Remember When 3: The Finale (Remember Trilogy #3) (18 page)

   He ran a palm over the front as I said, “Well, open it, dummy! There’s more inside.”

   He broke out of his daze to flip the latch, cracking up as he did so.
“Holy shit. It’s us!”

   His hands dove into the treasure trove, pulling out the bag of
Skittles, the package of Twinkies. The pack of Juicy Fruit, the snack-sized bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, the scattered pieces of saltwater taffy.

  
Underneath all the junk food, he unearthed his nametag from Totally Videos that I’d saved as if it were a voodoo talisman. “Oh my God! I can’t believe you have this, you stalker!”

  
I laughed and admitted, “I slept with it under my pillow that whole winter.”

  
“Loser.”

  
The last item was a broken piece of cork. He held it up and asked, “Our wine from the tent?”

  
“Yep,” I smiled back.

  
He shook his head in disbelief. “You are just the best, you know that?” he asked, before his lips came down sweetly on mine.

  
It was hard to tear away, but I was too excited to concentrate on kissing him when there were still unopened presents. “There’s still more! Keep opening.”

   He grabbed the small, square package
out of the bag and ripped off the paper. He was smiling like a loon at the Guns N’ Roses Greatest Hits CD in his hands as I explained, “You don’t know this, but ‘Paradise City’ is our song.”

  
He didn’t even miss a beat as he asked, “Why? Because it’s the first one we listened to together?”

   My mouth gaped open. “Tell me you don’t actually remember that.”

   “We were in my truck—God, I miss that Bronco—and I was driving us back to your house after school. Of course I remember. I was the one who put it on.”

   “But… But…”

   “All I wanted to do was pull over and see what you had on under that skirt. I had an uncontrollable hard-on the whole ride home.”

   “Shut up! You did not!”

   “The song still drives me insane whenever I hear it.”

   “Where’s your CD player!?”

   He laughed at that, but noted, “Cool your jets there, horndog. I still have another present to unwrap.”

   He took the last, small package out and tore off the paper. He was holding a disc in a clear jewel case. He looked it over, asking, “R and J? Who’s that?”

   I must have confused him with the G N’ R. I bit my lip and hinted, “I had it burned from video to DVD.”

   Understanding dawned across his face. “Get out.
Our movie? I can’t believe you did this!”

   He immediately hopped off the couc
h to throw it in the DVD player when I stopped him. “No! Popcorn first. I haven’t watched this in fifteen years either. Let’s do this right.”

   So, it was a few minutes later when we were situated on his couch, wrapped up in a fuzzy tan blanket, the coffee table strewn with a junk food buffet. I settled into his side with a Twinkie in one hand and a Coke in the other, delaying my worries
, yet again, about the calories until a more convenient time. Trip had one hand around the bowl of popcorn and the other on the remote control.

   “You ready?” he asked, his smile
infectious.

   “Just promise me something.”

   Trip paused in the act of pressing play, a wrinkle appearing between his brows. “What?”

   “
Please don’t analyze it. Just watch. Okay?”

   That cracked him up.

   We watched as the scene faded in on my father’s den—Friar Laurence’s room—the two of us frantically pacing about, Trip wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket and me in a pair of scrubs (We’d decided to make Romeo into a very
Eddie and the Cruisers
-type hoodlum and put a literal spin on “the nurse”), and I kept whining about how his main squeeze “Julie” had been moping around the castle.

   “
Look at you,” Trip laughed out. “God, you were so in love with me. But look at that skinny little fuck. How could you not be?”

   “
Oh my God, you’re right!” It was so mortifying, watching the teenaged me looking at him all googly-eyed and hero-worshippy. “Oh, this is so embarrassing! No wonder everyone thought we were a couple. I wasn’t even playing Juliet! Yikes. It looks like the nurse wanted to get it on with the Montague boy.”

   “She still does, I hope.”

   I smiled at that as we directed our attentions back to the television.

