Remember When 3: The Finale (Remember Trilogy #3) (23 page)

   It was a small consolation
, however, while I was feeling so despondent.

   We did
n’t speak the rest of the night and spent those last, uncomfortable, waking hours avoiding one another’s company. Finally, I just went up to bed.

   Trip never did.

* * *

  
Late the next morning, I gathered up the last of my things and got ready to leave. I still had a little time before my flight, however, and figured we’d have the chance to make everything right before I stepped on that plane.

  
Trip was sitting outside with the paper when I found him. He didn’t look up from his reading as he said, “I called a car for you.”

  
I was stunned by those words, the sense of finality that they held. “You’re not taking me?”

  
He still couldn’t find it in him to tear his eyes from the newspaper in his hands. “I didn’t do it to be a jerk. I have to have a final sit-down with Carlos before we start filming next week.”

   No matter what he said, his
tense pose and standoffish lack of eye contact confirmed that he was still annoyed about our fight. So was I.

   There was no way I could get on that plane with things so up in the air between us.
At the very least, I needed to know that we were going to be okay, that I wasn’t leaving his house for the last time. All the stupid things between us could be resolved later, but there was one thing I really needed to clear up right then. “Why do you love me?”

  
That got his attention. He finally looked up and met my eyes. “What?”

   “
I mean, why do you love me? Why have you loved me all these years?”

  
He was clearly confused, judging by the crinkle drawn between his brows. “How am I supposed to answer that? I just do.”

   “
I’m getting on that plane in a few hours, and I need to know that I’ll be coming back here for the right reasons. Because I know I love you for you, but I need to know you love me for
me
, not just because I’m the only girl who’s ever seen beyond the movie star. I’m not that teenage girl anymore, Trip. I’m a grown woman who’s going to want to talk stuff out when there’s a problem, and I’d like to think you’ll try to understand where I’m coming from when I do. It’s not always going to be all rainbows and unicorns, you know? It’s hard for me out here. And just because I’m having a hard time with your fame doesn’t mean I only think of you as a famous person. You know that. But is that all I ever was to you? What if I’m just your Rosebud?”

  
He knew exactly what I was asking. And he didn’t say anything to ease my mind.

  
Instead, he did the complete opposite.

  
“Maybe a little distance wouldn’t be such a bad thing right now, Lay.”

Chapter 27

RETURN TO THE LAND OF WONDERS

 
This isn’t a breakup
.

  
That’s what I kept telling myself on the entire plane ride home.

  
We were not broken up, we were simply… disagreeing. Couples do that all the time, right? He was just doing his clamming-up, uncommunicative thing.

  
Right?

  
I’d had some niggling concerns about the success of our relationship since the beginning, but that was the first time I’d had actual
doubts
. The paparazzi, the women, the cage he lived in. The issues we both had with our parents, the piss-poor fighting skills with each other. It was all so much to deal with.

  
What kind of life was this? We never had any privacy. Outside of his fortress, anyway. And as evidenced by those intrusive pictures of us in his backyard, sometimes not even then.

   I didn’t sign on for that
.

   I didn’t sign on for the photographers in my face, the interruptions from his fans. I didn’t sign on for the constant worries about our security, our safety.
The tabloids. Other women. An ex-fiancée-slash-costar.

  
This was
his
world. I didn’t know if I could handle it. I wanted him, just not the world he lived in. Was there a way to separate the two? Wouldn’t Trip’s fame always be a huge part of who he was?

  
Hollywood was no place for an idealist. A dreamer, sure. But not an idealist.

  
I got home pretty late and tiptoed into the house so as not to wake my father. I went right to bed, but I hardly slept at all that night.

  
That’s three nights in a row for those of you keeping score at home.

  
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because the morning light seeping through my windows caught me by surprise. Of course, the first thought that invaded my brain was my fight with Trip.

  
I needed to talk about it.

  
At such an early hour, Lisa was probably in the middle of her morning craziness, getting her kids off to preschool. Dad had already left for work. Bruce had most likely been at his construction job since dawn.

   My go-to support system was officially
MIA at the moment.

  
But would any of them understand anyway? This wasn’t just your average, run-of-the-mill relationship stuff I was dealing with. I didn’t have too many people in my life who knew what it was like to deal with dating a celebrity.

  
Although… I knew my cousin Jack had dealt with a touch of super-stardom back in the day. It’s not like he was as famous as Trip, but back in the mid-nineties, his band was pretty well-known. That was around the same time he’d met his wife, Livia.

   I decided to give her a call
, and thank God, she was home.

  
We chatted for a few minutes, making small talk about my trip out to Cali. I knew Livi was pretty unaffected about the fact that my boyfriend was a movie star, and I was grateful that I’d picked the right person to call with my concerns.

