Remember When 3: The Finale (Remember Trilogy #3) (19 page)

Chapter
23

FRAGILE

  
The next day, it was my turn to come barging through the door in a huff. Trip was in the den, listening to his Guns N’ Roses CD and reading… shit. My book. I was flattered by that, but I was too riled up to acknowledge it right at that moment.

  
However
, I was not going to come at him guns blazing the way he had with me the day before. I was simply going to present an opportunity to engage in a conversation about what was bothering me. This would be good. A big, mature step in our communication.

   I
took a deep breath and slapped a copy of
The Backlot
down on the coffee table (a little harder than I’d intended), causing him to look up from his reading. He peeked over the book and saw what I had placed at his feet. “What’s that piece of crap doing in my house?”

   “Did you see the picture on the cover?”

   He lifted the book in front of his face again as he answered, “I’m really not interested in seeing a picture of myself on that birdcage liner.”

    “It’s n
ot just a picture of you,” I swiped the magazine off the table and held it up toward him. “It’s a picture of you
with
Jenna
.”

   He ignored me, so I flipped in a couple pages and read from the article.
“
Trip Wiley and Jenna Barnes together again! The estranged pair were recently seen leaving the St. James hotel, where a source confirmed the tumultuous twosome are plotting to work on a new movie together. Does this mean a possible reunion is in the works for the star-crossed couple?”

   I was fum
ing about the whole situation, but that last line
really
twisted the knife in my side.
They
were not the star-crossed couple. I’d been through way more with Trip than that witch.

   “You know not to believe anything in those rags. Why start now?”

   “Is it true? Is this why you’ve been growling around this house like a bear, crabby and stressed out?”

   He finally put the book down and swiped the magazine from my hands. “Did you really look at the picture, Lay? Yes, it’s the t
wo of us out front of the hotel, but it’s two
separate
photos. They just doctored it up to make it look like we were there
together
, when in fact, we just happened to be in the same place at different times.”

   I’d been so disgusted at the si
ght of them together that I hadn’t looked at the photo for more than two seconds. But okay, yeah, on closer inspection, he was right. The photo was totally ‘shopped.

  
“Fine. But is it true?” I asked again.

  
He ran a hand through his hair and lurched to his feet. “She wasn’t even there! I made sure she wouldn’t be there when I went to meet with Bert.”

  
“You
knew
? You knew she was going to be hired for this movie
before
that meeting?” I was astonished at his admission. He may as well have kicked me in the spleen. Oh, this “conversation” was gearing up to turn into an all-out brawl.

  
“I knew it was a
possibility
, yes.”

  
“And you didn’t bother to tell me about it?”

  
“Kind of like how you never told me that your first book was supposed to be about me?”

  
He was grasping at straws and he knew it. “
Really
, Trip?”

  
His posture deflated as he conceded, “I didn’t think it was worth upsetting you when it wasn’t set in stone. I’m still hoping she won’t be cast.”

  
I couldn’t even respond to that. I had my arms crossed over my chest, unspeaking, waiting for him to explain himself.

  
He put his hands over his face and growled into them before throwing his arms out to the side. “Look. It’s just a job! I’m not the boss here, okay? I didn’t pick her for the part. There are producers and who-you-know and anyone she’s ever promised a blowjob to, including the director who’s had a hard-on for her for years and he‘d be a full-time pervert if it weren’t for the fact that he’s a filmmaking genius!”

   I was aware of the man’s
pervy side. I’d experienced it for myself on Oscar night. But why did he have to perv over
Jenna Barnes
? Of all the people!

  
I was positively stewing about the blonde whore from hell.

  
Amongst others.

  
All those women from his past. I couldn’t take it. My prior resolve to handle things maturely got thrown out the window. “Who’s
Marcy
?”

   Trip stopped pacing, caught off guard by my change of subject.
“Who?”

   “
Oh, you don’t even remember her name?”

   “
Who’s name?”

   “
Marcy…
Something
! According to The Bimbo Twins at the read-through, you used to fuck her.”

  
He braced his hands on the back of the wing chair and stared me down. “I used to fuck a lot of women, Lay. A
lot
of them. Is that what you want to hear? How I spent years going to bed with every hot blonde in the city? Do you really need to hear this? Do you really want to go down this road?”

   No. No, I most certainly did not. But the fact was
,
he
was the one that took a road trip down the Whorey Highway, not me. If he hadn’t, there’d be nothing
to
discuss.

   “That was then.
This
?” he motioned his fingers in the gaping space between the two of us, “This is now. And right now,
this
is all that matters to me.”

  
“Right now.”

   “If you want the truth, it was all that mattered to me then, too. But I couldn’t… You weren’t…”

   “So, you just decided to have sex with
everybody
?”

   He sighed, looking at me intently, trying to find the right words.
The air left the room as he lost the heated tone and brought his voice down to a calculated calm. “Maybe that was wrong of me, and I apologize for it. I can only imagine what you must think of me right now. But I was only with them because I couldn’t be with
you.
I’ve always loved you, Lay. It’s always been you.”