   By the time “Robbie” finally accepted the mood ring that Julie had asked the nurse to bring to him, we were cracking up, and the movie was over almost as soon as it had begun. I always thought it was like an hour long. Seriously, it was probably no longer than seven minutes.

   The screen went blue, and all I could do was sit there and
groan in humiliation. “How on God’s green Earth did you not realize I was crazy about you? How could you have possibly been so blind?”

   “I knew. Well, I hoped, anyway. You thought you were so slick.”

   “I did! Oh, God. Kill me now.”

  
That made him laugh. “Just shut up and kiss me or I’ll have you bani-shed from this couch.”

  
I was still giggling as his mouth met mine, but it didn’t take long for me to stop laughing and melt into those soft, inviting lips. He wrapped his arm around my middle and slid my body underneath his as my hands ran over the muscles in his arms. I was practically obsessed with Trip’s new body, tracing my fingers over his new bulges every chance I got. I loved his involuntary response to my touch, the muscles in his back, or his chest, or his abs jumping under my palms.

  
He groaned as his hips jacked into mine, his tongue teasing against the seam of my lips, coaxing them to open, but he didn’t meet much resistance from me. I opened my mouth and moaned into his as our tongues tangled against one another.

   T
hings had heated up quickly, but I was jogged out of the spell when Trip tore his lips from mine. “Hold on,” he said gruffly, before bounding off the couch.

  
He threw his new Guns CD in the stereo and skipped to “Paradise City.” He turned from the sound system, looking at me with a wicked smirk, slowly stalking back toward the sofa like a predator and scooping his new palmcorder off the table. “I think we need to make a
new
movie….”

  
…And that’s how only a handful of people (okay, just he and I) know that Trip’s greatest film was actually a riveting two-person performance opening to unanimously positive reviews in the winter of 2005 during a private after-party on his couch in Hollywood, California.

Chapter 22

THE UPSIDE OF ANGER

   I was in the pool early the next day, trying to work off the feast from the night before. Trip’s plan was to run some errands all morning, then take his mother out for lunch that afternoon.

  
I thought he’d left hours before, so I was surprised when he came outside, holding a sheaf of papers in his hand.

  
“What is this?” he asked derisively. I didn’t know what he was holding, but I
did
know that I didn’t like the tone of his voice. I stepped out of the pool and wrapped a towel around me, coming closer to take a better look.

  
I was just coming to the realization
that the papers he was holding were mine when he spat out, “Are these the notes from your book?
My biography
? You’re
publishing
this? How could you do that to me, Layla?”

  
Hey, whoa. Hold on there, sparky. One minute, I was swimming around the pool. The next thing I know, I’m getting a tongue-lashing. And not the good kind.

  
I couldn’t even address his anger yet. I had my own anger to deal with. “I didn’t do anything! And why are you reading my stuff?”

  
“You left it scattered around my office. I couldn’t
avoid
reading it.”

  
His
office.

  
But crud. He was right. I did. “It was supposed to be a surprise. And I wrote this for
us
, not to sell. If I wanted to sell it, I could have done so years ago.”

  
“Bullshit. You
did
sell it! You sold
me
out!”

  
I was really shocked at how he’d just blown off my explanation and at the way he was ranting at me. I’d only been the target of his rage once before, years ago when he exploded on me at that diner. Only, he was drunk that night. This time, there was no excuse. I wondered what the hell was going on.

  
I tried to counter his yelling by keeping my voice calm. “I did no such thing. Trip, I swear. Those are my
personal
notes
from years ago, and I didn’t even use them for that first book. I only pulled them back out to write our story for
you
. It’s the one that they wanted, but I didn’t do it. Just read the book. You’ll see I’m not lying.”

  
He ignored my rationalization, his ire too far gone to listen to reason. “And this! What the hell is this? A washed-up actor? Is that where you see me headed?”

