Remember When (Remember Trilogy #1) Read online

  He gave me a dirty look out of the corner of his eye, and I was expecting some sort of witty retort. Instead he asked, “What do I owe you?”

  “Three-eighteen.”

  He slapped a ten down on the counter. I was counting his change when out of nowhere, he came out with, “So, hey- I was thinking- You want to get together tomorrow?”

  At first, my heart leapt out of my chest, until I realized that he was only trying to arrange a brainstorming session for our Shakespeare thing. “Oh, for our report. Yeah, sure. I’m not working tomorrow, but-” and I hated having to say this aloud, “I don’t get my license for another two weeks, we’ll have to do it at my house.”

  Oh my God. Did I just say “do it at my house”?

  Trip gave a shrug. “No problem. I’ll just drive you home after school.” He turned and called out over his shoulder, “Hey, Tess, you ready?”

  At that, she sauntered over, they offered their goodbyes and then they were gone...

  ...leaving me trying to think about anything other than the fact that I was going to be spending an entire afternoon alone with Trip Wilmington.

  Chapter 10

  ...ALMOST

  There was never a longer Tuesday in my entire life. Lisa didn’t settle my nerves any with the way she kept talking about it all day long. She was confident that Trip and I were going to be spending most of our study session groping each other on the couch. I wasn’t so sure.

  I’d avoided talking to him at lunch and made sure he didn’t get the chance to walk me down to English. I couldn’t escape him during class, but I kept the conversation to a minimum.

  It seems stupid now, but I didn’t want to do anything that would jinx our plans for the afternoon. I thought if I said or did the wrong thing, Trip would realize I was a total dork and wouldn’t want to partner up with me for the thing after all. All I needed to do was get through that one afternoon with him in order to show him how indispensible I’d be as an assignment buddy. Then I could relax knowing that by then, he’d realize how much he needed me, if for no other reason than that he wanted a good grade.

  By the time school let out, I had already decided that I was good to go. This was confirmed when Trip actually showed up to meet me on the front steps. In front of everyone, he plucked me out of the crowd and put his hand at the small of my back for the walk down to his car.

  Let me tell you, it felt amazing to be seen with him. I hoped everyone noticed it. Maybe rumors would get started that we were carrying on some sort of secret relationship. People would say things like, “I heard that Trip Wilmington dumped Tess Valletti for Layla Warren.”

  And if anyone actually had the balls to ever ask me outright, I’d only give them the satisfaction of a mysterious smile while saying something classy like, “I never kiss and tell, dahling.”

  While I was picturing who was going to play me in the movie version of my life story (Alyssa Milano, maybe?), Trip unlocked the passenger door of his Bronco and held it open until I got inside. I thought it was so cool how he did that. Maybe it was a common thing to do where he came from, but in Norman, the guys were always too aloof to treat any of us like actual ladies. God, didn’t they realize how easy it was to impress us?

  Trip cruised over to his side of the truck and slid himself behind the wheel. As he put the key in the ignition, I made the decision that whatever song was playing on the radio at that moment would be burned forever into my brain as “our song”.

  He turned the key... and New Kids on the Block came blaring out of the speakers singing “The Right Stuff”.

  Okay, fine. The next song would be the one.

  “What the hell is this crap?” Trip asked as he popped a Guns N’ Roses tape into the cassette player.

  I watched as he loosened his tie over his head and unbuttoned his blue Oxford so that it hung open casually over his thin, white T-shirt, stretched taut over the contours of his chest. He shifted over to fix his hair in the rearview mirror, his arm pressed against mine as he leaned across the center console. I could feel the heat of the day just emanating off of him and smell the crisp, clean scent of his skin just inches from my own body.

  And that, ladies and gentlemen, even to this very day, is why I completely fall apart whenever I hear even a single note from “Paradise City”.

