Remember When 3: The Finale Part 22

Sometimes, you just have to learn when to let go.

I made the decision that I could toss her just the slightest morsel here. I couldn't grant her my absolute forgiveness-I'd spent too many years cultivating my anger to give that up so easily-but I could at least give her something. I could at least leave her with just the smallest bit of peace.

"Thank you for that." I swiped my eyes and met hers as I added, "You're wrong about something, though, you know. I look a lot like Dad, that's true." My hand reached out on its own as I laid it against her arm. "But he always said I was more like you."

Chapter 29.

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED.

I really wanted to call Trip, hear his voice, tell him about my day. But not like that. Not by using the encounter with my mother as an excuse to talk to him. I could tell him everything once things between us got squared away.

If they got squared away.

Right then, what I needed was a dose of my best friend.

The twins would be in school for a couple more hours and Pickford was at work, so I probably couldn't have planned a better time to have a breakdown. I went right to Lisa's house and came in through the sunroom door at the back. She turned from her seated position in the middle of her family room, and I could see that I'd interrupted her in the middle of packing up her winter clothes.

I was familiar with this ritual, as I'd seen her perform this task twice a year, every year, since the day we met. She had towers of clear, plastic bins stacked around the room, labels informing her as to the contents of each box. And not just boring categories like "shorts" or "sweaters". No. Lisa's bins sported terminology like "Kate Spade Summer Bags" and "a.s.s-tastic 7 Jeans".

She was excited to see me after so many weeks and lunged across the room to give me a laughing hug h.e.l.lo. I hugged her back, happy to see her, but gutted from the day's events.

That's when she saw my face.

She knew I was there for something big, even before I said the words. "I just saw my mother."

Her eyes went buggy, but then she promptly put her hand in the air, halting further speech. "Hold that thought."

If I weren't feeling so miserable, I'd have laughed at the torn label she was holding in her hands: "Marc Jacobs f.u.c.k-me Heels." I guessed it was time to re-categorize now that the twins were learning how to read.

She led me to the kitchen and poured me a big ol' gla.s.s of wine, then we settled in on a couple stools at her island. Lisa ignored the clothes explosion in the adjoining room to give me her undivided attention. She propped her elbows on the granite surface in front of her, rested her chin in her hands, and said, "Okay. Spill it."

So spill it I did.

I told her everything that had happened at Beth Israel, every single word of the bizarre conversation, every thought that had run through my mind during the whole encounter. Lisa offered wide eyes or questions or words of comfort throughout my tale, helping me to sort out the myriad of emotions racing through my brain.

As I neared the end of my story, I actually felt a hundred times better than I had only moments before.

Thank G.o.d for best friends.

"Wow," I said on an exhale. "I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I never understood that saying before, but I feel... lighter."

"Screw you. I'm feeling heavier than ever."

Lisa's belly had b.u.mped out considerably in the weeks since I'd been gone. She still had four more months to go, and I could only imagine she'd be bigger than a manatee by then.

"So, Miss Red Carpet," she said, changing the subject. "I feel like I haven't talked to you for more than a few minutes since The Key. How's Trip? When are you heading back out there?"

I didn't know if it was the mention of Trip's name, the emotional trauma from having just seen my mother, or the half bottle of wine I'd polished off, but Lisa's question immediately sent me into a fit of tears.

"What? Oh no! Trouble in paradise? I thought things were going so great!"

"They were," I bawled out, not even trying to pull myself together. "But Lis, so much bad stuff happened between us this past week. I don't know what the h.e.l.l is going on."

"What do you mean? What happened?"

Lisa and I hadn't spoken as much over the past few days as we usually did. She didn't know about the fights between Trip and me, didn't know about the downward spiral we'd been on all week. Trip's lifestyle in Hollywood was so isolating and I guess I got sucked into the vortex. But there I was, back home, sitting on my favorite stool in my best friend's kitchen, finally able to talk some stuff out, tell her everything face to face.

"He puts ketchup on his steak and I'm his G.o.dd.a.m.ned sled!" I sobbed. I literally, actually sobbed.

"Uh, Layla, honey, I think you've had too much wine."

