Forever With Him

by Stacy Travis

  “No. Not in Ireland. Not anywhere.”

  “Wow, who knew Chris Conley was so uptight?”

  Looking ahead, I noted that there were still three more buildings in front of us before we got to the front of the hotel. I couldn’t get us there fast enough. “Yeah, I guess that’s it. I’m just uptight,” I said, wanting to close the door on the subject.

  The doorman held the front door to the hotel open for us, and I steered Triss to the elevators. I knew our rooms were on the same floor, but I didn’t know which one was hers. I assumed she had the wherewithal to find it.

  “Do you have your keycard?” I asked.

  She dug around in her purse and eventually fished out a tube of lip gloss, which she applied on our way up in the elevator. She handed the purse to me, and I gingerly looked through it until I found the card. “Got it. What’s your room number?”

  She looked down at the key, which had no number on it because small pieces of plastic issued by hotels never have room numbers on them. “I don’t remember, but it’s the first one next to the ice.” Skeptical of her directional sense, I led her toward the ice machines, where there were rooms on either side. She pointed, and I helped her swipe her key.

  The door opened, and I heaved a sigh of relief that the day—and the night—was over.

  She lingered in the doorway. “You wanna come in for a bit?”

  Not even a little bit. I shook my head. “Get some sleep. We have a nine thirty call.” I handed her the purse, and she turned her back on me, walked unsteadily toward the bed, and let the door swing back and nearly hit me in the face.

  On my way to my own room, I looked down at my phone, knowing I needed to call Nikki before she left for her dinner meeting. I had a missed call from her and three texts.

  Nikki: You around?

  Nikki: I’ve gotta run in a few

  Nikki: You must be running over. Hope today went well. Call me tomorrow. xox

  I felt like shit.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Los Angeles

  Nikki

  I couldn’t get past the sickening, heavy feeling of being punched in the gut.

  Chris’s message and text had reached me before I’d seen anything online or faced my colleagues at work. At first, I thought he was just being overprotective. He knew I tended to freak out over stuff related to crowds and the trappings of celebrity. And honestly, crowds only freaked me out when they were armed with cameras.

  It was probably no big deal, just Chris looking gorgeous and eligible in a foreign country and baiting the single women who loved his movies.

  Then I saw the pictures.

  The nausea set in immediately. Even though I knew there was probably a context that would take the sting out of what I was seeing, I couldn’t help my visceral response. I felt as if I’d been kicked hard enough to knock the wind out of my lungs. I needed to sit. I thought I might throw up. I felt so incredibly betrayed and so stupid for thinking something could possibly work between Chris—who was world famous and had women throwing themselves at his feet—and me, who was average.

  The worst thing was that a part of me was relieved. I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to get tired of my average and return to the glamorous life that suited him.

  Waiting—and worrying—had been stressful and more exhausting than being apart for more time than we were together. So after I recovered from feeling sucker-punched, I felt oddly calm.

  I could hear Chris’s words echoing in my head: “I never look at those.”

  But that was him. He didn’t like seeing stolen moments captured by lurking paparazzi, a grimace as he took a sip of a too-hot latte or a stern expression while he waited for the elevator because no one acts smiley and photo-ready while waiting for an elevator. I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to see myself that way, caught accidentally in daily life, not ready for my closeup.

  Yes, I’d promised Chris I would ignore the tabloids. That had been easy to do when the worst thing in them was some troll hypothesizing about whether Chris Conley and “his LA arm candy” were still an item while he was off in Ireland filming for two months.

  I knew the truth, and I didn’t much care what someone printed in order to get tongues wagging and sell magazines.

  But what I saw in the photos was another thing entirely. The rational purveyor of spin control in me knew how things could be taken out of context. There was a context that was being misconstrued. But the emotional girlfriend was having trouble seeing anything but Chris kissing his costar.

  How else could it be explained? He’s kissing her.

  First of all, there was no avoiding the tabloids. The pictures were everywhere on Instagram and on the Daily Mail home screen. I didn’t count that as a tabloid, so I continued to read it, even though I was at work and should have been working. Big mistake.

  The bigger mistake was that Chris made the situation worse by (a) forgetting to call me the night before when he was clearly occupied with his tongue down the throat of his costar and (b) he’d left me a voicemail that made it sound like I would be the one overreacting to something that meant nothing. I found it hard to understand how being caught kissing his costar meant nothing, even if there was some alternate truth behind it.

  How many truths are there? Two? Ten?

  It felt like the classic apology from a thief. He wasn’t sorry he stole, but he was very sorry he got caught.

  Then again, I owed it to him to hear what he had to say. Sort of. Maybe. It would have been one thing if there were rumors swirling around and he explained away their source. But he’d been caught on camera. There was no mistaking that kiss. He couldn’t pretend he was whispering in her ear when it looked like he was kissing her cheek. They were lip to lip. In another picture, it looked like he was pulling her into his arms, which was also hard to explain away.

