Chapter One

           Everyone should do something impulsive at least once.   And I don’t mean buying a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes when your credit card’s already maxed or ditching work to road trip it to Atlantic City. I’m talking life-altering madness, like crashing an Oscar party or buying a two-seater convertible because it’s the first sunny day in a week. It’s the thing you’ll either regret doing for the rest of your life OR regret not having done. The problem for me, ten years later, is I’m still not sure which one it was. Common sense, my mother if she knew and what is now my future would all agree that it was a horrid mistake—with sentiments like that I should go with mistake.  And I do, I swear, on most days. Only today, the problem is it’s here, in my face, plastered all over the TODAY Show, Good Morning America and the promos for The View, where he’s certain to be the hot topic of the day. Like Aidan Royce ever knew how to be anything else. Flipping the TV off, I decide to take an out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach. Hell, denial has worked this long. I’m good for about five minutes, until Tanya comes into the office. Working in the promotions department of a major radio station, it’s our job to keep abreast of current events. For Tanya, it’s what keeps her from reaching for a second chocolate frosted donut. With the donut in mouth, she waves her free hand, coffee in the other and turns the TV back on.

         “Hey, Bella, mornin’ sugar,” she says, arranging herself behind her desk in our shared, three-person office.

          Promotions are important to 98.6—The Normal FM for Easy Listening.  We make it go, dream up the giveaways, wrangle 70’s and 80’s artists into reunion concerts and make sure we’re sponsoring politically correct non-profit events, the kind that appeal to our loyal but never too edgy crowd. However, it doesn’t directly translate into revenue, so we don’t rate separate offices like the DJs. That’s okay; we’re great co-workers and good friends. I like sharing with Tanya and Mary Louise on most days. Maybe, just not so much, today. On cue, Mary Louise traipses into the office two minutes behind Tanya—a soy protein drink in hand. For such opposites, you’d think they’d hate one another, but nothing could be further from the truth. They fill each other’s gaps. Tanya’s a scattered mess, not unlike her life. As a three-time divorcee, she’s what I’d call a social person. Tanya’s been to church, been to bars, and been to bed in hopes of meeting Mr. Right there. I privately hold it as the gold standard to which I will not sink. Don’t get me wrong, what Tanya lacks in man sense she makes up for with her children, a complementary kid from each marriage. At least she’s doing a better job than their fathers, none of whom can be counted on for a regular child support check. Mary Louise, on the other hand, has been blissfully married and childless for six years. She married a man named Joe Bland. I’m not kidding. Mary Louise is the most stable, no-nonsense person I know. A few months ago, when I had to meet her in the emergency room, she was like a rock. Joe, it seems, had broken numerous bones falling off their roof while trying to tap into the cable line. Like radio, Mary Louise believes high def should be free to the user—she’s also the most frugal person I know. But Mary Louise is not without her vices, and as I suspect she’s all over the tabloid television.  As she often says, “Gossip is free.”

          “Have you seen this?” she demands, crossing to her neat-as-pin desk, never taking her eyes off the TV. “The drunk driving thing, you’d expect that from somebody like him. In fact, I can’t believe Aidan Royce has gone this long without a major incident.” She motions to the screen and a fire engine red Porche that I watch being towed for the hundredth time that morning. “But punching a cop? That’s bad behavior for even a known bad boy. They said he knocked two teeth out! That won’t help his public image any.”

         Not so surprising. I know for a fact Aidan can take three teeth out, if need be. The screen cuts to the loop they’ve been running all morning. Eight solid seconds of Aidan’s backside standing in front of a booking desk, wearing handcuffs. He’s half crocked and a disheveled mess, but he still looks amazing, even from that angle—particularly from that angle. I swallow a sickening sense of déjà vu and try not to look. But I don’t really need to see him. Before my eyes were even open this morning I heard his name on the radio and an icy panic that I had no business feeling rushed me. At 6:10 a.m., surely he had to be dead. It was nothing so inclusive as to provide me with closure for my lingering denial. Instead, the Grammy winning, platinum selling, hell-raising rocker—the one who amounted to my brush with life-altering impulsiveness—was just under arrest.  

          “Help his public image? Are you kidding?” Tanya disagrees, flicking donut crumbs from a fuchsia sweater that goes oddly well with her bright orange hair. “I’d be surprised if his publicist didn’t arrange the whole thing. They’ll get miles out of this. And did you see that slut he was with? Talk about blond and ambitious. She was right off the groupie mobile, wearing half a size two dress and babbling about how she’d only met him last night.  At least this one was the age of consent,” she says, mashing the remote, only to come up with same loop on channel seven.

          That was a nasty story a few years back. While touring Europe, Aidan was rumored to be having an affair with the niece of Norway’s crown prince, the technically underage niece. Those were a few uncomfortable weeks. I felt a lot of things back then, every time I was forced to look at him—things I thought I’d packed away for good: resentment, jealousy, irony. But mostly I felt them when I looked at her, a nubile stunning beauty. Of course he wanted to have sex with her, and she with him. Was I deluded enough to believe that he was a celibate sexy, multi-millionaire, rock star? Perhaps this is why denial, for me, is a commandment.