I sniveled out, "He doesn't love me. He loves the fact that I'm the only woman who doesn't think of him as a movie star. He even told me as much! I'm his Rosebud. Citizen Kane, remember? The one thing that brought him happiness before the fame, before the money. Rosebud was his special thing before all that."

"Yeah, um, that sounds like a pretty good thing to be thought of as."

Lisa is pretty smart, but I guessed she wasn't able to understand what the problem was. Truth be told, I didn't really understand it myself. "I thought so too, at first. But don't you get it? He was always so paranoid about women wanting him just because he was Trip Wiley: Big Bad Movie Star. But now I'm the one who's freaking out because he only wants Layla Warren: The Teenager Who Loved Him Before All That."

"I still don't see the problem."

"The problem is that I'm not her anymore! I'm me! Get it? I don't know if he's really fallen in love with me." I took a shaky breath and another swig of wine. "The sick thing is, that's not even our biggest issue."

I didn't even wait for Lisa to ask before I proceeded to spew everything out in a rush, just completely brain-vomiting all over my best friend.

Sorry. That sounded a lot grosser than I meant it to.

I told her about Robert the Lizard Perv and the possible movie with Jenna. I told her about my nudie pics and Devin and the memoir and the fights leading up to it and the huge one after. I told her about Trip's father and my mother and trying to force him to forgive. I told her about the real Patrick Van Keegan and the Bimbo Twins and all those blonde s.l.u.ts and the autograph hounds and the paparazzi and that weird card in Trip's mailbox at the fortress.

I talked and I talked until I was exhausted, my throat actually sore and raw, my breath catching on choppy inhales.

When I finally came up for air, I saw my best friend practically laying over the counter limp, her arms bent over her head, her mouth gaped open in pure shock.

I swiped the tears from my cheeks and commanded, "Well? Say something!"

She sat up slowly, letting out with a huge breath. "I don't even... Layla, I'm speechless here. I got nothing."

Holy s.h.i.+t. Lisa was speechless? Things must've been worse than I thought.

She got up from the table and returned with a bottle of cherry vodka and a shot gla.s.s. "I've got booze, though. Here. You wanna do a shot? You're drinking for two now, don't forget."

I almost laughed at her comment. Just purging the entire story from my brain was enough to make me feel a little better. "No. I'm already buzzed enough from the wine."

"C'mon. Drink it. You need it."

"No, I'm alright."

"What are you, chicken?"

That one did make me chuckle. "Peer pressure! Peer pressure! I need a grown-up!"

We were able to laugh for a minute, until Lisa got serious and said, "Hey Layla? We are the grown-ups, now."

"Well, that certainly sucks."

She snorted at that, but added, "I'm really sorry things got so crazy out there. But this is big girl stuff right now. You two aren't those same teenagers anymore. This is what it's like to be in a real, adult relations.h.i.+p. You think there're days I don't want to kill Pick? Because I do. But we find a way to make it work. I know your problems are different, but it's all just the same, stupid relations.h.i.+p garbage. We've all got our c.r.a.p to sort out. If you guys are meant to be, you'll just have to figure a way to sort yours."

If.

I was getting pretty sick of if when it came to Trip.

Part Three of my disastrous day commenced once my father got home from work.

I had to tell him about my little run-in with his ex-wife.

He gave me a gargantuan hug the second he came through the door as if it had been years since we'd seen each other instead of only a month. I asked about Sylvia, he asked about my flight. Before he could inquire about my time out west, I diverted him with questions about his work.

That always distracted him.

We chatted about his day, talked about his new clients. He finally settled himself down at the kitchen table, where I joined him, eyeing him warily.

Dad eyed me back. He knew something was up. "Okay, Loo. Out with it."

I took a deep breath and said, "I wanted to talk to you about Kate."

He looked at me questioningly, but didn't say anything. Finally, I just spilled the news. "I saw her today, you know. She's a nurse at Beth Israel Hospital."

I expected my big revelation to shock him. But instead, he simply responded, "Yeah, I'd heard that's where she might be."

It turned out I was the one who was shocked. "You knew?"