  Isn’t a photo irrefutable proof? In a court of law, wouldn’t that be enough to convict?

  My phone rang. I knew it was Annie before I even looked at the caller ID. She was talking before I had a chance to say hello. “Is there a chance you still live in a superhero blackout?”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Unfortunately… no.” I was glad she’d called my cellphone, so I could leave my desk and walk out into the hallway for our conversation.

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry. What did he say?”

  “I haven’t talked to him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m really, really mad.” I expected her to tell me to calm down until I spoke to him, but she surprised me when she said, “Good.”

  “Why good?”

  “Because you’re standing up for yourself, even though you might be wrong.”

  I shrugged even though I knew she couldn’t hear that over the phone. “What’s he gonna say? Whatever happened, happened. I don’t see a need to hear about it.”

  “But you are going to—right?—hear what he has to say?”

  I sighed. When I’d first seen the photos, I’d felt betrayed, but that moved quickly into just feeling sad. I’d already moved through at least one stage of grief, and it surprised me how quickly I was coming to terms with moving on. “Of course. Even though I don’t see the point. Maybe this is normal for him when he’s working.”

  “I don’t think you believe that. He probably feels terrible. If you love him, you can’t just not talk to him.”

  “For sure I can just not talk to him. I feel like it would be easier for us both to just let it go. There’s no need to get all maudlin and dramatic over this.”

  Even without seeing her face, I could tell Annie was exasperated by her harsh exhale. “Here you go again.”

  “Just… please stop with the tirade about how I don’t ask for what I want.”

  “I don’t think I need the tirade. You know what I’m going to say.”

  “I do.”

  “Okay, then. Tell him what you want. If that’s an a
pology, great. If it’s a break from the relationship, fine. But please promise me you’ll ask for what you need. You owe it to yourself to be honest with him. Then, maybe you’ll get what you want.”

  I felt an unwelcome welling of tears. I hadn’t cried at all when I saw the pictures. I’d been shocked and betrayed and angry, but I hadn’t felt the kind of sadness that would lead me to break down and cry. “That’s the problem,” I said. “I thought I wanted this. I thought I wanted him. And now… I’m not sure.”

  Hearing myself say those words made me realize what had been holding me back the whole time. “I can’t ask for what I want if I still don’t know what that is.”

  In perhaps a further sign of not knowing what I wanted, I found myself walking down the block outside our office with Jemma for the first time since she’d started at our firm.

  I’d finally agreed to her suggestion to have lunch together, even though I had no appetite and didn’t know what we were going to talk about for an hour. Actually, I had a good feeling. She’d been the first to come over to my desk after seeing the pictures of Chris and asked if I was okay. And even though I knew part of her interest came from hoping I would give her some inside scoop, she also seemed to genuinely care.

  “We’ve all been there,” she’d said, which almost made me laugh, because they were such sage counseling words coming from someone barely old enough to drink in a bar.

  “I’m not so sure about that. But thanks.”

  So what if she’s a little young and a lot starstruck? So what if I kinda know the reason behind her interest in me is her interest in Chris and the salacious details she hopes to glean from me over a slice of pizza and a Caesar salad at the Crow’s Nest, a crummy fast-food Italian place down the block?

  I didn’t go out to lunch that often. Generally, I preferred to eat something quickly from the vending machine and leave a little early at the end of the day. Taking an hour break in the middle seemed like a waste of time. But I needed the break, so I was willing to trade a couple movie-star details because I didn’t feel like eating alone at my desk.

  “Maybe it’s a sign he’s serious about you,” Jemma said, jumping right into her thoughts about why I should feel flattered by the photos everyone else at the office had seen and no one else at the office had mentioned

  As enlightened as I felt I was about relationships, her armchair psychology about why Chris had been kissing his costar didn’t make a lot of sense. And that was even after I admitted to myself that I was not at all enlightened about relationships. “How do you figure? I thought being serious about a person was a reason not to go around kissing other people.”

  “Well, yeah, yeah, when you put it that way, sure, It makes sense.”

  I still didn’t understand what other ways there were to put it, so I waited while Jemma composed a thought in her head. When she didn’t elaborate, I had to poke her. “Explain your thinking, please.”

  “I guess… I just meant it in that FOMO way.”

  “Again, explain?”

  “You know, when you start thinking seriously about one person, you get that panicked feeling about everyone else out there. What if I could do better? Am I missing something?”

  We were walking down the block, and I couldn’t help but tilt my head back and feel the glorious rays of the sun hitting my face. I hadn’t been outside at all that week because I’d been working hard and hadn’t made it home while it was still light out. “So you think he’s making some kind of last-stand kissing effort?”

  “I mean, he’s your boyfriend. What do you think?” she asked.

  I wanted to strangle her. She’d put out some semi-believable theory that sounded like it was maybe the kind of thing all the kids were doing. Maybe I needed to get with the program. But then she started equivocating, and I didn’t know what to think. “Generally, I think he’s a good guy. But…”

  “Pictures are kind of damning.”

