Twenty

It was few days later that the shrill of the phone awoke Emily sometime in the mid-morning, after a nasty night shift. It was Sarah, and she was babbling incomprehensibly. Emily got the idea that she was excited, but couldn’t, at first, make out what the excitement was about. Groggily, she sat up and looked around.

“Sarah, what the hell are you talking about? Are you okay?” Emily asked irritably.

“Emily, you’re in the newspaper!” Sarah squealed.

“What are you talking about?”

“The Entertainment section! There’s a picture of you and Trent Buchanan snogging at the baseball game! First of all, you never said you were snogging, and second, oh my God!” Sarah, evidently, was unable to contain herself.

Emily swung her legs off the bed and rubbed her face, confused. A picture in the paper?

“Okay, Sar, I’m going to get the paper. I’ll call you later.” She hung up on a babbling Sarah and found a robe, heading to the kitchen, where she’d thrown the paper, unread, onto the counter after the kids had left for their day camp. She flipped past the obits, where she often searched for patients who hadn’t made it, to ‘Entertainment’. The section was little more than a tabloid gossip column, and she’d never had much interest in it.

There, in living colour, was a grainy picture of Emily and Trent, his arm around her shoulders, looking comically at each other over the tops of their sunglasses. Emily remembered the moment vividly, but had had no idea that anyone had taken their photograph. The caption read, ‘Uptown singer and new love canoodle at the Jays’ game’. There was a brief paragraph, describing Trent’s mystery woman, and alluding to the legions of pubescent female fans who would be crushed if “this one turned out to be ‘the one’”.

Emily felt odd, as if she were an impartial third party watching from a distance. Guiltily, she closed the paper with a snap when Ellen walked into the kitchen. “Oh, you’re up early,” she said.
“Uh… yeah. I couldn’t sleep. I’m going back, though.” She took the paper and headed off , hoping her behaviour seemed more like fatigue than complete and irrational panic. Ellen couldn’t find out about Trent like this.

What was clear to Emily after the baseball game, and even more so now, was that anyone who developed any kind of relationship with Trent Buchanan would be subject to the same attention he was, if only by association. Did she really want that? Of course, her family would not be immune; Ellen and the twins would lose their privacy, too, if she were to continue seeing him. It was certainly something to consider.

As she climbed back in her bed, she saw the message light blinking on the phone. She checked her voice mail. It was Trent.

“Hey, darlin’,” he drawled. “Listen, I know you’re sleeping, but I wanted to warn you about the paper… we’re in it… sorry… Call me.”

He sounded reticent, but Emily didn’t know what she would say, and was experiencing both mixed emotions and exhaustion, so she closed her eyes, resolving to call him later. Her sleep that day was troubled, and a long time in coming.