The Road Trip Rewind

Chapter 11 - Beatrix

Chapter 11

Beatrix

Thursday, December 30, 1999

It feels like a dream when I wake in the morning, too early still to be up, and remember I’m not alone in the bed.

That Rocco and I had, by some wordless agreement, both needed the comfort of another warm body last night. A little cuddle before sleep, buzzed from the drinks and the surreal high of a night out in ’99.

If either of us had wanted more than that, we made no acknowledgement.

Now, stirring from sleep, I feel him first, before I open my eyes.

Every inch of him.

His firm chest is pressed up against my back, a thin Aero Girl cotton tee the only thing between us. He’s got his warm thighs curved around the bottom of my ass, one large bicep tucked around my shoulders, the other nestled under my head. His left hand is draped on my wrist, gently clasping.

Spooning me, just like he did when we’d dated. Lying like this together, so close, so tender—it’s somehow the most intimate I’ve been with anyone in a long time. And yet, we haven’t even kissed. Not in seventeen years.

I’d been so surprised, back then—Rocco was an exceptionally good cuddler. Attentive, playful, sensitive. Before and after sex, and sometimes just for the sake of it, too, no ulterior motives attached. Most twentysomething Hollywood boys were repelled by anything that could suggest there was meaning attached. Actual feelings. But with Rocco, the cuddling was just as good as the sex.

And the sex had been very, very good.

Rocco might have had an ego sometimes, but never in the bedroom. Or in the bathroom, kitchen, car—wherever we happened to be when the fancy struck, as it so often did. He checked it the second our clothes came off, even if it was just for some naked spooning under the blankets while we chatted about nothing and everything. We’d stayed up talking until sunrise once, cuddled under a blanket on his roof.

“Hey,” Rocco says in a husky voice, his lips brushing against my ear.

I startle, wondering how long he’s been awake. If he’s been as acutely aware of every inch of my body as I am of his.

As I think this, I become even more aware of him—of his morning excitement. I don’t shift my hips away. Neither doeshe.

What the hell am I doing?

“Last night was . . .” he starts, then waits for me to finish.

“A nice homage to ’99,” I say, because I’m nowhere near capable of examining it more closely. Why we chose one bed when we’re paying for two. Why I felt so secure being back in his arms. He’s my steady anchor in this outrageous fever dream, the one real thing I have. But it’s more than that, too.

“It didn’t feel like ’99 to me. Maybe there were nice callbacks, sure, in the way we . . . banter. Some history. But you’re not Trixie anymore. And I hope I’m not the same Rocco.”

He’s right; I’m certainly not. He isn’t either, much as I treated him that way for the last few months.

“Maybe,” I admit, partial recognition.

“Maybe,” he repeats. “That’s not a great answer.”

I shrug, and his bicep slides from my shoulder to my elbow, though the grip doesn’t loosen. “It’s too much to contemplate before coffee,” I say.

“Were you going to kiss me? Last night, at the bull pen. Or was that . . . a joke for you?”

My stomach dips, and I feel my entire body warming. “I . . . I’m not sure.” It’s a lie, and we both know it.

“Bea.”

“Rocco.”

“Didn’t we say we were going to be honest with one another during this little trip through time of ours?”

“Fine.” I pinch my eyes shut, as if it will somehow make this admission easier. “Yes.”

His whole body stiffens alongside mine. “Why?”

“Why did I almost kiss you, or why did I stop myself?”

He lifts his hand to my cheek, gently tilts my head until I open my eyes. Face him straight on. “Both. And don’t just blame it on the Zima. Those are barely alcoholic.”

I weigh my options, truth vs. various white lies. He’s right, though—we did promise to be honest. I owe him that much, don’t I? And maybe I owe it to myself even more.

“Because . . .” I start, forcing myself to keep meeting his eyes, even though they’re making me sweat a not insignificant puddle into the sheets. “Against all odds, we were having such a refreshing night, open and honest and real. And for whatever reason, I feel so . . . comfortable with you, even now. Here. Whatever, whyever this is.” I flap a hand aimlessly at the motel room, and he reaches out for it. Holds on tight. “Like I can let you see me. Judgement free. Show you all the messy bits I usually hide from everyone, even myself. Last night, watching you so willingly make a complete ass of yourself on that bull . . . you made me laugh, and I forgot about all the reasons I can’t do it. A momentary slip.”

“Why, though? Why can’t you?”

I yank my hand out of his. “Because, Rocco! I’m terrified. And I refuse to be Trixie again. She’s naive, and she’s stubborn, and she hurts people—herself included.”

He opens his mouth and then pauses, seeming to consider his words. What promises he can or can’t keep.