  
“How do you deal with it?” I finally asked. She knew I was talking about the madness of being in love with a famous person.

  
Livia laughed and answered, “I don’t know. I don’t really think about it. I mean, it’s not
him
, you know?”

   Of course I knew. But just because I viewed Trip as a normal person didn’t mean the rest of the world did. It was the other people on the planet that I had the problem with.
“No, I know that. I just meant, you know, the whole
being famous
thing. The invasion of privacy thing.”

  
“Oh,” she said. “
That
.” She chuckled again and added, “Well, I can’t say that your cousin was ever in the same league as your boyfriend in that department. But yeah, I guess the women grated on my nerves a bit. They were just always
there
, always hanging around.”

  
I certainly knew what that was like. “But like, did you ever feel… violated? Like how the press and the women are all odds stacked against you? Like you never have a private moment, that you can’t go anywhere without being recognized, worrying about stalkers, hounded by people asking questions, asking for autographs, taking pictures, like anything you do is made public the second you do it, like the problems you
should
be working on are lost in the background because of it…?”

  
I realized I was rambling and that of course Livia had no real experience with those things. Few people did.

  
“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “I guess this past month has been a little overwhelming.”

  
“Look, Layla. I can only imagine that all that stuff must be pretty hard to deal with.” She gave a sigh at that and said, “The bottom line is, if you love him, then you learn to deal with it, right? Some people get annoying in-laws; we get the fame. Every relationship has their burdens to bear. What matters is how you deal with those burdens
together.
The little bit of fame we went through was no picnic, though, so I know I wouldn’t go back to that life for anything. Jack starts missing the whole rock star thing every now and then, but I just send him out to get a new tattoo and that normally calms him down.”

  
“What about Lutz Hamburg?”

  
“The producer guy? What about him?”

   “
The Super Bowl last month. Trip said he ran into Jack and him there. He’s going to do that soundtrack, right?”

   Livia was silent for a beat too long, and I thought there was a chance I’d spoken out of turn.
Shit. Did she not know about that?
I hoped I didn’t just inadvertently get my cousin sent to the doghouse. But she allayed my concerns when she said, “Oh. Yeah, that. He hasn’t really decided yet.”

  
She wrapped up the conversation quickly after that, and
I sat there for a few extra minutes, trying to figure out what to do about Trip.

  
Yes, I was pissed and unsure about just exactly what was happening between us, but I wasn’t even allowing myself to consider the possibility that we were over. I decided to concentrate on the memoir. It would be a special gift for him, a way to show him how much I loved him by getting every detail down perfectly.

  
An assignment like that was an obsessive-compulsive’s dream.

   I had to drive into the city to do the proper research, get the right vibe for the New York chapters of our story,
maybe take some pictures. I knew there was plenty of time to send Livia back in to take some more professional shots for the actual book, but for right then, I just wanted to give her an idea of the visuals I’d be going for.

  
I hit the
TRU Times Square
, and prayed that Concierge Cat would be behind the front desk. The girl had a serious ass-whooping coming her way, but she wasn’t there. I assumed she’d probably been fired a long time ago. I snapped some shots of the lobby, then headed back outside. Down the street was the movie theater where we’d caught a showing of
Swayed
, and the diner around the corner where we’d pigged out afterward.

   T
hen I zoomed down to the Village to my old apartment building, but wasn’t able to finagle my way up to the roof, much less my old apartment. I took some exterior shots of the building instead.

  
The last stop was Beth Israel Hospital, where Trip was treated after he’d broken his arm.

   I’d just made my way to the front desk when
I turned and collided into a woman coming around the corner. We were both holding folders, the contents of which had gone flying through the air upon impact.

  
That’s when I realized I had literally just bumped into Kate.

   Kate
Warren.

  
My mother.

Chapter 28

A HOLE IN MY HEART

   I was frozen with shock. I knew it was her just as sure as I knew my own name. My name that she’d lifted from a Clapton song over thirty-one years before. It was a killer song, but still. That’s a pretty lame-ass thing to do to a kid.

  
She hadn’t really looked at me yet, and she
definitely
didn’t recognize me as she started apologizing profusely, bending down to pick up our collective papers, separating them on the receptionist’s counter into two piles, hers and mine. I stood there glued in my place, jaw slightly agape, watching the woman who’d given me life giggle casually as she cleaned up her mess.

   I didn’t know what I should do.
Talk to her? Introduce myself? Run? I sure as hell was eyeing up Option Three right at that moment.

   Before I could make a decision, she stood and met my eyes.

   Her smile abruptly disappeared.

  
We stood there like that for a long while, my heart beating out of my chest, my words caught in the back of my throat, my mind racing. I hadn’t seen her since I was twelve, but she looked almost exactly as I remembered her. I stood there and assessed her, compared my memory with the woman standing right there in front of me.

