"It"s a memoir, not a biography, and I was thinking I was arranging for our life together to be a little more private. I was thinking that you"d be grateful to have him off your back. I thought I was protecting you, protecting us."
"I already told you that the c.r.a.p in those rags doesn"t bother me."
"Well, it bothers me! I"m sure it"s real easy for you to wash your hands of it when it wasn"t your a.s.s on the cover of that thing!"
Trip opened his mouth to respond, but must have thought better of it. He knew there was no way to excuse such an intrusion into our lives.
"Are you even going to do anything about it? Can"t we call your lawyers or something?" I asked.
"There"s no case, Layla. They covered up most of your body and they weren"t on my property when they took the picture."
"How can that be legal? How can you be okay with it?"
"I"m not okay with it, but what do you expect me to do? I"m also not okay with your ex-fiance getting a book deal out of the situation."
Was that... jealousy I was hearing? "Are you serious? He means absolutely nothing to me. To us. He can hit the lottery or get hit by a bus. It doesn"t matter. He"s on my pay-no-mind list. So, it shouldn"t really matter if he"s the one to turn this book into a raging success. If it does well, that will only mean that we benefit from it. Understand?"
"I could give two s.h.i.ts about the money he"ll make off it."
"Then what"s the problem?"
Trip raked a hand through his hair and looked at me, a line drawn between his brows, a muscle twitching in his jaw. I gave him a moment to gather his thoughts, but when he did nothing more than let out a breath through clenched teeth, I filled in the blank s.p.a.ce.
"Look, Trip. Don"t you see how this makes everything work out? Diana still gets the fiction novel to auction off to the highest bidder and she gets to option the built-in deal for the memoir. Devin calls off the dogs because he won"t want any bad press leading up to the release. The Backlot is the only magazine writing all that negative stuff, and now they won"t do that anymore. You go back to being Golden Boy in the tabloids. I sell lots of books. Everyone wins."
Trip finally found his voice. "Especially Fields!"
"What?"
"Oh, I"m so sure he"ll hate every moment of working so closely with his ex-fiancee."
That wasn"t the case at all. And wow, yeah, I guessed Trip actually was jealous. It was kind of strange to see him getting so angry just from the mere mention of Devin"s name. I didn"t do anything that would warrant suspicion on Trip"s part. And where did he get off being such a hypocrite? "He"s not my agent. He"s not my editor. He won"t be working with his ex-fiancee at all!" I should have just shut up after that. I should have just let the comment stand on its own. But in true brain-vomit fashion, I had to go and add, "Unlike some people."
"Oh, Jesus. Don"t start in with this again."
"Are you going to do this movie with her?"
"Stop changing the subject."
"Are you?"
"I haven"t decided yet."
"What"s to think about?"
He paced a few steps, ran a hand over his face. "Why don"t you trust me? I"m not that same guy anymore, Lay."
Knowing that didn"t make the situation any less outrageous. And besides, he was getting all bent out of shape because of a meeting with Devin. I wasn"t the one that would be rolling around naked with my ex in front of dozens of people for some movie that the whole world would see. I thought I was content to let Trip make his own decision about it, but obviously, I was fooling myself. So was he. "I do trust you, but why would you even want to do it? You hate Bert; you want nothing to do with Jenna. It just feels like you"re trying to punish me somehow by even considering this role. I"ve already apologized for the mixup five years ago; the fact of the matter is that I"m here with you now. Doesn"t that mean anything to you?"
Aaand get ready for some more inappropriate brain-vomit in three... two... one...
"Your mother was right. You don"t know how to forgive. Maybe I deserve a little of that, but this is going too far. I"m not your father."
The look Trip shot me froze me in my tracks. "Now you"re bringing my father into this? Way to go for the trifecta, there, Lay."
I knew I was opening a whole new can of worms at what was most likely not the most opportune moment. But screw it. I didn"t want to waste a good argument. We weren"t normally fighters. It wasn"t every day that we had a big blowout to hash out all our c.r.a.p. Well, prior to the past few days, anyway.
May as well lay everything out on the table.
"You say you can"t forgive your father even though you know what it must have been like for him. You know what it"s like to have that weakness. But I think that wake was a really good first step. You made sure that it was beautiful."
"I did that for my mother."
"You did that for you. To say goodbye properly. And there"s nothing wrong with that. It"s cathartic."
He stopped pacing around the room and looked at me like I"d just shat in his Corn Flakes. "You know what? Don"t go standing there psycho-a.n.a.lyzing me, Lay. That"s a s.h.i.tty thing to do. I could toss out a ton of jargon to describe your f.u.c.ked-upness, but I"m not doing that to you. I don"t try talking you into forgiving your mother; why is it so important to you that I forgive my father? Why can"t you just let it be what it is? Why can"t you just let it go?"