  “Maybe there’s another side to it.” Jesus, she had a way of making me doubt everything about myself and my relationship. “I think I need to talk to him before I go off the reservation and assume he’s an unrepentant cheater.”

  “Yeah… no. I’d be organizing a murder plot.” Is that what the kids these days are doing? Lunch was going to be interesting. And probably painful.

  One Caesar salad, two pieces of pizza, and a brownie later—I decided to stress eat, and carb-loading seemed like a sure way to get me there—I didn’t feel any better about Chris, but I had succeeded in veering most of the conversation away from him by relentlessly carpet-bombing Jemma with questions, so she couldn’t ask me much of anything.

  “When did your parents move to California?” I asked. It turned out she lived with her parents, and the job at our firm was her first one after college. And really, unless we were counting sweeping the leaves off her uncle’s tennis court, it was her first job. For the record, I counted leaf-sweeping as a job, but not when the employer was a relative. I lived by a unique code of principles.

  “It’ll be two years in December.”

  “So they moved while you were in college?”

  “Yes. So when you were in France—”

  “And where did you go to college?”

  “University of Oregon.”

  “What did you study?” I asked.

  “Communications. Anyway, so how did you guys meet—”

  I’d just taken a bite of food. Rookie move. It allowed her to get most of her question out before I could wave my hand in front of her, because I wasn’t done asking about her fascinating choice of major. “Communications as a general major? Or did you specialize? Mass communications? Something related to public relations? How did you learn about the open position at the firm?”

  There. I’d asked her enough questions that I would have time to take one, if not two, bites and chew them while she answered.

  I could tell she was starting to understand the futility of trying to lunch-buddy me out of celebrity information, because her face fell a bit and took on the resigned look of a person who knew she’d been beaten at her own game. She methodically answered all my questions.

  I respected her work ethic. And I decided she wasn’t the celebrity stalker I’d initially feared she was. She just liked her People Magazine and her tabloid gossip—and there I was, a living, breathing tabloid story, sitting with her at lunch. She was so genuine about her guileless interest in celebrity gossip that I started to see she just liked the stories. She wasn’t looking to turn around and call TMZ with her own unauthorized behind-the-scenes account of what I told her. She just wanted to know because she liked celebrity culture.

  And she’d answered all my intrusive and sometimes zany questions for the better part of an hour. It seemed like that deserved a little return favor on my part.

  “Okay, since you asked. I’ll give you the basics of how we met.” I told her about the grocery store meet cute and my ill-fated attempt to buy peaches. Then I gave her the broad strokes of our two-week vacation. I made it sound like it was the most normal thing in the world to meet an international megawatt actor in a grocery store and end up dating him several months later. Because to me, it was.

  And that, I realized, was my problem.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ballinascorney, Ireland

  Chris

  Apparently, even a kindly bar owner from a small Irish town knew there was money to be made by selling photographs to a gossip rag.

  The Daily Mail had not one, not two, but three pictures of Triss and me in the bar. In one, we were clearly mid-kiss, and it looked far steamier than it was. In the second, she’d just fallen into me, and my expression looked elated rather than the shock I was feeling. And in the third, taken from behind, I had my hand on her back, and she had just wrapped her arm around my neck. All three looked bad.

  My publicist, Natalie, called me the minute the story hit the wires, which was at around eight a.m. in Ireland and the middle of the night in California. Natalie had her
phone set to send her alerts from all the media outlets when they featured her clients. She was used to being awakened with such things.

  “What’s going on there across the pond?” she asked with more amusement than concern in her voice. She knew Triss’s reputation for being difficult, and she knew me. “You’re the last two I’d expect to start up an on-set romance.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” It was my standard response where Natalie was concerned. She would call me with some sort of image emergency, and I would be clueless, because I didn’t have alerts set on my phone to tell me what the tabloids were writing. I considered it sanity insurance.

  “You and Triss Marshawn. There are pictures. They won’t be easy to explain unless you tell me what’s up.”

  I didn’t need her to tell me more to deduce that someone must have snapped pictures of us at the pub. Sitting across the table and holding hands would have been bad enough. It would have been too much to hope no one had caught the kiss on camera. “Shit.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. So are you and Nikki over?”

  “No! Not at all. And I can only hope she took my advice not to read the swill that passes for news in the Daily Mail and she doesn’t know.”

  “Does she live in an underground bunker and write on stone tablets? Because that’s the only scenario that will keep her in the dark. The pictures are everywhere, not just the Mail.”

  “Okay, I need to call her. I’ll call you back.”

  “Nope, nope. You can call her in five minutes. Right now, you need to tell me what actually happened.” I’d put my phone on speaker so I could scroll through the pictures, and I couldn’t believe what I saw. How had someone captured the exact worst moments?

  “Shit,” I said again. I flipped to my text app and fired off a couple quick texts to Nikki. Hey. Need to talk to you. U up? Call me.

  “Yes, I’m aware. Talk to me.”