Part 20 (1/2)

”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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 punis.h.i.+ng me!”

”Stop. Pus.h.i.+ng. 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-”