"Why can"t you? Stop shutting me out. Stop treating me like I"m constantly betraying you. Stop punishing me!"
"Stop. Pushing. Me!" He turned and stomped a few steps away, tearing at his hair with his fists. He flung his hands out to his sides and threw his head toward the ceiling as he let out with a screaming, frustrated, "Fuuuuuck!"
He bent in half, braced his hands against his knees and took a cleansing breath, coming down, refocusing. It was enough of a tantrum to wipe him out, and I watched his torso slump in fatigue. He was trying to keep his rage in check as he turned back to me and said in a measured voice, "Just think about it. We can"t change the stuff we have no control over, remember?"
"What do you mean?"
"It means that I can"t change the fact that my father was an a.s.shole. You can"t change the fact that your mother left. I can"t control what the tabloids say about me-or you-and it shouldn"t matter what they say anyway. I can"t control who gets cast in a movie and I can"t change the list of women that I"ve slept with. I can"t stop the fans from asking for autographs. I can"t stop a photographer from taking a picture. We can"t control other people"s behavior. We can only control our own."
I couldn"t believe he was content to just throw me to the wolves. I wasn"t used to being tabloid fodder, he knew that. Because we couldn"t change what happened meant that we should just do nothing about it? That was his ideology, not mine. "That"s a bit of a cop-out, don"t you think?"
His newly-found calm cracked at that as his voice rose a notch higher. "A cop-out? I"ve been living my life by those words for three years now. You"re going to stand there and tell me the theory I base my life around is nothing but a cop-out?"
"No. I didn"t mean it like that. What I was trying to say is that it"s a little too convenient to write everything off to a simple catch phrase. Sometimes, you have to get down in the mud and get your hands dirty. Sometimes, you have to actually figure some stuff out for yourself. And sometimes, you need to ask for help."
"I don"t need anyone"s help. I"ve been doing just fine on my own."
"How can you say that? Your mother and Claudia have been there for you every minute of your life. I"m really sorry I wasn"t, but you need to stop holding that against me. I want to be here for you now. I love you, Trip. I want to help you through this." Would he always resent his father? He"d acted like I"d gone for his jugular just by bringing it up. Would he ever let me break down that wall? Was I even supposed to try?
I let the dad thing go for the time being, in order to drive my point home. "But what I meant was that I need your help."
A line formed between his brows. "With what?"
With what? Couldn"t he see how hard it was for me out there? How I was struggling? This was the life he chose; this was the world he lived in. I felt out of control within it, but how could he just be used to this madness by now? The entire universe expected pieces of him-from his fans to the women to the people he worked with. The only piece of him I wanted was the real him, but there were so many other things standing in the way.
"I don"t know how to deal with this life. I feel like I"ve been thrown into this ocean without a life vest, and I"m afraid of sinking, Trip. You"ve had ten years to become a part of the way things work out here. I"ve had four weeks. I just don"t-"
"You think I"m like them? That I"m part of this whole stupid, shallow-"
"No, of course not. You"re-"
"Because I"m not just some f.u.c.king sellout, okay? I might play the game, but it doesn"t mean I like it. It doesn"t mean I"m used to it."
"I wasn"t saying that! I-"
"Let me tell you something, Lay. You never get used to it. Never. All you can do is navigate through it."
"Okay, fine. I"m just trying to figure out how. I don"t know how to be you through something like this!"
He stood there staring at me for a long minute, and I couldn"t read the look on his face. We were both breathing heavily, caught in a stand-off, each of us waiting for the other one to flinch first. My heart was beating in a crazy rhythm, watching him looking at me like a lion ready to pounce. Every muscle in his body was poised, tensed; his eyes were icy, blue slits aimed in my direction. The moment was wrought with unease, the air between us charged with crackling electricity, edgy and heated. I got the impression he was battling with himself over whether to wring my neck or slam me up against the wall and kiss the last of our fight away.
It hadn"t occurred to me that he"d been considering a third alternative entirely.
"Well, from the sound of it, you"ve already got it all figured out perfectly."
At that, he walked out of the room.
I stood there, shocked and speechless, having no idea what to do. I didn"t want to run after him, even though we still had a ton of stuff to work out. Because "working it out" had only led to huge fights between us thus far. Talking about our problems shouldn"t trigger even bigger ones.
We needed to find some better ways to get our points across, because fighting about everything was definitely not cutting it.
Ignoring our stupid c.r.a.p hadn"t ever cut it, either, and at least we"d gotten in the habit of addressing our problems, even if we had no clue how to deal with them.
It was a small consolation, however, while I was feeling so despondent.
We didn"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 p.i.s.s-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-fiancee-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.