“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 fucking 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 standoff, 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 crap 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?”