  I was trying to play it cool- tapping my hands against my knees to the music, looking absently out the window- but I was actually a trembling mess inside. I mean shit! I was riding shotgun in Trip’s truck! For the second time in less than a week! But this time, I had him all to myself for the next two, maybe three, hours. How the hell was I going to hold it together all that time?

  I grabbed my purse off the floor and started rifling through it, looking for nothing in particular except a way to occupy my hands.

  “Damn, you’re fidgety.”

  That caught me off guard. “What?”

  Trip turned down the radio and said, “I don’t think you’ve stopped bopping around once since getting in my truck.”

  I always fidget when I’m nervous. Not really the smoothest habit, but at least it was better than Charlene Henderson’s nervous cheerleader tick. You could always tell when she was feeling even slightly uncomfortable when the poor girl started in with regimented clapping.

  “Oh. I was just looking for... some gum! Here it is. Wanna slice?”

  “Slice?”

  “Yeah. It’s Juicy Fruit.” I held a piece in his direction. “See? It’s a slice. Want one?”

  This made Trip smile. “Yeah, sure. Unwrap it for me?”

  So I did. I thought about sliding over to the driver’s side and feeding it to him all 9 1/2 Weeks, but then wimped out and just passed it over.

  “Thanks.”

  I was such a dork that I found myself sneaking looks at him as he chewed a stupid piece of gum. But just watching his jaw clench up with every chomp was enough to make my palms all sweaty. I tried to look inconspicuous as I wiped them against my polyester skirt.

  As we pulled up in front of my house, I realized that I had never even given Trip the address. It was pretty cool that he had obviously done some recon and found out on his own. Then again- and I got the worst, most panicky feeling in my chest when I thought this- maybe he knew where I lived because he’d seen me spying out my window at him every morning. Could God be that cruel?

  My fears were laid to rest when Trip said, “This is your house, right? Funny. I run through this neighborhood sometimes.”

  And I thought, Yes, you do. Every day so far except Sunday.

  But I said, “Oh yeah? Guess I’ll have to alert the Neighborhood Watch. They don’t appreciate riffraff roaming around on their streets.”

  Trip grinned as he let me out of the truck. “Yeah. Just try it, Dummy.”

  I gave him a light backhand on his arm in answer.

  Before I led him up our front walk, I jumped up and grabbed a leaf off the tree at the curb. It was something I’d done a million times, but I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought to skip that little ritual for one, stupid day. I was a little embarrassed as I shrugged and offered a brief explanation to Trip. “Sorry. Superstition.”

  He laughed. “You do that often?” he asked. “Maul trees in your spare time?”

  “Just that one,” I answered, before playfully admitting, “Every day, actually!”

  Even though I was laughing, I was feeling pretty skittish at the thought of being alone with Trip for the next few hours. My father usually didn’t come home from work until dinnertime and Bruce had freshman football practice every day. Knowing this, I had made a point to do a quick cleanup before leaving for school that morning in order to make sure the house would be presentable in the afternoon. Living with two men is a constant study in maintainable hygienics. My father wasn’t so bad, but Bruce was an absolute slob. After he split for the bus stop, I was met with a destroyed bathroom- soaking wet towels and clothes all over the floor. Hello? Ever hear of a hamper?

  Thank God I’d taken c
are of Bruce’s discarded boxer shorts, however, because Trip hit the bathroom the second we were inside the door. I utilized the time during his absence to pull a couple of Cokes out of the fridge and settle myself at the kitchen table.

  I had my English notebook lain out and was tapping my pen against the page in front of me as I read the booklet of requirements for the project. Basically, we were supposed to give a report on our assigned scene in a “style of our choosing”. We were to focus on the motivations of each character and interpret Shakespeare’s language into our present-day vernacular.

  Here are the questions we needed to answer in our report:

   What do your characters want? What are they trying to say? How do they go about achieving their goals?

   How are you like/unlike your assigned characters? What traits do you share? What traits are completely opposite from you? Would people who know you agree with your assessment?

   How would your characters like living in Norman, NJ? How would your characters dress and speak differently if they were living here today? (Please utilize a visual aid for this portion of your project.)