   He had my
memoir notes and my “Last Act” notes all jumbled together, thinking I was writing a tell-all about his past and making dim predictions about his future.

  
I ignored my anxiety at seeing how he’d messed up my “filing system.” There had been order to my chaos, and Trip had just lumped all my pages into one, discombobulated stack. “That is for a
fictional
novel that has nothing to do with you!”

  
Something changed in his expression and I knew my words were finally getting through. His shoulders deflated as he swiped a hand through his hair, staring off across the patio. He wanted to believe me; I could tell that he did. I wasn’t a liar. Trip knew that. He knew I wasn’t like them. He couldn’t help but get his defenses up about something like this. He was surrounded by users and sellouts.

   But goddammit, I wasn’t one of them.

  
Maybe I should have told him about being asked to write that first book, but since I never actually did it, I didn’t think it was important enough to mention. It’s not like I was specifically trying to keep that information a secret from him.

  
Besides,
I got the impression that something else was going on. Trip was being moody and accusatory, both of which were definitely not features of his normal personality. He was all stressed out, and I knew it wasn’t just because of my manuscript.

  
So, why the temper tantrum?

  
“What’s going on here, Trip? This is about more than just some diary passages.”

  
He met my eyes for a quick second, opened his mouth to speak, but then must have thought better of it. Instead, he stormed into the house and I followed him. The conversation wasn’t over.

  
I was getting ready to ask him about his abandoned explanation when he growled and slammed the papers onto a side chair of the living room. “Goddammit! I need a drink.”

  
I watched him head for the bar and brace his hands along the edge, eyeing up the rainbow of bottles along the mirrored wall.

  
Oh no
. No, no, no.

  
As riled as I was feeling, I still knew I had to stop this. Our fight took a backseat to the more immediate situation that had just presented itself.

  
I wanted to beg him not to do it. I wanted to sit him in a chair and talk him down from the ledge. But he’d started pacing around the room like a caged animal, hands clenched in fists at his hips, in his hair, against the bar. Talking wasn’t going to do it right then.

  I intercepted him mid-pacing, halting him in his tracks with my hands at his shoulders, jogging him out of his stupor. He’d been in such a state that his eyes met mine in confusion, his expression glazed over momentarily. It was like I was awakening a sleepwalker as I dropped my towel, grasped his hands, and placed them on my breasts, trying to jog him out of his trance.

  
It worked.

  
His eyes suddenly turned dark and his lip curled into a leer.

 
I clashed my lips to his, kissing him hard, fisting his shirt in my hands, pulling him toward me and ramming my tongue in his mouth. Trip took the bait and grabbed me around the waist, pulling me to him fiercely, sliding a hand down to grip my ass, pressing my body into intimate contact with his, bending me backwards from the force of his kiss. Feeding off me. Taking.

  
My heart was beating a crazy rhythm, my body melting from his eagerness. I suddenly forgot about trying to create a diversion and just got caught up in the electric jolts that were invading my entire length, making me dizzy, the room spinning. His impatient lips tasted sweet, as always, his sugary warmth consuming me. The heat of us sharing the same gasping breaths, the power of his hunger overtaking mine. There was no tenderness there; there was no reason for it. There was only want. There was only need. There was only now.

  
Oooh. Angry sex
.

  
He abruptly spun me around and pushed me away, forcing my body to bend over the back of the couch, holding me fixed there with a hand at my spine. I snuck a look at him over my shoulder as I hooked my thumbs into my bikini bottoms, ripping them down my legs quickly, hearing Trip groan.

  
The preliminaries were over as he released his hand from my back, tearing at his fly, the both of us standing there with our clothes around our ankles. He grabbed a fistful of wet hair at my nape, knotted his fingers in the mass and tugged, forcing my head back. His other hand was at my backside, positioning a certain body part against me. He leaned over my back and hissed into my ear, “You want this?
You want me to fuck you hard
?”

  
Well, Jesus. Hell yeah, I wanted it. How freaking hot was he? I could only nod my head in answer.

