Aidan looked across his living room coffee table at his publicist, Annette. He forced himself to listen to what she was saying, even though his mind kept returning to a different woman entirely. Kate. The woman who'd dominated his every waking thought for the past three weeks.

“Well," Annette said, her voice cutting through his thoughts. "The Today Show finally returned my call."

Aidan winced. He remembered the morning in question. His band had been playing the Today Show’s live summer concert series in the middle of midtown Manhattan, when he’d caught sight of Kate in the crowd. It was the first time he’d seen her face in seven years, since the disastrous night she walked out on him. He’d spotted her pressed up against a barricade, her designer suit and heels sticking out like a sore thumb amid the throng of screaming fans. His only thought at the time had been to talk to her. He’d left the stage in the middle of the set and pushed his way through the crowd. The few shouted words they'd exchanged in the frenzy had set the events of the past three weeks in motion.

“Do you want to hear the voicemail?” Annette asked him.

“Do I need to hear the voicemail?”

“I think you might find it instructive."

He watched Annette lower her white-haired head and squint at her phone through the reading glasses she kept perched on the tip of her nose. She looked almost maternal, Aidan thought. Anyone observing them might have taken her for some doting aunt or grandmother. Looks could be deceiving. She stopped scrolling through the messages and hit play. The irate voice of the Today Show’s executive producer blared around them:

“—The guy’s a loose cannon. If he can’t manage to stick to the script long enough to perform a two-song set—“

Aidan waved for her to stop. “I get the picture.”

“I can try to smooth it over, but you gotta give me some kind of explanation.”

Aidan sighed. An explanation. She wanted an explanation.

“It was her?” Annette asked him. “It was Kate? That’s why you left the stage?”

“Yeah, it was Kate.”

Annette nodded. “You can’t do that, Aidan. I need you to exercise a little impulse control.”

He chuckled. Impulse control had never been his strong suit, and they both knew it. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“That means you can’t go tweeting unreleased material you don’t own the rights to, either.”

“Those were my songs,” he shot back. Annette had her laptop open, and she pulled up his twitter account. He didn’t need to look at the screen to know what his tweet had said.

*********************************

Messages to Kate... how many was I supposed to send?

http://bit.ly/14nNdY8

Reply     Retweet     Favorite     More

6:42 AM – 04 June 2013

**********************************

It was an allusion to his band's debut album, of course. There wasn't a music fan alive who could've failed to catch the reference. Message To Kate was the title of the album that had first rocketed him and his friends to fame, propelling them almost overnight from a group of complete unknowns to one of the most recognizable rock bands on the planet. It had been an instant classic, considered one of the best break-up albums in recent memory by critics and fans alike. Twelve songs, chronicling all the pain and anger, sadness and regret – everything he'd felt after Kate walked out on him.

But the playlist he'd tweeted a couple weeks ago had included more than just those 12 songs. Aidan watched as Annette clicked the link and pulled up the list. Thirty-two songs, spanning across Message To Kate and the two follow-up albums as well. Or three follow-up albums, really, if you counted the single from the upcoming album he'd leaked. It had been a public confession, that playlist – an attempt to let Kate know how all these years later, he still wasn't over her.

“Those are my songs,” he said to Annette. “I wrote every single word of them myself.”

“The rights belong to the label,” she responded, “and you know that very well.”

“So let them sue me.”

“Oh, they’ll do better than that,” she warned. “You keep this up, and they’ll drop your ass.”

“No one's going to drop us. We sell more tickets than all their other artists combined.”

She sat silently, raising her eyebrows at him.

“Fine,” he groaned. “I won’t leak any more singles. You have my word.”

She nodded.

“Are we done here?” Aidan asked.

She tilted her head and shot him a tight smile. “Oh no, my dear,” she said. “We’re saving the best for last.”

He slumped back against the couch and wearily rubbed his eyes. “The radio broadcast.”

She nodded, pulling up a file on her laptop. “I’ve got the tape right here,” she said.

“I know what I said.”

“Hmmm,” she replied vaguely as she tapped at the computer. “I think I need to hear it again.” She hit play.

“That was One Direction with Story of My Life, coming in at number two on the countdown. And now everyone, we’ve got a caller on the line. A surprise caller. Aidan Sands!”

“Hey, Darren.”

“Aidan, my friend – to what do we owe this honor?”

“You’ll never guess where I’m calling from. I’m at a rest stop!”

The radio host laughed at his joke – another clever little reference – this time to the band's new single, Rest Stop. Another break-up song, that one. Aidan had made quite a career out of them. Everyone assumed this song was about his much-publicized split with his on-again-off-again girlfriend of the past two years. Only Aidan knew what it was really about: that night, seven years ago, speeding down an empty highway, chasing after a girl who didn't want to be caught. Always the same thing, the same girl, the same night. Every decent song he'd ever written was about her.

“Rest stop, huh?” Darren said, chuckling along. "So you just called to tell us that?"

“No, no,” Aidan’s voice replied. “I’ve got some unfinished business I’m hoping you can help me out with.”

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“There’s someone I tried to call once, from a payphone in a rest stop parking lot. Long time ago.”

