He looked at me for way too long, the memory of our one amazing night together passing between us.
He slowly cocked a brow and admitted, “You know... I use it sometimes,” the smirk on his lips telling me more than I had any right to know.
“Trip! For godsakes!”
That caused him to bust out laughing, and caused me to turn the most embarrassing shade of crimson. But I said, “You’re so bad,” as I shook my head and gave his leg a smack, trying to regain our casual banter.
Just then, there was a knock at the door, and Trip was the one to jump up and answer it. Sandy was there, expressing her apologies for interrupting, but explaining that Trip had another interview to get to. I couldn’t hear what he said, but he closed the door and came back over to the couch. “I was able to buy us five more minutes.” He flopped down on the sofa like he owned the place, which, I guess, in a way, he sort of did.
I had a million more questions for him. I wanted to ask about his family, find out how things were going between him and his father. I wanted to know more about what he did in the years between dropping contact with me and striking it big in Los Angeles. I wanted to convince him that he was making a huge mistake with the underwear model, and to ask him if I’d get to see him again before he left New York.
Not that I should have cared about any of those things. I was grateful enough just to have reconnected with my old friend. It’s not like I could have expected us to go back to being best buddies all over again just because of this one chance meeting. He had a big new Hollywood life to get back to, and I... well, I didn’t. We were on two completely different paths in life, two completely different worlds.
Trip’s voice broke my train of thought. “Hey, I’ll be done with this crazy day in a little while, and then I need to drop by the set for a couple hours to reshoot a quick scene. Why don’t we go to a late dinner afterward?”
I was sure that he was only asking me out so we could finalize the interview, but something just didn’t feel right about it. “Trip, I’d love to, but I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
He waved off my reservations and pressed the issue. “Oh, come on. One of the restaurants downstairs serves the best Kobe beef you’ve ever had in your life. Melts in your mouth.”
I’d never even had Kobe beef at all, much less would I be able to judge whether it was the best. I looked up to tell him as much when I registered the look in his eyes.
The warning lights started flashing at the invitation I saw there, written all over his face. I guessed that “dinner” wasn’t really what Trip was trying to talk me into.
Tossing over my fiancé for a night between the sheets with my ex-boyfriend wasn’t even up for consideration, but damn. It was tempting to take Trip up on his restaurant invite. I was enjoying the hell out of our reunion and was flattered by all that flirting. I thought that maybe I’d be able to keep things from getting physical while simply taking pleasure from an innocent night out with an old friend.
I suddenly realized that I’d been staring at the cut of his square jaw, shadowed by the growth of stubble, imagining what that hint of a beard would feel like scratching against my inner thighs.
Jesus! The sooner I got out of there, the better.
“Trip, as much as I’d love to continue this... conversation, I think we both know how our significant others might... take things the wrong way. I think it’s best if we just say our goodbyes now.”
He held my gaze for a long moment, the both of us trying to postpone the process of slipping away from one another, yet again.
Trip slapped his hands against his knees, hauled himself off the couch and said pleasantly enough, “Welp, I can see I’m not going to change your mind.”
He stood in the middle of the room and opened his arms for a hug. True to form, I didn’t hesitate to walk right into his outstretched limbs. He wrapped them around my body, and all I could do was hope he couldn’t feel my heart beating against his chest. I tried to fight it, but my lungs involuntarily breathed in, absorbing that beautiful Trip smell deep into my nostrils. The sense memory of his soapy/sugary scent wafted right from my nose and straight into my brain, causing flashbacks to appear as strongly as if I were on LSD.
He started rubbing my back and brushing his lips along my temple, causing long-forgotten tremors to race along my spine. I found my brain trying to justify a way to say yes to his dinner invitation, a way to draw out even just a few more moments of our time together. I was dying inside, my thoughts winging off in a million different directions, lost in the long-ago yet familiar sensation of my body melting against Trip’s chest. After all that time, he was still able to turn me into Jell-O just by coming anywhere near me.
He had to know what he was doing. He wasn’t playing fair.