  
He let go of my hair and grabbed my hips, driving full-length into me as we both screamed. He slammed into me hard and fast, grunting on every thrust; once, twice, maybe only a dozen times before he lost it, growling and cursing as he came, pouring himself out in me, forcing every last ounce to spill inside, before slumping across my back, shuddering and exhausted, breathless and spent.

  
We were both ravaged animals, panting heavily, coming down. Trip gave a quick rub to the back of my head, soothing the spot where he’d practically ripped out my hair.

   “You okay?”

   “I’m great!” I said, elated and overcome. Who knew a quickie could be so satisfying?

  
He put his forehead against my shoulder blade, and I could feel his heaving breath against my bare skin. “I wasn’t going to do it, you know. I wasn’t going to take a drink. It’s important that you know that. I’ve been here before. I would have talked myself down.”

  
“Coulda told me that before slamming me over the sofa. Ow. My ribs hurt.”

  
Trip pulled his pants back up and I managed to wrap a towel around me before sliding onto the couch, where he joined me, curling up against my side. We were both invertebrates, melting into one another as I played my fingers through his hair. I thought about the fight we’d just had and wondered what was going on. We definitely had to straighten some stuff out.

  
But it was hard to concentrate on anything more than getting my breathing back to normal while I reveled in the delicious afterglow, his limbs tangled up with mine.

  
That is, until the question that had been bothering me for weeks made its way out of my mouth. “Why do you even keep it in the house?”

  
He didn’t even wait a beat before answering resolutely, “To test myself. Like Sam Malone. Remember
Cheers
? Reformed alcoholic relief-pitcher-turned-bar-owner? That’s me. If I know I can fight it in the privacy of my own home, when it’s right there for the taking at any time, I know I can fight it anywhere.”

   We lay there for a moment, settling into one another
as I mulled over his logic. Trip’s heartbeat was still pounding rapidly, the sound a nostalgic melody against my ear.

  
Out of nowhere, he sighed, “I’m sorry.”

   “Huh?”

  “I’m sorry for raising my voice, for accusing you like that.”

  
I was grateful for the apology. But it still didn’t explain his outburst. “Thank you. I appreciate that. But Trip, why would you just come out like gangbusters and blast me like that? Even when I explained myself, you refused to believe me.”

   “I know. I guess I just got caught up in my own head about it.”

   I was all too familiar with that scenario. I think I’ve proven beyond all reasonable doubt that I am Queen of the Mind-Splooge. “I’m really sorry if it looked as though I were writing some tell-all about your life. I hope you know that I’d never do that. Even the ‘biography’ I was working on for you was more of just a sweet story about how we’d met; a memoir from my point of view. It’s not a retelling of every sordid detail about your life.”

  
“I only scanned the pages long enough to see that it was about me.”

   “I
kinda figured that out on my own.”

   He sighed and repositioned himself more comfortably on the couch, my body wedged in tightly along his side. I ran a hand up his bare chest as he tangled a strand of my hair around his fingers, the both of us lost in thought.

   Finally, he asked, “Is it any good?”

  His question made me chuckle. “Well, it’s not finished yet, but I’d like to think so, yes.”

   It suddenly occurred to me that Trip had no idea whether or not I could actually write.
Yes, he’d read the article I’d written about him, but that was hardly a valid example of my work. I’d written entire novels since then.

  
I was mulling that over when his next words caught me completely off guard. “Then you should publish it if you want. Just have your agent send over the release forms.”

  
What the?
I was stunned by what he was asking. I twisted myself to look him in the eyes as I asked, “Seriously? You want me to essentially sell a piece of your life story, here.”

   He swiped a hand down my jaw, his fingers playing under the hair at my neck.
“Babe. I trust you. And anyway, it’s
our
life story. You and me, remember?”

   Of course I remembered.

   How could I ever forget?

  
When it came to Trip, I remembered everything.