“Just pick up your phone next time, alright? Please? I went nine whole years without seeing you, and now, here I am, only a day later… and I miss you. I miss you, Lay. Anyways, sleep tight. I’ll try again tomorrow.”
My hand shot out involuntarily, quickly grasping for my phone and answering with a frantic, “Trip!”
…but I didn’t make it in time. The machine clicked off, and instead of Trip’s voice, I was met with a dial tone. I ended up sitting there, staring at the receiver, perfectly still, for several minutes.
Trip had been trying to get in touch with me over the past few weeks, and out of obligation to my fiancé, I had dutifully ignored every one of those calls. After what had happened at the hotel, I wasn’t willing to take the chance that something like that would happen again.
Yet we’d spent the entire night together, and aside from a little flirting—okay, a lot of flirting—we’d managed to keep our heads about us.
And our hands to ourselves.
I reached over and clicked off the lamp, then trudged my way past the blinking light on my answering machine and into my bedroom. I opened my bottom nightstand drawer and rifled through a few layers of godonlyknowswhat before coming up with a pink, satin-covered cigar box. I flipped the lid and dug around to the bottom, my hand navigating through the stack of papers and postcards before coming up with a pale blue envelope, the likes of which I hadn’t laid eyes on in years. I had already memorized every word long ago, but I pulled out the piece of notebook paper inside and reread it anyway, my eyes zeroing in on one sentence in particular: I could be in love with you.
I curled under the comforter and pulled it up to my chin, feeling my heart splinter as my brain raced.
Trip was lonely. I knew that now. It was there in those pauses in his message, the fact that he’d bothered to call at such an ungodly hour. The spirited boy who loved me had grown into a desolate man. He was all the way across the country from his new life and trying to grasp onto the remaining shreds of his old one.
And what had I done the whole time he was here? Used him for my own selfish career gains and then promptly blew him off.
I rolled over and stared out the window. Aside from being exhausted and out of sorts, I was also feeling mildly buzzed.
That’s the only reason I was crying as I fell asleep.
Chapter 21
HANGING UP
The next morning, with only about three hours’ worth of sleep in me, I couldn’t get to the newsstand fast enough to pick up my Sunday copy of New York Today. I practically threw my money at poor Felix before bounding up the stairs to my apartment, scattering the sections across my bed. I dug around until I came up with my copy of Now!, finding a full page cover shot of Trip for my efforts. Even on grainy newspulp, the picture looked fantastic, his fitted white T-shirt hinting at the smooth, muscular chest underneath, his piercing blue eyes jumping right off the page.
It was a never-before-seen studio shot that Rajani in the art department had hunted down for me, and I was glad, because right there, no matter how many articles were written about him from the junket or the other interviews that day, I knew my story’s picture would immediately stand out from the standard promo packet offerings.
The words, “TRIP WILEY: HOLLYWOOD’S HOTTEST RISING STAR” were aligned neatly in a column next to the pic and “An interview with Now! reporter Layla Warren” in smaller type underneath.
Reporter Layla Warren! I was practically giddy.
I flipped in a few pages, until I found the actual article itself. Formatted beautifully over two entire pages, my words (my words!) were framed around a few carefully chosen shots from Trip’s life. They’d used a stock photo from the publicity packet for the main inside shot, but I ended up digging out my yearbook and pulling a few from my own private collection for the insets.
I’d titled it “Quite a Trip”, and the words were right there printed on the page in 48-point-font above the studio still of a very intense-looking Trip Wiley. I’d highlighted his “I’ve never shied away from hard work” quote, which was enlarged and bolded and plunked right in the middle of the article.
It looked spectacular.
Even though I’d written the damnable thing, I sat there cross-legged on my bed and read every word in its entirety all over again. The interview had required some extensive editing before my final draft, but I managed to turn it into a really great piece, offering a much more personal side to Trip than would be found in any other periodical that year. I’d straddled the line between my own personal relationship and professional, detached journalist perfectly. The story wasn’t supposed be about me, after all. It was all about him. I hoped he’d agree that I’d done him justice.