  
Same honey-colored hair—although, I was sure that by then it was coming from a bottle—shoulder-length and wavy and hanging over her forehead.

   Those same brown eyes—
my
eyes—sporting a few new crinkles, as well as some long, faint creases around her mouth.

   Laugh lines. How dare
she.

  
I only came back to Earth when I heard her voice—that oddly familiar, melodic voice—ask, “
Layla
?”

   I couldn’t speak. I wanted to deny it. I wanted to run away. But instead, my head shook up and down on its own,
as my shaking, traitorous voice answered, “Yes.”

   There was an awkward second where it almost looked as though she were going to hug me. I tensed visibly and she must have thought better of it.

   “I can’t believe how much you’ve grown!”

  
Yeah, Kate. That’s what kids do. They grow up. Most parents stick around to witness it
.

   I did
n’t know if she was expecting an answer, but I wasn’t giving her one anyway.

  
“You look just like Kenny. My God. It’s uncanny. You always did, but…”

  
“What are you doing here?”

  
She shifted on her feet for a moment, ran a hand over her hair, tried out a smile. She tipped out her bottom lip and gave a quick breath to the wayward curl across her forehead. I’d forgotten how she used to do that. “Well, I work here. What are
you
doing here?”

  
For some reason, that casual question made me angrier than had she slapped me right across the face. But I suppose anything she said would have been met with the same venom.

   “I’m researching my
book
,” I answered with added vengeance.
See that, Kate? Look how well I’m doing without you
. “What do you mean you work here?”

   “I mean
I work here.” She held her hands at her sides, palms facing me. Trying to make me notice that she was wearing scrubs.

   “You’re a
nurse
? You take
care
of people?”

   “Yes. For about ten years now.”

   “That’s rich.”

   My words were laced with a bite I didn’t even recognize. Who was this person trying to have a pleasant conversation with me? Where did she get off talking to me like we were a couple of long-
lost friends just catching up?

   Her face dropped at that, her attempt to remain smiling abandoned at my answer. Her shoulders deflated, her gaze focused on the two piles of papers she’d scooped off the floor. I watched, flabbergasted, as she
nudged each of the two piles into perfect stacks, setting them at exact right angles along the countertop.

   “Guess that’s
one
thing you gave me,” I said, nodding my head in the direction of her busywork. “Thanks.” No way she could’ve missed the sarcasm.

   She stopped fiddling with the papers, laying a flat palm on top of each stack
, her eyes closed as she said, “You’re angry.”

   Tha
t made me snap loudly, “Ya think?”

   She tried to give me
a
shush
, even though there was no one else around. Well, save for the two other nurses at the far end of the desk. But fuck her. Let her coworkers see what kind of person they were working with. The kind of selfish bitch
who abandoned her family for her latest boy toy.

  
“How’s Ke—How’s your father?”

  
“Still around. How’s
Rick
?” I asked her, my eyes like slits, my mouth barely able to form the word.

   She actually looked wistful when she answered, “Oh, he and I haven’t been together for a long time now.”

   
What the…?

  
“Oh, really? He was so fucking important to you that you
left us
for him, but you’re not even
together
? What kind of succubus are you?”

   She actually looked like she was trying to contain a smile. Was she for real?

   “Layla I—” She bit her bottom lip, trying to find the right words. “I know what you must think. But I didn’t leave you for him. I left… I left you for
you
.”

   “What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

   “I wasn’t happy, Loo. Not for a long time.”

   Who cared if she was happy? Who really gave one flying fuck about her happiness? The woman made everyone around her miserable for years after she left. She didn’t deserve to be happy.

   “Don’t call me that,
” I spat.

   “I’m sorry.”

   “You should be.” Only, she and I both knew she owed me an apology for things way bigger than using my family nickname.

   “I was young, Layla. Your father and I… we were so young when we had you. I didn’t know who I was.”

   “Is this the part where you tell me you needed to
find yourself
? If that’s the case, you can just save it.”

   “You need to understand
—”

   “I don’t need to do anything.”

  
She took a steadying breath. “You’re right. I have no right to ask anything of you.” She bit her lip and continued, “Just please know that… Well, sometimes your life doesn’t turn out the way you plan. Sometimes, you make choices and—”

   “The motherly advice is really w
arming my heart, here, Kate. But you know what? We’ve been fine without you. We’ve done just fine. We didn’t need you. So spare me your sanctimonious explanations. At least be honest.” I ran my hand through my hair and tried to find my equilibrium. There was only one thing I needed from this woman in front of me. Only one question I’d always wanted to ask. “Just answer me this. Just…
How could you do it
? How could you walk out that door? Leave your husband and your kids and never look back? What kind of person can do a thing like that?”

