Twelve

They headed to a little pub she knew, near the university. It was sparsely populated at this time of day, and they easily found a booth near the back, away from the door and the well-traveled path to the dingy washrooms. The lights were low, and again Trent sat with his back to the door so as to be less recognizable. They ordered drinks, he a beer, she a glass of wine. He shrugged off his jacket and looked across the table at her. Emily, who had not yet taken her jacket off, perched her sunglasses on top of her head, pushing her hair off her face, and sat on the edge of her seat. She felt coiled, ready to bolt. She could see him processing her posture.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

"For what?" she asked. "There's nothing to be sorry for."

"I..." he started, and then broke off. He looked at his hands, and even in the gloom, Emily could see by his face that he was feeling repentant.

"Look," she said, as much to give him a break as anything. "You live a certain lifestyle. Mine's just different. You have nothing to apologize for."

He looked at her, and reached for her hand. She left it there and was disconcerted by the frisson his touch sent up her arm. It was not unpleasant, and she found herself softening toward him. Besides, he looked so miserable. She was surprised to find she was almost feeling sorry for him.

"It's not so much my lifestyle," he said. "I gave up that shit years ago. I barely even drink, now." Ironically, their drinks showed up at that moment and they laughed.

"Look, Emily. I'm thirty-six years old. I've been in the music business for almost twenty years. I'm way past that stuff. Blake is twenty-three. He's still thrilled by the adoration. He's a fabulous musician, but he's a kid. Our relationship is professional. It's work. You don't socialize with everyone you work with, do you?"

Emily sat, a little shocked by the longest speech he had yet heard him make. She had never considered that someone with the passion for their work that he talked about would consider it "just work". She had always assumed that it was a lifestyle; it never occurred to her that it was about passion for one’s art. She told him as much.

"I guess it's my turn to be sorry," she said. "I figured that rock stars were all about the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll."

"For me, it's the music. I love to play, to sing," he said, echoing almost exactly what he had said that night in the coffee shop. "You can't play well if you're high. Blake knows that. But what he does outside of work is his business. He's a grown-up. I can't tell him what to do."

Emily thought for a while, nonplussed. This man was, at best, unpredictable. Arrogant and self-focused one minute, shy and embarrassed the next. And he was holding her hand. It was nice, she had to admit, to be touched by a man after all this time. Involuntarily, the thought dragged up Thomas's face and she felt uncomfortable again. But she didn't pull away. She did the next best thing. She changed the subject.

"You're older than I thought," she said abruptly, realizing her non sequitur after the fact. He looked puzzled a moment and then answered.

"Thirty-six last month," he said. His hand was still on hers, as if glued. He looked at her, eyebrows slightly raised, expectant but silent, and she laughed.

"What a gentleman, not even asking!" she said, pretending to think about whether to answer his unvoiced question. "Thirty five," she relented.

"That's about what I expected."

"Hey!" she cried, with mock indignation, pulling her hand free. "You're supposed to feed me some line about looking like I'm just out of high school or something." She swatted him lightly on the arm and felt her knees go a bit weak.

He laughed, and the creases at the corners of his eyes deepened. "Well, I did the math. I figured you couldn't have finished medical school and all that if you were right out of high school," he said. "Besides," he cintinued wryly. "You have a certain... shall we say... maturity that most of our fans lack."

She looked at him sideways, pretending to be wary, but genuinely surprised to hear that he had given her even that much thought.

"You did the math?" she asked, chuckling self-consciously, to keep the conversation on solid ground, and to buy herself some time to regain her composure.

"Yup," he said, looking into her eyes. "I thought about Googling you but thought that might be too intrusive."

Googling me? she thought, wondering briefly if there was anything he would have learned about her if he had. "Hmmmm, I never thought of doing that," she said making her tone purposely sarcastic. They laughed again, and this time it was easier.

Emily confessed to Trent that prior to meeting him, she had known nothing about him or his band. Since their night in the coffee shop, (and maybe a little before that) she'd listened to no music except theirs. And, she had to admit, she'd looked him up on the internet, just to find out a little about him. "Just checking you out, I guess." she said.

He looked at her ruefully. "You have the advantage, then, I guess," he said, rubbing a hand over his stubbled jaw. "I know you're a doctor in Forest Glen, but that's about it. I don't even know your phone number."

Emily's stomach clenched and she ignored the playful hint. Part of her brain screamed at her to back away from the table and run. Another part, screaming a little louder, told her to sit and talk. I'm not ready for this, she thought. Not ready for what? Thomas has been gone for three years and he's not coming back. I know, her internal conversation raged. But you just met this guy, and he's so weird, and he's a musician. Do you really want to tell your life story to this man? It was pretty obvious where the conversation was going. The pregnant silence stretched uncomfortably. Finally, she spoke.

"I don't know you," she said.

She saw Trent take a deep breath, as if steeling himself to say something difficult. He started to speak, stopped, and started again. "Don't know, or don't want to know?" he asked in a dejected tone, looking down at his lap. The seriousness in his tone made her lean down to catch his downcast eyes.

She regarded him for a moment, then spoke frankly. "I don't know," she said. "I have baggage, Trent. And I suspect you do, too, if you're a thirty-six year old musician."

Her hand reached out, as if of its own accord, and took his. She watched the gesture with a peculiarly detached interest, unable to stop herself; it felt as if she were watching someone else do something over which she had no control.

He said nothing, but placed his other hand over hers and looked at her. She knew this was his invitation to her, her opportunity to tell him about herself, about Thomas and the twins. But it was as if she had used up all her nerve just touching his hand. She couldn't make herself say anything.