 “Cute,” Annette said to him over the tape.

“Whatever," Aidan replied. "It was funny.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “It was great publicity for the song. Perfect publicity stunt. The kind of thing you might want to discuss first with – oh, I don’t know –  your publicist?”

Aidan cracked a grin. “OK, I get the point."

“No wait,” she said, holding up a finger. “There’s more.” She advanced the clip and then hit play again, and he heard his voice speaking seriously now:

“So now I finally got your new number, Kate. But we’ve got the whole world listening in on the line with us, whether we want them there or not. They’re not hanging up, Kate. So we may as well let them in on the truth. Right? No more publicists. No more bullshit—

Aidan studied the backs of his fingernails, unwilling to look up and meet Annette’s glare as he listened to his voice continue speaking.

 “Just the truth. Because the truth—The truth is, I have loved you since I was 19 years old, and I will love you for the rest of my life.”

There was a click, followed by ten seconds of dead air before Darren’s voice filled the silence. “Aidan? Aidan, are you still there?”

“You hung up on him. On Darren Tyson. On a nationally syndicated radio show.”

Aidan closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“You don’t want a publicist anymore?” Annette said. “That’s fine. Good luck to you. ‘Cause at the rate you’re going, there’s not going to be a single media outlet on either coast that’s willing to have you on as a guest.”

“Annette, I didn’t mean that about the publicists. I was – you know. I was making a point.”

“What point were you making, exactly?”

He didn’t answer. He turned his head and gazed out his living room window at the pristine view of the Hollywood Hills.

Annette leaned across the table and grabbed his chin. She turned his face back towards her. “Why did you hang up the phone, Aidan? That’s the question the reporters keep asking. And I don’t know the answer.”

He shrugged. “So make something up.”

“Sure,” she said. “I can make up some bullshit. I’m a publicist. That’s what I do. But you know how this works, Aidan. If you want me to control the story, you have to tell me what the story is. The real story. You have to let me do my job.”

The real story, Aidan thought. The real story was that he’d hung up the phone when he went down on one knee because the cord didn’t reach to the ground. And thank God for that. At least he hadn’t humiliated himself completely by proposing and getting turned down flat on a national radio broadcast.

Annette was looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to explain. He shrugged again. “What? I was on a payphone,” he said. “I ran out of change."

“You ran out of change.”

“It was a stupid idea. Next time I’ll call from my cell.”

“There’s nothing more to it than that?”

“Nope.”

They stared at each other, eyes locked, both fully aware that he was lying. Annette looked away first. Something in his eyes must have told her not to press the matter further.

“And you and Kate?” she asked.

“What about me and Kate?”

“Do you need me to play the tape again, Aidan?”

“OK. She’s my ex-girlfriend. There’s some history.”

“And?”

“We’re getting reacquainted. That’s it.”

“Are you together?”

Aidan shut his eyes, willing the woman across from him to disappear in a puff of smoke.

“Aidan,” Annette said, leaning toward him again and putting a hand on his arm. “You just declared your love in front of 4.5 million radio listeners. So when the press asks me if the two of you are together, do you want me to confirm? Or do you want me to walk it back?”

That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? And not a question he cared to answer out loud – not even to his publicist. Sure, Annette could walk it back. The world hadn’t been there in that gas station parking lot to see him down on one knee. But Kate was there. Kate knew what he had said. Kate knew how he felt. There was no walking it back with Kate.

And there was no walking it back with himself either. There was no way to tell himself he didn’t feel what he knew he felt. That his life without her these past seven years had been missing something essential – no matter how many times he had lied and told himself that everything was great. It wasn’t great. It would never be great. It would never even be good. And now that he knew what was missing, it would never even be bearable, if he had to go back to life without her. No, there was no walking it back. The truth was out.

Kate had said it was too soon, though, and he knew deep down that she was right. They’d only been in touch again for a few weeks. She didn’t know about the secret conversations he’d been having with her in his head all these years. Or how, when he was out on the town with his latest piece of celebrity arm candy, he would picture Kate’s face looking back at him instead.

No, Kate was right. Just having an itch for someone for seven years was not the same thing as being in a relationship. Pulling over into the rest stop and calling into the radio show had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. He hadn’t even realized that speech was going to end in a marriage proposal until the words were coming out of his mouth. What was he thinking? Probably spending too much time reading the scripts that the movie studios kept sending his way – all those cliché-ridden romantic comedies, star vehicles designed to help him make the leap from recording artist to matinee idol.

He regretted it now. It was way too soon to talk marriage, and he knew it. But that didn’t mean he’d changed his mind about Kate. He knew exactly what he wanted. And he wasn’t about to take no for answer.

Now she was coming out to stay with him. She was due to arrive on Saturday and would stay for two weeks. That’s what she had promised him. Two weeks to show her what their life would be like if she stayed. Two weeks to prove to her that all these years later – even with everything that had changed – he was still that same boy she used to love, and she was still that same little girl.

“Aidan,” Annette prompted him again. “What do you want me to tell the media?”

He reached out and pushed her laptop closed. “No comment,” he replied, squaring his jaw with a look of single-minded determination. “No comment today. But ask me again in two weeks."