  
She gave a defeated sigh, then turned broken eyes to me. The pang in my heart was only out of an instinctual sympathy. I didn’t feel badly for
her
. I didn’t feel
anything
for her.

  
“I’m trying to tell you. I was young. One minute, I was a teenager. The next, I was a wife. And a mother. It was just…
too much
. I never… I never knew how to handle things back then. I was insecure and there were younger men who paid attention to me. Who made
me
feel young and carefree, too. Like them. And then Rick came along…”

   “Okay,
eww. Got it.”

   “He offered me a way out. I didn’t realize I’d been looking for one. But I never… I never thought it wo
uld be forever. After only a couple weeks, I missed you and your brother terribly. I called your father. He told me to meet him at his office so we could talk things out. I never showed, Layla. I never went to meet him.”

   The weight of that
statement and the forlorn way she delivered it almost made me feel badly for her. Almost.

  
“Why not?” I asked, more gently than I intended.

  
“Because Rick made me choose. Made me choose him or your father. I knew I wasn’t happy before, why would I expect to be happy a second time? So, I chose Rick. Mistakenly believed my happiness depended on something outside of myself. But he didn’t make me happy either. We broke it off after only a few months. I went to the house that day. It was fall. I parked my car at the end of the street and watched you two playing in the leaves with your dad. And you looked…
joyous
. It’s the only way I can describe it. You had on that rainbow hat? You remember, the one with the tassels that hung down to here? And you were smiling, and Bruce was laughing and… I knew you were better off without me.”

   “How
noble
of you,” I said, trying to regain the proper snottiness to my voice. It wouldn’t come.

   “I wasn’t well in those days, Layla.”

   I tossed her a bone on that one. “I know. It took me a while to figure that out.”

   “
But I straightened out. Truly. I had
lots
of therapy.” At that admission, she actually let out with a tiny giggle. The sound was so completely unexpected, so achingly nostalgic, that I hadn’t realized I’d let my guard down.

  
I took in in her trim physique, obvious even in the scrubs, and found myself hoping I had inherited those genes. I peered at her lips—lips that were tipped ever so slightly into a smile as she giggled. I knew that if she’d smile just a bit wider, I would see the crooked tooth, the one my skull had shifted one afternoon when she was tickling me. She had refused to get it fixed, insisting that it would forever remind her of me. Before I could wonder if that too had been erased, she grinned uncomfortably at me, and I could just make out the slight turn of that incisor. My eyes snapped up to her face, and I took a step back, bumping into the desk.

  
I was having a conversation with my mother.
Almost more dumbfounding than that, I found that I was actually hearing her. Hearing what she had to say. And even if I didn’t agree with her choices, agree with the way she had left us so easily… I allowed myself to let her be human.

  
She must have sensed this shift in me, because her voice had changed from tense and beseeching to simply…
pained
. I bit my lip until I tasted blood, trying to hold back the looming tears.

   S
he gave another burst of air toward her forehead and continued. “I was so impressed with everyone at the hospital that I went back to school and got my nursing degree. It was a huge turning point in my life. I continued with my therapy, realized the gravity of my selfish mistakes.” She put a hand to her heart and said, “I was filled with such
regret
, Layla. If you listen to only one thing I’ve said today, please hear that. Please know that it’s the truth.”

   I believed her. I couldn’t forgive her, but I believed her.

   She was caught up in her retelling, shaking her head at the memories before she continued.
“
By then,
years
had gone by. I couldn’t quite believe it. I wanted nothing more than to try and make things right. But after so much time, I knew it was too late. I never thought you, or your brother, or your father… I knew that you had built your own life together. I knew I wasn’t a part of that. By then, there was nothing left of
me
in you kids. You were all his, and he deserved you. He earned it from you. You, especially. You and your father were always so much alike.” Her eyes were glistening with genuine tears as she added, “But I did love you—so much—and I
am
sorry. Truly, Layla.”

   Okay, fine, yes,
I was crying. I admit it.

  
I wasn’t feeling badly for her, exactly. After all that time, there was no way I was going to feel sympathy for her after what she’d put us all through. And even in that moment, I knew it was pretty damned unlikely that we’d be able to salvage any kind of relationship after something like that. And trust me, I wasn’t looking for one. This was a chance encounter. It’s not like she tracked me down to tell me these things. I was only willing to give her so much credit.

  
I was simply crying from the sheer
waste
of it all. The utter helplessness, the lost time, the alternate life. I was crying because I understood her regret, her indecision, her insecurities. I was crying because that was
my mother
standing there in front of me, for the first time in almost twenty years, practically begging for some sign that I might someday forgive her. Absolve her guilt. Maybe even lose just a smidge of my long-held hatred for her.