"Not at first, no." He paused at that, trying to find the words. The ones he came up with weren't the ones I was expecting. "I want to apologize, Loo. I always felt like I should have tried harder to find her, should have been able to figure out what she needed from me in order to keep her here. Bruce was too young to even remember much about her, but you were the one that put her on such a pedestal. Do you even remember any of the bad times?"

Bad times? Before she left?

"What do you mean?"

"The Episodes, as your aunt Eleanor and I used to refer to them. The singing out on the front lawn in the middle of the night when she was happy. The days she'd spend in bed, reading the encyclopedia when she was depressed. The baking jags. The shopping trips. The way she couldn't go to sleep until she double-checked that everything in the pantry was alphabetized." He gave a shake to his head and let out a sad chuckle at the memories.

"I remember the baking and the singing," I said. "But I guess I must've been oblivious to the rest."

"I never felt like I did a very good job of being both father and mother to you kids."

I looked at him in astonishment. "Are you kidding? Dad, you've been amazing. Kate couldn't have done any better."

"It was hard on you, growing up without her."

That was a bit of an understatement. But the fact was, it was hard on all of us. Yet somehow, we all survived. "It was. You're right. But Dad, when I think about how close you and I always were, I wouldn't trade that for anything. You loved us enough for a million mothers. Bruce and I know that."

He cracked a small smile and gave me a light fist b.u.mp before rapping his knuckles on the table, ending the conversation. I guessed Dad heard everything he needed to hear and didn't really want a rehash of my entire conversation with his ex-wife. I hadn't even mentioned that she'd given me her phone number. I didn't think any of us would ever need it, but I'd stuck it in my pocket anyway. You never know.

It was cleansing, in a way, to see that the encounter didn't mean too much to him. I was happy that he'd come to the same conclusion as I had after so many years: There was no reason for hate, or remorse, or nostalgia. It was what it was. She was simply a part of our past.

"So," he started in, smiling, "I haven't gotten the post-mortem on the rest of your California trip yet. How was it?"

I hadn't spoken to Dad for more than a few check-ins since the Oscars. Lisa and Pick had invited him, Sylvia, and her parents over to watch the show. They made a ton of food and sat around the TV, trying to catch every glimpse of Trip and me. Lisa said I was giving dirty looks to Joan Rivers.

"Post-mortem. Interesting choice of words," I answered back, practically scowling at the sudden s.h.i.+ft in subject matter. "Everything feels like it's dying between us."

"Oh, come on. Surely, you don't mean that."

"I do. And don't call me s.h.i.+rley."

He chuckled at that. "You compared every relations.h.i.+p you ever had to Trip. I'm sure that whatever happened between you two can be fixed."

"Maybe."

I was lost in that thought until Dad startled me out of it. "He came to see me, you know. I think he was really looking for you."

"What? When?"

"Oh, a few years back. He was visiting his mother up there in that big house of hers on the hill, and stopped by to say h.e.l.lo. His arm was all bandaged up from when he broke it, remember? When he was filming that movie in the city and you interviewed him? We sat out back and shot the breeze for a while."

Remember? Was he kidding?

I was knocked out. "You never told me that!"

"He said you wouldn't give him the time of day, wouldn't go out with him while he was in town. I guess you'd just gotten engaged to that Fields guy-stop looking at me like that. Of course I knew-and you were trying to do the right thing by staying away from him. We both had a chuckle over that one. That you didn't trust yourself to be anywhere near him."

"You knew that? Trip knew?"

"You were always nuts about that kid. Heck, I always liked him too. He was a good kid. And now he's a good man. But you need to decide whether you're going to keep trying to find someone else who measures up, or settle down with the real thing. No relations.h.i.+p is perfect, Loo. You have to decide to accept the imperfections and realize that what matters is that you're perfect together. All the other stuff is just the small stuff. It doesn't matter."

"It's actually kind of big stuff, Dad," I said, picking at the linen placemat in front of me.

My father leaned back in his chair, folding his hands across his belly. "Did he beat you? Cheat on you? Start drinking again?"

"No, of course not. Nothing like that."

"Then it's not 'big stuff.' It's just stuff you haven't figured a way through, yet." He got up from the table and gave me a kiss on the top of my head. "You two'll figure it out. Have a little faith, sweetheart."