day and night.”

Was she calling him spoiled now? Because he didn’t want to clean up a hotel room?

“It’s a hotel room!" he exclaimed. "Who cleans up a hotel room? Even regular people don’t—“

“Regular people? Oh, that’s nice.”

“What is your problem?”

“That’s my problem. I think that sums it up pretty nicely. I am a regular person, and you are not.”

“No, I’m not. OK? I’m not a regular person. I’m sorry. Why does that mean you get to treat me like shit?”

“How am I treating you like shit?  I came out here to be with you. I spend all day following you around to your rehearsals, making nice with your stupid friends—“

“Since when did you hate my friends?”

“I don’t hate them, Aidan. They hate me.”

He let out a huff of annoyance. “I honestly have no clue know what we’re talking about right now.”

“Whatever.” She held up her hand at him, trying to diffuse the situation. “I’m sorry. I had a long day. I’m in a bad mood. I just want to eat my pizza and go to bed.”

He was still trying to decipher her last comment. “The guys love you. They've always loved you.”

“I’m not talking about the guys.”

He shook his head in confusion. “What? Hal? I thought you liked Hal.”

Kate met his words with a derisive snort. “Yeah,” she said, “Hal’s like the sister I never had.”

“Did she do something? Because I can talk to Paul—“

“No!” Kate leaned back against the couch and looked up, addressing the ceiling. “Can we please just drop it?”

“No, we can’t just drop it. No. You ignored me all evening. You were rude to my friends. If there’s some kind of feud going on between you and Hal, then I think you owe me the courtesy of filling me in.”

She continued staring upward, and a long moment passed before she finally responded. “Why did you wear a blazer the other night?”

“What?”

“To dinner the other night,” she continued. “At the sushi place.”

He squinted at her, silently cursing her inability to answer a simple question. A blazer? Did he wear a blazer? He vaguely recalled throwing on a suit jacket that night over his usual t-shirt and jeans.

He could feel his temper slipping away from him now, but he was too annoyed to dial it back. “I don’t know, Kate,” he said, his voice rising in irritation. “Maybe because my arms were cold? I don’t—“

“Halley said you never wear blazers.”

“What does that even mean?”

Kate shook her head and stood up. “Don’t yell at me,” she said.

“You’re not making any sense!” he shouted back.

She turned away from him and started walking toward the bedroom door.

Aidan let out a groan and shut his eyes, forcing himself to count to ten before he spoke again. He couldn’t let her go to bed angry. He needed to get to the bottom of this – whatever irrational, idiotic thing was bothering her.

“OK,” he said in a steadier voice. “OK. Halley said I never wear blazers. What does that mean?”

Kate stopped walking and turned back to face him. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest, and she was looking down at the ground in front of his feet as she replied. “It means I’m old, Aidan.”

“We’re the same age—”

“And I make you act old.”

“You make me act my age!”

“When was the last time you wore a jacket to dinner?”

“I don’t know, Kate. I’m not exactly keeping a record—“

“Well, I’m sure your publicist is. Should I call her up and ask her?”

“I wanted to look nice! OK? Yes. I wanted to impress you. Why am I getting in trouble for that?”

“You’re not ‘in trouble.’” She made air quotes with her hands. “I’m not your mother.”

“Then stop acting like you’re my mother!”

“Exactly,” she said, meeting his eyes with a look of exhausted defeat. “Exactly.”

He shook his head at her, utterly baffled.

“You’re not in trouble,” she said slowly. “It’s nothing you did wrong. Or I did wrong. Or Halley did wrong. We just don’t belong together, Aidan. We don’t.”

“Yes, we do!”

“I don’t belong with your friends. I don’t belong in this town. I definitely don’t belong in your VIP sections—“

“Well then I don’t belong there either, because I belong with you!”

“No.”

“Kate, I love you.”

“You haven’t thought this through.”

“I have thought it through. I asked you to marry me!”

Her gaze fluttered back down toward the floor for a moment, before she lifted her eyes to meet his again. “Yeah, that’s another thing," she said. "You need to stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Pretending to propose. It's not a funny joke, Aidan. You have to stop saying that when you don’t really mean it.”

“Of course I mean it!”

“No.” She shook her head. “You don’t.”

“Well not—I mean, today at the studio I was just messing around, but the first time—“

“You didn’t mean it then either.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but she continued talking over him. “You were just all caught up in the moment. I know—“

“Caught up in the—you think I just going around proposing to people because I’m caught up in the moment? Seriously?”

“Come on, Aidan. You're telling me that wasn't a spur of the moment thing? You didn’t even have a ring!”

He brought his hand to his face, clapping it over his mouth in disbelief before he spoke again. So there it was. That’s what she thought of him. Immature. Impulsive. It hurt all the more because he knew, deep down, that she wasn't entirely wrong.

But he'd be damned before he'd admit that to her now.

“That’s why you said no?” he asked. “That's why? Because I didn’t have a ring?”

“No, of course that's not—“

Aidan wasn’t listening to her answer. Kate broke off in mid-sentence and watched as he spun around toward the front door of the suite. For a moment, she thought he was leaving, but he stepped past the door to the coat closet just beside it. She stood motionless as he flung the closet door open and started fumbling around with the coats hanging inside.

He turned back toward her a moment later. His eyes flashed with anger, and a small black object hurtled toward her through the air. She reached up and caught it against her chest.

“What is this?” she asked, but she didn’t need him to answer. She knew what it was the moment her fingers closed around it. A small, hinged box, covered in black velvet.

“There’s your ring.”

Kate looked down at the box, suddenly unable to think what to say or do next.

“Go ahead,” he said, spitting the words at her. “Open it.”

She knew she shouldn’t. He was angry. He’d just thrown it at her. She should throw it right back in his face. But she couldn’t quite seem to make her hands listen. A ring. He had a ring. She watched helplessly as her fingers moved with a mind of their own, flipping the box open.

Inside, she saw the simplest engagement ring imaginable. A plain, thin band of gold with a circle-cut diamond solitaire.  Not particularly big. Maybe just short of a carat. She looked up and met his eyes in surprise.

“You know when I bought that?” he asked.

She didn’t answer, unable to do anything but stare back at him as he spoke. He wasn’t yelling now. His voice had dropped so low it was barely audible, and she could see his whole body quivering with pent up violence.

“Guess,” he said.

She shook her head.

“You know how many times I got asked that? In interviews over the years? They love to ask that one. ‘What’s the first thing you ever bought with the money, Aidan? What’s the first thing you bought when you finally hit it big?’”

She looked back down at the ring box, unable to bear the look of bitterness on his face.

“Well, there it is,” he continued, his voice rising in volume once again. “That’s how I spent it. Even though you were gone. Even though you wouldn’t so much as pick up my phone calls. That’s I how I spent it, Kate. The first big check I ever got. That’s where it went. On a ring. For you.”

“Please stop.” She took a step toward him, but he held up a hand to ward her off. She watched from across the room as he went down on one knee for the second time that day.

“Aidan don’t—“

“So let’s try this again,” he shouted. “What do you have to say this time?”

He flung his arms out wide on either side of himself – uncovered, exposed, inviting her to stab him straight through the chest – and he bellowed the words that came next with every last morsel of strength he could muster:

“KATIE, YOU'RE THE ONE! I LOVE YOU! WILL YOU FUCKING MARRY ME?”