Remember When 2 by T. Torrest Read Free Book Online Page A

are, Bridezilla.”
       “I was not a bridezilla!”
       I started to crack up, watching Lisa getting all defensive. “You’re right. Bridezilla’s probably too harsh. You were more like Princess Di on acid.”
       Our waiter came out to take our order even though neither one of us had even cracked open a menu. Not that it mattered. Lisa always got the Nicoise Salad—without anchovies—and I always got the Cobb.
       After our server took his leave, I sank back into my deck chair, looking out over the lake. It really was a beautiful day- bright and clear and breezy; a nice departure from the perpetually grey and noisy city that I called home. Lisa knew how much I enjoyed some quiet every now and then—even if she rarely respected that aspiration—so it was a good thing that she’d cracked open her newspaper instead of blabbering my ear off. Silence was easier to obtain when she was engrossed with the Style section.
       I decided to join her, reaching a hand across the table and asking, “Hey, gimme the crossword, will ya?”
       Lisa rifled through the paper as I dug around in my purse for a pencil. She handed it over and went back to her article, and I displayed some rudimentary origami skills, getting the page folded just the right way for optimal cruciverbalism...
       ...when right there on Page Six was a picture of none other than my old high school boyfriend, Trip Wilmington.
       I immediately gasped at the sight of him, but it’s not as though I hadn’t experienced that scenario before. It seemed he’d been popping up sporadically in those days. I would pick up the occasional copy of People , or Entertainment Weekly , or Us , and every now and again find his gorgeous mug staring back at me from the pages. But mainly, I encountered him on movie screens, and most recently, he’d invaded my home via my dream.
       I still couldn’t quite believe that my high school sweetheart grew up to become a Hollywood movie star.
       He’d started going by the name Trip Wiley by that time, and I was well aware of the fact that he’d been making his living as an actor. I know I may have been a bit more attuned to that information than your average entertainment-seeker (given our prior association) but he was actually starting to become kind of famous. And there I was, looking at his picture right there on Page Six .
       “Holy shit! It’s Trip!”
       Lisa spun her head around, looking behind her before realizing I was talking to the newspaper. I slid the page across the table and showed her the picture.
       She said, “Mmmm. Trip Wilmington. He was yummy.”
       Don’t I know it.
       “Jesus. I still can’t believe he’s like, getting famous.”
       Lisa took a sip from her Sprite. “I know. How weird is that? We know a famous person. You had sex with a famous person!”
       Does it still count if he and I hooked up before he was famous? It’s funny, but the last time I even saw him in person was the morning after we’d slept together, the morning I was leaving for college.
       I didn’t see his face until years later, when I went to see Failing to Fly , an aptly-named piece of garbage that almost had me walking out of the theater. But all of a sudden, Trip popped up onscreen and almost gave me a heart attack. It was a throwaway scene to the rest of the world, a silent appearance of about ten seconds total. It happened so quickly and unexpectedly that I wasn’t even sure I’d really seen it.
       I wrote him in L.A. to ask him about it, but my letter went unanswered. It turned out to be the last one I ever sent him.
       In the summer of ‘98, Devin had taken me to see The Fairways for our very first “date”. About midway through, Trip showed up in a speaking role. He wasn’t onscreen very long, but I almost fainted dead away. I didn’t say anything to Devin about it and just kept the revelation to myself. He and I barely knew each other at the time, and truly,