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Chapter Thirty-Three
At LAX, Val came to pick him up, which was both a blessing and a curse—a blessing because it meant there was someone to share the burden of the media’s sea of flashbulbs and shouts. A curse—well, a curse for Vivi’s team, probably—because Val ruined every photo opportunity by flipping off the cameraman, the finger held right by Remy’s face, therefore making the photos unusable on tabloid covers.
“Nice,” Remy said, impressed.
“Celeste told me to do it,” Val shouted—he had to shout to be heard over the press mob—and despite a crest of anger that rose in him at Celeste’s name, Remy was grateful. It’d been nearly eighteen hours of travel back from Sydney, and frankly, he was beyond exhausted by all things paparazzi.
They made it out of the airport and into the van with far less drama than Remy expected, and as they drew closer to their home, he dared to crack the window and let in the salty, sharp smell of Venice Beach.
“You glad to be back?” Val asked.
“You have no idea,” Remy answered, closing his eyes, breathing in the citrus-laced air. It hit him in the chest, just how hard it smelled like home, even though he’d have never thought he could be nostalgic about a place like LA.
Things weren’t quite as he left them, of course. Houses had been repainted. Tiny shops had closed, and new tiny shops had opened, and the grocery store had changed names. There were new buildings going up, whose future purposes Val tried to explain as they zipped past them, back toward the fig-and-lemon house.
Celeste was at the door when they pulled into the driveway, tending to flowers she’d planted in crumbly pots by the entry. She looked up at Remy, and her eyes were hesitant, wary.
“Hey, Remy,” she said as he climbed out of the car.
Val went still, waiting to see Remy’s reaction.
Remy nodded.
“Remy, look—” Celeste started.
“Not right now, Celeste, okay?” Remy said, sighing, and walked toward the door. “I just—not right now.”
“Give her a chance, brother,” Val said.
“Not right now, from either of you, alright? I just can’t right now,” Remy said. He meant it—he couldn’t fight with them on the heels of fighting and breaking up with Vivi. He wanted to, of course; he wanted to shout, to make Val apologize for telling Celeste, to make Celeste apologize for publishing the story, to make sure they knew it was their fault he and Vivi were done.
Except…honestly? He wasn’t sure it was their fault. They were the catalyst, but the more he replayed his and Vivi’s fight and the months preceding it, the more he thought they weren’t the actual cause. A spark, not the powder keg.
“Alright,” Celeste said, stepping aside so Remy could enter the house. “I just—I have to say one thing, okay?”
“Fine,” Remy said, sloughing his bag off in the entryway. The house, like the neighborhood, had changed. Val and Celeste hadn’t just moved into Remy’s room; they’d made the house their own. There was a new couch, they’d painted the kitchen, the trees outside had been pruned. It felt like the two of them, not the three of them.
“Before you left, you told me to do my job the best I could and that you’d do your job the best you could. I didn’t know that’d changed. I didn’t even know anything about you and Vivi, really, until Val told me, and it sounded like it was…I don’t know. Too big to break.”
“And I only mentioned it to her because I thought it meant you’d be moving,” Val jumped in. “I wasn’t just…uh…gossiping.”
They were both behind him, now, watching him stare at the house. Had the floors been refinished? No, no—they were just clean, mopped and waxed. There was a picture on the wall that saidI love this townover an artsy rendition of the LA skyline.
“Remy?” Val asked.
“I didn’t know it would do all this,” Celeste said, her normally bold voice strangely small. Remy turned to look at her and saw that Celeste looked truly crushed—her eyes, her mouth, her cheeks were all pinched and worried. “It was just a story about another star,” she finished. “I didn’t know—”
“It was a story about a girl,” Remy corrected. “And it was a story about me. People, not stars.”
She took a breath. “I was just doing my job,” she said.
Remy firmed his mouth but nodded. “It wasn’t—there were other issues, okay? You didn’t break us up, it just…that isn’t how I wanted it to end.” He exhaled. “Don’t write about that.”
“I won’t. I promise. Nothing else about you or Vivi. I’ll stick to crotch shots,” Celeste said with a weak smile.
Remy tried to smile back, though he wondered if it had occurred to Celeste that those crotches also belonged to people, not stars.
“Well, hey, different subject,” Val said, jumping in, either because he wanted to diffuse the tension or because he was Val and didn’t notice there was tension to begin with. “I got a new tattoo. Want to see it?”