As the silence stretched longer and longer, growing increasingly uncomfortable with each second that passed, Emily thought desperately of something to say, something that wouldn’t sound coy or misleading, something that conveyed the inexplicably intense but conflicting needs she felt at that moment, without giving anything up. She was torn between her desire for a man who, she had to admit, she found undeniably attractive, and between a need, irrational, she knew, to protect herself and her family from another heartbreak.

Finally, it was Trent who broke the silence. “Wow, Emily, I’ve got to tell you, I’m not too sure what to think right now,” he said. “You have to know how I feel.”

She looked at him, puzzled.

Emily thought that he was going to elaborate, but he stopped, and she realized he was asking a question. She decided to answer honestly, rather than risk letting silence be misconstrued. He seemed worth a risk.

“No, Trent, I don’t,” she confessed. “We’ve met only three times, and you seem like two completely different people, depending on, oh, I don’t know, the phases of the moon. I don’t really know what to think.”

She spoke gently, but with intensity. She really did feel at a loss here. On one hand, there was inarguably something appealing about being invited out, being touched, by a very attractive man, who was a rock star to boot. At the same time, though, she felt torn, by the suddenness by which she had realized her attraction to the man, and the knowledge that, since she really knew little about him, that the attraction must be mainly physical. What she did know of him was confusing and inconsistent, and she was bewildered by the dichotomy of his character. For someone who used her people-reading skills daily in her professional life, his inscrutability was, to say the least, disconcerting.

A third factor, of course, which she couldn’t exactly speak aloud, was the ghost of her husband, (her late husband, she reminded herself consciously), and the fear that history could very easily repeat itself. After all, she had always considered her life to have been charmed, at least before that dark day. A fairytale, really. She’d married her college sweetheart, had two beautiful children, a textbook career, everything a woman could want, including a perfect mother-in-law. If everything hadn’t actually fallen apart during that summer three years ago, at least it had changed the course of her life dramatically. And if it happened once, there was nothing to say, at least from the perspective of her enduring grief, that it wouldn’t happen again. Maybe not by cancer this time, but at the end of the day, did it matter how? The end result would still be pain. Emily told herself that she would not put her children through it again.

Her reverie was broken by a confused shake of Trent’s head. “What do you mean?” he asked, genuinely confused.

Emily realized she needed to explain her comment, which gave her a strange and sudden comfort. Maybe he really didn’t know how he came across.

“When we first met, that night at the hospital, I thought you were the most arrogant prick who’d ever walked the earth,” she started, and smiled when she saw his indignant reaction. “Wait! I’m not done. Let me finish.”

He calmed himself visibly, but a self-righteous expression remained on his face, not unlike the unfortunate night they’d met.

“You barged into my trauma room and demanded things I couldn’t give you.” What the hell, she thought. What have I got to lose? She told it like she saw it, unflattering though it was. “You strutted around like you owned the place, or like everyone in it owed you something.”

Emily could see she had offended him, and continued hurriedly. “But then, when you waited for me outside the hospital, and when we sat so long in that coffee shop, and chatted and laughed, you were completely different. You were shy, quiet, self-effacing, and, by God you were hot.” She felt herself blushing and looked down. He started to speak and she cut him off again, reaching over and placing a finger to his lips.

“That man was the one I emailed. Not the rock star; I would have ignored his email. But the man in the restaurant, he was the one I drove out here to see today. And the one I found when I got here, was the rock star.” She shrugged and looked up.

“So which one are you?” she asked.

He looked back at her, and was silent so long she wondered if he would even answer. He looked stricken. Finally, he spoke.

“When I saw you that first night in the hospital coming out of the room towards me, I was full of fire. The ‘rock star’ walked into the hospital looking for you, to apologize, actually. That nurse wouldn’t tell me where you were, so I waited. I knew you would have to leave eventually. I wanted to tell you I was sorry.” He stopped and took a deep breath, as if what he was about to say was painful.

“Then I saw you coming toward me and I knew I had to say something, but you were so intimidating.” Emily started to laugh, but stopped when Trent looked at her, seriously.

“You are beautiful. I was so anxious about that girl the first day, and you had a surgical mask on, and you were so angry, that it didn’t register. But the next day, when I was calmer, I knew the second I saw you. You are beautiful,” he repeated. “I was scared.”

“Scared?” Genuinely shocked, Emily found her voice. “Scared of what, of me?”

“Don’t sound so shocked,” he smiled, and she melted a little, seeing the corners of his mouth merge into perfect dimples. “You were a hard ass, too.”

Surprised, it occurred to Emily that her professional face was probably as different from faces that she adopted in the other areas of her life as Trent’s. He has a professional side, and other sides that might not be quite the same. Again, she felt her stress level recede a little.

She laughed, relieved, and not a little embarrassed. “You’re probably right.”

“Look,” Trent said, and Emily had a moment’s panic, utterly unable to predict what he might say next. “Why don’t we start all over?”

“Again?” she said, feigning exasperation, but intrigued by the idea.

“I’ll start over as many times as it takes to get it right,” he said, and she had no doubt about his sincerity.

She considered him. The idea of pressing a reset button was certainly appealing. Cut the losses, start over, no strings attached. Couldn’t be any worse, she reasoned. “Abandon all preconceived ideas?” she proposed.

“Right.”

“Okay.”

“Fine.”

They looked at each other over their empty glasses. Trent smiled, and Emily smiled back. She held out her hand.

“I’m Emily,” she said.

“Trent,” he said. They shook hands, and left them clasped on the table.