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 piss-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-fiancée-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.
Although… I knew my cousin Jack had dealt with a touch of super-stardom back in the day. It’s not like he was as famous as Trip, but back in the mid-nineties, his band was pretty well-known. That was around the same time he’d met his wife, Livia.
I decided to give her a call, and thank God, she was home.
We chatted for a few minutes, making small talk about my trip out to Cali. I knew Livi was pretty unaffected about the fact that my boyfriend was a movie star, and I was grateful that I’d picked the right person to call with my concerns.
“How do you deal with it?” I finally asked. She knew I was talking about the madness of being in love with a famous person.
Livia laughed and answered, “I don’t know. I don’t really think about it. I mean, it’s not him, you know?”
Of course I knew. But just because I viewed Trip as a normal person didn’t mean the rest of the world did. It was the other people on the planet that I had the problem with. “No, I know that. I just meant, you know, the whole being famous thing. The invasion of privacy thing.”