Remember When 3: The Finale (Remember Trilogy #3) (20 page)

   I needed to just chill the hell out. I trusted Trip to do the right thing, make the right decision in regards to his career. Sure, I was hoping he wouldn’t even take the part, but if he
did
… well, if he did, I knew it would be for the right reasons. He was right when he said I wasn’t normally a jealous girl. I realized I was just lashing out due
to fear. Fear of knowing how easily we’d been torn apart in the past.

   W
e weren’t those same stupid kids anymore. We’d gone through a lot to get to this point, and
this
wasn’t going to just slip away like it had the last time. Or the time before that.

 
When it came to our relationship,
this
was all that mattered now.

  I hoped I wasn’t being naïve when I chose to believe him.

Chapter 24

SUNSET STORY

   I’d felt bad about all the ridiculous fighting we’d been engaging in. It wasn’t really our style.

   Well, it didn’t
used
to be.

   I blamed it on the smoggy air out there. It messed with a person’s brain.

   Not that I’m making excuses for our behavior.

   But
even if we still had some major communication skills to hone, at least we were making it a point to actually talk about stuff. In the old days, we’d just bottle everything away and assume the worst. Fighting was an improvement over silence, right?

  
I knew Trip had only lashed out at me because he was under stress. Plus, he’d gotten too used to the idea of being sold out. That didn’t make it okay, and his outbursts were something we’d have to work on. I didn’t sign on to be his punching bag.

   He didn’t sign on to be mine, either.

   I went into that Jenna conversation determined to be calm. Zen. Rational. Instead, I’d freaked out at him because… well, because I obviously didn’t like the idea of Trip’s name being thrown around with hers again. Or any of those other women.

  
I’d dealt with that enough while we were separated.

   In the week
s after The Lunchbox, I kinda went a little nutty. I holed up in my old bedroom and watched
E!
religiously, torturing myself with every report about Trip’s new movie, every mention of his engagement. The only times I left the house were to buy up all the movie magazines and rag mags that had his picture on the cover. There were a lot of them.

  
As usual, Lisa was my saving grace.

   She came over every day, made me shower, put on clean clothes. She
brought over mindless romantic comedies and snacks to pig out on while we watched them. She took me shopping. She bought me that membership to the gym so I could use the pool. Eventually, she dragged me to her Lamaze classes. She tried to keep me focused on
life
.

  She even tried to get me to swear off the tabloids, but those things were addictive. It took quite a while before I could wean myself out of their grasp. But even though I stopped buying them, I couldn’t ignore the covers. So, it was hard to avoid Trip altogether. With so many entertainment magazines, his face was everywhere, all the time. Normally, not alone.

   During those years after rehab, he went back to his playboy ways. I couldn’t go more than
a week without seeing him on some magazine, some new girl on his arm, living it up with some random woman or another.

  
A few months back, he was even named as
People
’s Sexiest Man Alive.

  
For the second year in a row.

  
So, in my defense, you need to understand that I was acting out because of more than just plain old jealousy. Any reminder of that period of his life inevitably reminded me of mine, and that wasn’t really the greatest time for either of us.

   He’d spent
our years apart with a fake smile plastered to his face, concentrating on nothing more than his career and turning fully into
him
.

   The
newfound stardom forced Trip’s alter ego to appear more often than usual, and he hid behind that persona for so long that there were times I was sure he didn’t even realize he was slipping into it.

   Like the night we went to The Viper Room.

   Trip decided that I couldn’t come all the way out to Los Angeles without experiencing at least a taste of the famed Sunset Strip. He chose that place not only because he was friendly with the owners, but because it was practically pitch black inside. I could barely see my hand in front of my face, much less would gawking fans be able to recognize him in order to swarm him all night.

  
He kept ordering Tanqueray and tonics for me, and after about three of them, I suddenly decided I felt like dancing. There was a great band playing, and we abandoned our private booth in order to make our way closer to the stage. It wasn’t the smartest move on either of our parts, because the lighting was a bit brighter near that part of the club.

   People noticed.

   A group of girls that were dancing nearby started nudging each other and looking our way before I realized our mistake. They were young—in their early twenties—and I immediately felt like The Old Lady at the Bar. I’d already come to the conclusion that the Sunset Strip was a younger person’s game, and I’d most likely missed my window for optimal clubbing a few years before. I was hoping that maybe since I was there with a celebrity that it shaved a couple years off my tally.

   One of the girl
s finally mustered up enough bravery to walk right up to Trip and ask, “You’re Trip Wiley, right?”

  
I could see the hint of white powder along the edge of her nose. God. Coke was so eighties. Wasn’t ecstasy or meth all the rage nowadays? I didn’t even know. That’s how uncool I was when it came to the club scene.

  
Him
made his appearance as he smiled and answered, “That I am.”

  
Fangirl shot over her shoulder, “Told ya!” as her girlfriends started giggling and closed in around him. I was unceremoniously shoved out of the way as they asked for his autograph and tried to buy him a drink. Trip just ate it up. He shot me an apologetic look as he signed their scraps of paper, gave hugs, posed for pictures. I wanted to just get the hell off the dance floor before more people recognized him.

  
At one point, Fangirl gave me the once-over and said to Trip, “Why are you here with
her
?”

  
Ummm, excuse me, Cokey McWhoreslut?

  
She should’ve used daddy’s credit card to invest in some etiquette lessons instead of blowing it up her nose. I put my hands at my hips and got right up in her face to respond, “Maybe because I have more
class
than to say something like that?”