  
Ouch.
My heart cracked at that admission, because I knew it was the truth. He’d always been it for me, too. He’d always been the love of my life.

  
And, yeah, okay, to be honest, it’s not as though I had joined a nunnery while we were separated. My numbers weren’t anywhere near his, but could I really blame him for living his life, doing whatever he did,
before
we were together? It’s not like either one of us could pull a Superman and spin the world back in time to change things.

  
“Patience” was playing on the stereo, and it was enough to make me want to cry. I looked over at Trip, who’d sat down in the wing chair, elbows on his knees. His hands clamped into two white-knuckled fists and his head dropped to his chest, staring at his feet as he said, “Please don’t leave me over this. Please don’t break me again.”

   He thought I was going to leave him over it? I just wanted to be a regular girl for a minute and bitch about it. I wasn’t planning on
leaving
him.

   “
Oh God, Trip… no. I’m not…” I sank down to the floor at his feet, put a hand to his knee. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere.” He looked positively wrecked, which was never my intention. I guess I could have explained things better.
“I’m sorry, too. It’s just strange for me. We can’t seem to go anywhere without running into one of your ex-girlfriends. All these California blondes with their big fake tits. Can you even imagine what that would be like for you if every time you turned your head, some guy I slept with was standing there? Some guy who still wants to sleep with me. Gives you dirty looks like you don’t measure up. How would that feel for you?”

  
He raised broken eyes to mine. “Babe. Think about it. Yeah, they’re all blondes. I couldn’t bear to be with a brunette ever again after you.”

  
What?
I thought on his words for a moment and holy crap, realized it was the truth. Damn that man and his selective adorableness.

  
I tried to contain my smile at his revelation as I teased, “Maybe I should dye my hair.”

   He grabbed
a handful at the back of my head and pulled, tipping my face up to his. “Don’t even think about it.”

   The old Trip was
back as his mouth crashed down on mine and kissed me roughly, his teeth clenched, the sound of his growl vibrating against my lips. He wasn’t going to distract me this time. We still needed to sort some stuff out. But his admission and his kiss had at least served to change the tone of our confrontation.

  
My voice was almost playful as I said, “Okay, okay. But
Jenna
? C’mon, Trip. You have to understand why I’m so upset. Not only is she your ex-fiancée, but she’s super-skinny, with humongous boobs, and she…” I trailed off.

  
“What?” Trip asked, finally cracking a smile. “And she what?”

  
“She went to Yale!
YALE
, Trip!”

  
“Why do I get the impression that you’re more jealous of that than of her tits?”

  
“I
have
tits. What I don’t have is a diploma from YALE.”

   “Neither does
she.”

  
Wait. What?

   He could see the confusion on my face, and clarified his statement. “She didn’t go to Yale. T
hat was just part of her packaging.”

  
“Packaging? I thought they only did that in like the fifties.”

   “You’d be surprised. I could give you a list of people in arranged marriages that would make your head spin.”

   “Arranged?”

  
“For a few guys who are a little light in the loafers. Ruins their box office as romantic leading men if people can’t buy them as straight.”

   I let that sink in. Hollywood was the weirdest place, I swear.
“So, no Yale?”

  
He was laughing as he put his arms around me, hauled me up to sit on his lap. “No. Actually, she wasn’t too bright. I couldn’t understand how someone who went to Yale could constantly use the word ‘supposably’. Made me cringe every time.”

  
“How did she even get away with saying she went there? Someone could easily find out the truth. I mean, there are records for that sort of thing.”

  
“Only if someone cares enough to dig for them.”

   It seemed Jenna escaped a bit of the Hollywood grapevine simply because she wasn’t famous
enough
. Huh. Maybe I could slip by it as well.

  
I snuggled in against his chest, played with the edge of his T-shirt at his neck. “I can’t believe you were engaged to her.”

   “In my defense, she didn’t start ou
t as such a vapid tart. I was impressed with the Yale thing, too. And believe it or not, in the beginning, she was nice.”

   That made me just a
smidge jealous. But she was his
ex
for a reason, right?

   “So, you just expect me to suck it up and deal with this?”

   “I’d appreciate it.” He put a palm against my cheek, holding my head against his chest. “Have a little faith, sweetheart.”

  
Faith wasn’t an easy thing to come by, and not a concept with which I was too familiar. It was too scary. Too… unpredictable. I wasn’t used to throwing caution to the wind, just leaving my fate in the hands of another person.

   Then again, the person in question was Trip.

   I was still kind of seething about it, but what could I do? It was just work, like he said. After the numerous stories he’d told me about the technicality behind all those steamy love scenes in his movies,
I knew all that chemistry was just make-believe.

  
But shit.
Jenna?

  
I suddenly understood why he’d been so edgy the past days. He was all stressed at the thought that I’d actually leave him just because her name was being thrown around as a possible choice for a possible project. I supposed he could’ve had a bit more faith in
me
than that.

   But if he thought it was going to freak me out so badly, why was he even considering it?