Before he has a chance to speak, I ask the question that suddenly seems to matter most: “Do you want to kiss me for the Trixie I was then or the Beatrix I am now?”

“Neither,” he says, not missing a beat. “I want to kiss Bea.”

It’s Bea, it’s the way those cool-blue eyes seem to take in everything I’m saying and everything I’m not. The way his full lips part slightly as his breath hitches, the lock of dark hair that tumbles down across his forehead.

The air around us almost seems to crackle and snap with electricity.

I nod then, and he edges in closer, until there’s barely an inch left between our lips, the last boundary to cross, and he’s leaving it for me.

I close the gap, of course.

My lips crash into his like nothing in the world could stop this, us, whatever we’re doing. And maybe nothing could. Maybe the universe always had its plans.

His mouth is hot and sweet against mine. I give his bottom lip a few nips and he moans, and then my tongue slips through, meeting his. He palms the side of my face, his thumb tracing along my jawline, up to my earlobe, tucking away a loose strand of hair. I hear myself moan this time and reach up to tangle my fingers around that stray lock and tug. He nips now; I give another nip back.

Rocco slips his arm out from under me in one breath, and is on top of me the next, his hands braced against the headboard. He slept in nothing but skintight boxer briefs, which are doing nothing to hide his copious amount of enthusiasm. He’s grinning, so wide I can see the wrinkles around his eyes, his lips, proof of life these last seventeen years apart.

He’s never been more irresistible.

Though I should, right? Resist. There were reasons, good ones, loads of them....

Fuck it. When in ’99, right? Within reason.

“Only kisses,” I say, gasping.

“Only kisses,” he repeats solemnly.

“Though I am a little stuffy in here, aren’t you?”

He laughs as I tug him down, his lips melding into mine, Aero Girl shirt disappearing between us, skin on skin on skin, and I let myself fall freely into the whirlpool of time.

* * *

“So, the day before New Year’s Eve, ’99,” Rocco says, studying me from his side of our shared pillow, head propped in his hand. “What were you and I doing, and should we try to go there tonight? Do some more covert spying? Try to . . . intervene in some way? To crack the code of the mystery world we’re living in?”

I chug the last dregs of my cooling coffee. Bless Rocco, who had finally pulled on his clothes—before promptly removing most of them again—to make a run to a 7-Eleven down the block for some necessary sustenance. Gritty coffee, pizza Combos, shriveled hot dogs, and green apple Warheads, mostly for the novelty appeal (my tongue had immediate regrets; not all ’90s research is as pleasurable as others)—plus a few shiny foil packets that made me blush like a Catholic schoolgirl all the way to my toes when I spotted them at the bottom of the plastic bag.

Funny, seeing as what we’ve already done this morning feels just as intimate.

While we had . . . mutually determined rather quickly that kisses weren’t enough to satisfy us, we stopped short of allowing it to go all the way. There’d been no lack of entertaining foreplay options, both of us eager to show off the highly pleasant talents honed over the last seventeen years. Rocco had certainly learned many excellent things.

But sex, full on, Rocco inside me—had still felt like too momentous of a boundary to cross this morning. Too transformative. This newfound bond is already so tenuous.

And maybe, if I’m being honest with myself, it feels like the last card I can hold—the last thing standing between me and the immediate unraveling of everything I’ve worked so hard on all these years.

I hate that he thinks those foil packets might become necessary.

But I might love it even more.

It’s a thought I don’t want to examine too closely. Especially with more pressing things to think on, such as:

How the hell do we get back to the right time?

Is there something to be said or done—or unsaid or undone—to reverse the course of how everything played out the first time for me and Rocco?

And if so, do we have to do it before the stroke of Y2K midnight?

“It would make sense,” I say slowly, pulling the duvet further up my bare chest, feeling suddenly extra naked, “that our time here revolves around New Year’s Eve, that frenetic Y2K energy, no? As much as anything about this situation could make sense, that is. Like we’ve said, if we’re here together, this time, this place, it feels like there’s a reason. And tomorrow night was the last time we saw one another, before the movie forced us back together. So . . . maybe there’s a piece we’re missing still? And seeing ourselves, following our footsteps, will help us to figure it out? I don’t know. How could we possibly know?” I throw my hands up in frustration. The blanket starts to fall, and I immediately yank it back in place. Nothing was exposed—and I’ve already exposed myself to him, very willingly—but I feel myself blush anyway.

Rocco doesn’t break eye contact, though a small grin on his lips tells me he notices my flush. “Maybe it’s worth a shot then? It feels like we should make some kind of effort to right the ship.” The grin disappears. “Do you think the universe . . . wants us to stay together? For me to not mess it all up with Piper?”

