Tripping Over You

20

         "You've already saved me, Chloey, I'm just returning the favor here."

         Staring into his eyes, it hit me hard. "Oh my gosh."

         Tripp grew concerned. "What?"

         "I'm into Tripp Rivers." I wasn't sure when it happened. When I'd gone and fallen for Tripp. It was like his kiss had awakened my senses and opened my eyes and there it was. We'd spent nearly a month together and I hadn't known that I'd fall for him.

         It had to be after his downfall. After the media counted him out and Joel said he wasn't good enough for the role of Frankie. Seeing Tripp work and fight had touched me, deeper than I had realized.

         His only response was a slow, arrogant smile, one that happened to be extremely irresistible.

         I brought my lips to his briefly, but it didn't stop there. Tripp leaned down and picked me up, bringing me back into my bedroom and laying me down on the bed. He removed his t-shirt from my body and brought the comforter over us as he leaned down to kiss me again.

It went on like that for a week. Together we fell into a conjoined bliss, impenetrable by phone calls or going out with the others.

         It happened fast, without thinking or reasoning, and it was love.

         Or at least, that was what a small, crazy part of me was beginning to think. Could thirty days with a person be enough time to fall head over heels in love with them? Not even thirty, could seven do the trick?

         It was hard to believe how one minute I was a friend supporting Tripp at his showcase, and the next I was in bed with him rolling around and kissing. Kissing! Kissing the Tripp Rivers. The same Tripp Rivers I'd come to L.A. despising. The same Tripp Rivers my best friend was obsessed with. The same Tripp Rivers who I deemed some arrogant celebrity.

         And now a tiny, insane Chloey Beckett inside of me thought she was in love with him.

         The seven days following our morning revelation were filled with more kisses and more closeness. Tripp seemed so happy and overjoyed and I felt it and basked in it. He avoided doing anything that didn't involve being with me, and I barely went ten minutes without thinking of him.

         God, was being into someone supposed to make you so scatterbrained? I woke up thinking about Tripp and I went to sleep thinking about Tripp, and I knew just by looking at him it was the same with him.

         It was official. We had fallen—no, we had tripped for each other, hard.

         It was Saturday morning and together we sat in his kitchen. Tripp was eating a bowl of fruit and I crunched on some cereal.

         "We should spend the day in bed," Tripp suggested. "I've got a few movies we could watch."

         I brought my glass of orange juice to my lips, above the rim I eyed Tripp, knowing what would happen when we "watched" movies. He knew it too, the blush that flooded his cheeks giving him away.

         Gavin came buzzing into the kitchen and was soon followed by the entrance of Mick and Nancy.

         Nancy barely greeted me before taking a stance across from Tripp and eyeing him down. In her hands appeared to be a magazine. "Tripp, darling, we need to talk."

         He looked up from his fruit. "About what?"

         Nancy briefly glanced at me. "About a certain predicament at hand." She turned the magazine over, revealing a tabloid. On the cover was a photo of Tripp and me at the beach. I was wearing a bikini and soaking wet as Tripp had been carrying me into the ocean. There was another photo in a little blurb of our shared lip-lock moments later.