   She st
ood there, speechless. She might have had youth over me, but she sure as hell didn’t have my years of
cultivated wit
. Or my boyfriend. Fuck her.

   Trip grabbed my hand
and led us back to our booth. He looked pretty pissed. I was, too. I mean, who the hell did that coked-out bitch think she was, right?

   But when we got back to the booth, Trip said, “Layla. You can’t say stuff like that!”

   “What? You’re kidding, right? I’m pretty sure she had it coming.”

   “
Those are my
fans
, Lay. They’re the ones who’ll actually buy a ticket to my next movie. You can’t ream every one of them out every time one of them says something stupid.”

   I looked at him in astonishment. “Well, maybe if you had put her in her place first, I wouldn’t have had to. But you didn’t say anything!”

   His eyebrow quirked at that. “I would have. You jumped in before I could.”

  
Crap. He was right.

  
I started laughing. “Well, okay, Mr. Cool. How would
you
have handled it?”

  
He slid along the pleather bench seat, close enough to rub a hand along my bare thigh. “I would have asked her kindly to treat my girlfriend with a little more respect. That’s all it would have taken. She’s young and catty; she was showing off for her friends. A simple reminder that she was acting out of line would have done the trick. But now….”

  
“Now what?”

  
He raised my chin to face him and smirked out, “Well, now she has a story to sell. You’re the one that gets all bent out of shape about the tabloids, and now you know how these stories happen, Lay-Lay. She could call up any of those damned magazines and those bloodsuckers would be able to pull an entire article out of a two-minute incident.”

   “I highly doubt
she even knows how to read.”

  
That made him laugh. “You’re right. I’m sure it won’t turn into anything. But please just let me handle this stuff from now on, okay?”

   I snuggled in a little closer against his sid
e. “Fine. You’re the boss, Chester.”

   He just chuckled
and shook his head.

  
Then his hand rose a little higher as his mouth came down on mine.

  
“
Oh my God
! I’m kissing
Trip Wiley
!” I busted, as I ran my hands through his hair and opened my lips, right there in our darkened booth. The music was pumping through my body; Trip’s tongue was invading my mouth.

   We were totally making out.

   I slid my hand down his chest, my fingers traveling south on their way to his jeans, pressing my palm insistently against his—

 
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but you didn’t sign my paper.”

  
My hand stilled as I broke away from Trip’s mouth. I looked up to find one of our new friends from the dance floor standing there expectantly, holding a pen and a piece of paper.

   “
What
?” Trip asked her gruffly, his thoughts clearly on my abandoned handy.

  
Dance Floor Girl said, “You signed all my friends’ stuff. You walked away before you could sign mine.” She stepped closer and shoved the paper in his direction. “Do you mind?”

  
My first thought was to answer her with
Do you?
but I kept my mouth shut. Trip smiled politely, signed her stupid napkin, and sent her on her way.

   He shot an apologetic look my way and I just rolled my eyes.

   And then we went back to making out.

  
My thoughts were more on the evening we’d had rather than the evening still ahead of us. I mean, the first night we went out in weeks, and we had to spend it dealing with strangers. That night, I felt like he belonged to the world more than he belonged to me. Maybe he always would.

   Trip went
to the bathroom, so I hit the dance floor. It’s not like I was the one who needed to live my life in hiding, right? No one would give a darn about me.

  
But just in case, I stood off to the edge of the floor where it was a little darker. I was feeling the effects of those gin and tonics, and figured I’d look like a drunken idiot if I busted a move anyway. So, I was just kind of swaying along and bobbing my head to the music when a voice behind me asked, “Good band, huh?”

   I turned and found a really cute guy standing there.
Young. Probably early to mid-twenties. Fantastic eyebrows. “Yeah. They’re great. I’m enjoying the hell out of them!”

   “You know what I’m enjoying?” Eyebrows asked.
He leaned in closer and said, “Watching you dance.” I just gave him a courteous smile and a
yeah right
smirk as he added, “Can I buy you a drink?”

  
I was feeling like an old lady in that club filled with twenty-somethings, so it was flattering that some young stud was laying on the charm. He was sweet, but I politely thanked him and explained I was there with someone.

   Suddenly, that someone swooped out of
nowhere, grabbed my hand and hauled me out of the club. Once we got outside, I gave a rub to my shoulder where Trip had practically pulled my arm out of the socket. “Whoa, there, pal. What’s with the—”

  
SLAM!
My back was suddenly plastered against the black walls of The Viper Room, Trip’s mouth descending on mine. I was a little buzzed from the drinks, but I was positively drunk from Trip’s drugging kiss. I melted under his assault, his body pressed along the length of mine, his breath against my lips as he pulled back and said, “You tease. Wiggling around in this little skirt. You thought you’d go unnoticed? I leave you alone for five minutes and you’ve already got some guy hitting on you.”

   I bit my lip to keep from smiling. Jealous Trip was just too hot for words.
I decided to stoke the fire. “You were only gone for three.”

   He growled, smacked me on the ass and gave me a sham dirty look out of the corner of his eyes. “You’re asking for it, Warren. Just wait until I get you home.”

   The valet brought the Batmobile around and Trip practically shoved me in the passenger seat, the line of awaiting clubgoers gawking at the scene we’d just made. Crud. Forgot about them. A few Blackberries made their appearance, but thank God there were no
actual
photographers around for that.

 
Trip started the drive home, his hand sliding up between my legs, under my skirt, teasing a look at my panties.

  
“Eyes on the road, cowboy. Let’s remember where we are.”

  
He snarled, “There’s only one place I want to be right now and it’s right here. Maybe here. Or
here.
”