  I was pondering investing in some posterboard for the visual aid aspect of our presentation when I realized Trip was taking an awfully long time in the bathroom.

  Oh, dear God. Please tell me he’s not pooping in there.

  My suspicions turned out to be unfounded when I heard a noise coming from down the hall.

  I moved down the hallway to my bedroom where I saw Trip standing at my dresser, giving the once-over to all of my things.

  Thank God I made my bed that morning, but what if he’d gone snooping through my dressers or something? I had a brief recollection of the set of pink, flowery, days-of-the-week cotton panties that were shoved to the back of my undies drawer. I never wore them, but couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. They were a gift the past Christmas from my Aunt Eleanor, who always used the excuse of having four sons to buy the cutesiest, girliest things possible for me. They were so, so, so very uncool. My reputation would have been destroyed.

  “What are you doing?”

  He looked up just then and smiled. “Just checking out your room. It’s the best way to get to know someone, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Or, you know, maybe you could just ask them stuff.”

  I watched as he ignored me and picked up one of my glass atomizers. He gave a quick squirt of Anais Anais in the air and took a sniff. “Nice.” He put the bottle down and rifled through a dish of change, coming up with a guitar pick. He held it up, impressed. “This yours?”

  Yeah, right. My cousin Jack tried to teach me only a million times, but I was a total sped. I could never get my fingers to bend just the right way and it got so frustrating that I decided it just wasn’t worth it. “Nope. My cousin’s.”

  He tossed the pick back into the dish before noticing my jewelry box. He ran a finger across the intricate lid, saying, “This is pretty awesome, all the carvings. It looks old.”

  “It is.” I don’t know what prompted me to continue, but I added, “It was my mother’s.”

  Trip’s hand stopped over the engraved surface. He didn’t look up as he asked, “Was?”

  God. It had been so long since I had to talk about this. Everyone I knew at sixteen had been in my life at twelve... I’d already been through the story with anyone who I considered a friend. Everyone else just made it up. I didn’t think I wanted my mother’s desertion to be the first thing Trip found out about me.

  I tried to sound casual as I shrugged and offered, “She died a few years ago.”

  I wondered if he was fooled by my attempt at nonchalance or if he could actually hear the lump in my throat. In any case, he pulled his hand away from the jewelry box as quickly as if it had burned him. I hoped he wouldn’t ask too many questions- it was my first attempt at lying about the situation and I didn’t really like how it felt. But he didn’t even raise his head as he simply offered, “I’m sorry.”

  Again I shrugged, trying to seem unaffected. “It was a long time ago.”

  He refocused his attentions on the photos taped around the perimeter of my mirror as I tried to ignore the knot of guilt growing in my belly. He was pointing to a picture of me as a little kid; Dorothy Hamill haircut, sitting on a Big Wheel, wearing a white karate uniform and an American flag draped across my shoulders. “Is that you?”

  I leaned over his shoulder, pretending to get a better look. My arm grazed his back, which caused me to shiver. And I may have imagined it, but I swear he flinched a little from the touch as well.

  “Yeah. That’s me, all right. I was pretty obsessed with Evel Knievel back in those days.”

  Trip started laughing. “That’s hysterical.”

  “I was kind of a tomboy.”

  “No way. I’m not buying it.”

  Then in one fell swoop, he grabbed my snowglobe off the dresser and flopped down backwards onto my bed. He propped some pillows behind his head and crossed his feet at the ankles, shaking the thing like it owed him money.

  You’d think I would have been a nervous wreck having Trip first in my room, then in my bed. The sight was definitely surreal, but more phenomenal than terrifying.

  “Make yourself at home.”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t impose.”

  At that, he flashed me a devastating grin and held up the globe for me to see. We both watched as a blizzard overtook New York City, before the storm subsided into harmless flurries.