          “Yeah, she looks like his type, flexible and disposable,” Mary Louise says, making that judgmental tsk, tsk sound with her tongue.

        “And they’re both so pretty. But he’ll be chasing a different skirt by next week.” “Or as soon as he makes bail. Definitely a skank. And what’s that thing on his neck?” Tanya points, as they cut to Aidan’s mug shot. She pops on her glasses, squinting at the TV. “Looks like he’s branded himself with an evil charm.”

        “Looks like a rope,” Mary Louise decides. “He and the blond slut are probably into S&M, bondage—like to advertise. Joe would never be ballsy enough to suggest such a thing.”

           “Neither would Ed, my second husband.”

           “That’s why he’s your second husband, isn’t it?” Mary Louise asks. Tanya smiles and shrugs. 

           “Virtual peas in a pod,” I say, not looking at him. “God love them both.” They nod, assuming I’m talking about Aidan and the slut. I really mean them.   “It’s a coiled snake. It means… ” I begin but stop; they’re not listening anyway. They’re hooked on the juggernaut image the media, Aidan’s publicist, his fans and tabloid gossip have created. Whether or not any of it is true doesn’t seem to be the point.

          “A skank, for sure. But that’s what women love about him, sexy and dangerous. It’s a lethal combination.” Filling the coffee maker, Mary Louise keeps vigil with one eye trained on the TV. “Heaven help the poor woman who ends up married to him.”

         “Or should you say women. No doubt he’ll go through five or six wives before he ends up in rehab or worse,” Tanya offers, as my eyes volley between the two of them.

          “You got that right. But they’ll keep coming. I’m amazed he’s flown under the radar this long. Hard to believe some girl hasn’t nabbed him. But you know how it goes, eventually, one of them will end up pregnant and he’ll do the noble thing—till it’s born anyway.”

          This notion sends my bran flakes on a fast hurl back toward my throat. But I manage to squelch it. “Some women can be so blind,” Tanya laments. “Clearly, he’s a womanizing scoundrel.”

         Clearly, Tanya doesn’t recognize her own lack of foresight concerning this particular character trait.

          “The worst, for sure,” Mary Louise confirms, pouring herself coffee.

          “Just shut up, both of you!” And already I cannot believe this has just come out of my mouth. Yet, I continue. “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

          “What bit you?” Mary Louise snipes, her steaming coffee cup frozen in mid-air. “You hate celebrity gossip. What do you know about Aidan Royce anyway? He’s exactly the kind of man you despise, aside from being a few light years removed from your world.”

           “I know more than you think, Mary Louise Bland. Aidan isn’t any of those things the media makes him out to be. He’s sweet and caring and he’d do anything for you, if you were in trouble.”

            “And how exactly would you happen on information like that?” Tanya questions taking Mary Louise’s side. “Have you been reading back issues of People magazine in the bathroom again?”

         “Don’t be ridiculous.”

          “Then how?”

          “Because—I just know.”

          “Because how?”

          “It doesn’t matter,” I seethe through clenched teeth. “I just know.”

           “How?” “I know Aidan, that’s all.” Both women look at me with incredulous stares and burst into a fit of laughter.   

          Of course, to them, I don’t know Aidan Royce any better than I know the man-in-the-moon. I know what it sounds like. But I can’t help it. I’ve been forced into the cataclysmic circumstance where I must defend him. And before I can stop myself, I break the only other vow I ever took—something about taking it to the grave. “I know,” I say with a tremulous breath, “because I’m married to him.”

                                                                      ****

            Well, as far as I know, I’m married to him. My guess is with the kind of money and power Aidan has he could have easily dissolved the union years ago, and probably did. That part wouldn’t surprise me a bit. But I should think he might have mentioned it, via personal assistant at the very least. Tanya and Mary Louise, believing they know everything there is to know about Isabel Lang, mercifully decide I am just full of raucous humor today. What else could they conclude? In five years at the radio station, the closest I’ve ever come to intimate contact with fame is the Hall from Hall & Oates borrowing my nail clipper to trim a hangnail. My marriage to Aidan is something I don’t utter aloud to myself. I immediately agree with their assumption that I’m kidding—just pulling their chains. Even if they are my friends, I shouldn’t be forced to confess it to two women who wanted me to appear on Dr. Phil as pickiest single woman in America. So I take it in stride when they spend the rest of the morning referring to me as Aidan Royce’s secret love wench and let it go at that.

          I feel that I am able to put it aside as we’re ushered into a staff meeting that afternoon. But after a few moments, I find my focus askew, or more to the point nonexistent. Instead of jotting down market shares, I’m doodling all over my Normal FM notepad. It’s all so subconscious. Before I know it I’ve used my red pen to color in all the little 98.6 thermometers, which are the logo for our station, giving them raging fevers. I attach little hearts to the end, Aidan’s initials floating inside each one. And instead of acting like the twenty-eight-year old, self-sufficient, obstacle overcoming woman that I am, I’m right back at Catswallow Senior High, doodling A.R. in the margin of my history notebook. What can I say, ten years later and he’s still my hero. Because I know that without Aidan Royce, I wouldn’t be any of those positive, successful things. I’d probably just be dead.