  “It makes music, you know,” I said. I walked the few steps over to my bed and sat on the edge. I wasn’t even self-conscious as I overlapped my hand around his and turned the globe over to wind up the bottom.

  Trip gave it another good shake, instigating another snow storm as the plucky strains of “New York, New York” filled my room.

  I remembered the Christmas my mother bought it for me. We’d taken a trip into the city, just the two of us, to see the tree at Rockefeller Center. I felt so cosmopolitan- even if I wasn’t able to put that description to it at the age of eight- walking around amongst the noise and excitement of New York with the crisp, winter chill all around us. She was wearing this phenomenal green velvet coat with fur-lined trim. I loved the way it felt against my cheek whenever I’d lean into her throughout our sightseeing. It felt special to have her all to myself for the whole night, a rare event that didn’t occur too often after my baby brother came along. Even before then, I remember the feeling of always wanting to keep her close so she wouldn’t just slip away.

  I watched Trip balance the snowglobe on his chest with one hand and tuck the other one behind his head. He had such a contented look on his face that it made me feel calm, too. Maybe a little too relaxed.

  “She didn’t die.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My mother. I lied. She didn’t die, she moved out. When I was twelve.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t even know why I lied about it. I guess you asking about her just caught me off guard. I thought it would be easier to just say that she died. Not that you wouldn’t have found out eventually anyway. It’s just... I never had to actually tell anyone about it before.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, everyone around here already knew everything. Or thought they did. I never had to explain, you know?”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Small town.”

  “Oh.”

  The song ended and Trip looked up to meet my eyes. I couldn’t really discern the expression on his face, but I hoped it wasn’t pity. He broke the silence when he asked, “You want to talk about it?”

  I reached over and grabbed a scrunchy off my nightstand and started playing it with my thumbs. “Not really. Is that okay?”

  “It’s your life, Layla.”

  In that shared moment, he continued to lock my gaze to his, holding me prisoner with his eyes, and I suddenly realized he was going to kiss me. Oh my God this is it! My h
eart slammed against my ribcage, probably so violently that Trip could actually see it. The seconds of quiet seemed to stretch out into eternity as I sat frozen, staring into that beautiful face, waiting for him to move first.

  Without another word, he bounded off the bed and returned the snowglobe to my dresser, breaking the moment. “Hey, I’m starving. Whaddya got to eat around here?”

  Okay, then!

  I resisted the urge to nudge the snowglobe a half inch into its rightful place and instead led Trip back to the kitchen.

  He sank into one of the chairs and cracked his Coke while I called out an inventory from the pantry. After much deliberation, he finally settled for some regular Doritos, lamenting the fact that they weren’t Cool Ranch. Through a mouthful of chips, he started, “So, I was thinking... this assignment we have to do.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I figure most everybody is gonna get up there and give some stupid report, you know, just read off a piece of paper or something.”

  “That’s normally how one gives a report, yes.”

  “Yeah, but we’re supposed to do a visual, too.”

  “Uh-huh. I was planning on picking up some posterboard or-”

  “Well, I was thinking of doing something a little different, maybe.”

  I watched Trip lounge back in his chair with a mischievous little grin on his face and realized I’d be submitting to whatever scheme he was cooking up.

  I was in no position to deny him anything when he looked at me like that.

  Chapter 11

  THE GRIFTERS

  As it turned out, Trip’s scheme entailed the brilliant idea to film our own version of Romeo and Juliet, set in Norman, New Jersey, circa 1990.

  We spent the rest of that first afternoon deciding on how we were going to answer some of those questions in Mason’s booklet and outlining our filming schedule.

  The plan required me to “borrow” a video camera from work, which I did without guilt. It’s not like I was going to keep the thing, but at the cost of renting it for the next couple months, I may as well have bought one of my own. At the pathetic minimum hourly wage Totally Videos was paying me, that thought wasn’t even a possibility. Because they paid me such a lousy salary, I decided to justify my liberation of said camera as an early holiday bonus. It just happened to be three months ahead of the holiday, is all.