I’ve thought about this exact question. Last night, this morning, spare moments when I wasn’t sleeping or distracted by Rocco’s . . . anatomy. How could I not? “It would be an enormous revision, wouldn’t it? One with so many potential life-altering consequences in our futures. My short-lived marriage, for one.” As much as I’d like to undo that particular decision. “Your relationship with your brother, and his with Piper.” Her name on my lips elicits an ugly flare of jealousy. Especially remembering what he’d said last night; she’d been his dream come true. “Let’s . . . take it in steps? Do some light stalking first? Immerse ourselves in what we were experiencing then. As amazing as it was watching you tumble off a bull in half a second, that probably wasn’t a huge help in puzzling through our mystery.”

“Maybe not, but we’ve been busy this morning immersing ourselves in other ways.” His lips twist up again, and it takes all my willpower to not lift a finger to trace them. “But yes. Good plan. Now we just have to remember exactly what we were doing in ’99.”

“Let’s see,” I say, willing the heavy dose of caffeine to unlock still untapped potential in the cobwebbed recesses of my mind. Things and places and people I haven’t let myself dwell on in years.

Really, Rocco isn’t wrong. The research we’ve been very busily working on today does feel rather prudent of us; it’s been one steady stream of memories since he’d left me alone for his 7-Eleven run. Maybe one of those memories will lead us to the answer we need now. Though it’s hard to say how the clear-as-day mental picture of him wearing nothing but a Santa hat while prancing around his house to “Run Rudolph Run” after losing a particularly spicy game of strip poker could save us. I’d always been terrible at card games, but he’d graciously let me win.

We did have plenty of memories that didn’t involve nudity. Obviously. They just . . . don’t seem to be my mind’s priority at the moment.

“It was a good day,” I say, because I know without a doubt it had been. I’d woken up New Year’s Eve morning feeling as content and as hopeful as ever. Which, of course, only made the events to come that evening more devastating. I put my empty coffee cup on the nightstand and close my eyes. Focus. No easy feat with Rocco’s icy-blue eyes pinned on me. Though they seem . . . less icy now, more summer sky blue. It must be a trick of the morning light. “We were hungover New Year’s Eve morning. I remember you serving me in bed: coffee and a chocolate chip banana muffin from the place around the corner we loved.”

“You remember what kind of muffin you ate that morning?” I can hear the surprise in his voice, and I feel instantly embarrassed. Like I gave too much away—the care and emphasis I placed on what must be such a throwaway gesture for him. But it had been the opposite of throwaway to me; it was one more item on a carefully logged list of evidence of real affection. Or what I’d thought had been real at the time.

I shrug. “It was my favorite. Still is. So when you’d make a run for me, that’s what you’d get. It’s not there anymore, the café. I checked a few years back, in a moment of weakness, when I had an intense craving. Some magical juice elixir place now.”

“Of course it is,” he says, and I can hear his smile even though my eyes are still closed. “But I remember that, too, now that you said it. You did love those muffins.” He chuckles, his elbow gently brushing against mine. “Got me hooked on them, too. They reminded me of you every time I went . . . after the fact. Because I did think about you. Even if I was a massive jackass who went about everything the absolute wrong way. Like I said last night, I’d been so laser focused on Piper for so long. Maybe the dream had changed, maybe you were changing it, but I was . . . too young and too stupid to put the pieces together.”

I nod because I’m afraid if I say anything more about it, I’ll cry. And there’s more important things to do right now than to cry about dusty history. Especially if we might have the chance to rewrite some of it. “Right,” I say, clearing my throat. “So let’s see, we were mildly hungover. It was the holiday season, so you were fielding party requests right and left. Being, you know, you. I remember joking about how it was time for you to hire an assistant to track your social needs. You turned down almost every invite, except . . .”

Except.

I can see it now, the glitzy, fabulous party in Hollywood Hills. The sprawling white-columned mansion of a Cutie Central castmate, a nepotism baby whose road in Hollywood was neatly paved, however briefly, by her hotshot entertainment-lawyer daddy. We’d gone for the novelty; anyone who was anyone would be there. We were young dreamers, desperate enough for that to be alluring. Plus, she’d promised a champagne fountain the size of a small swimming pool in the backyard. I had to see it in person to believe anyone could be that gaudy. (Spoiler: yes, in fact, they could.)

My eyes snap open. “Let’s go get glam. Because we have a party tonight.”

* * *

My arms are in an inverted backward pretzel, trying and failing to tug up the zipper on my much snugger than anticipated new red sequin minidress, when a series of loud knocks come from the door.

“My god, I have white hair, Beatrix,” Rocco calls out. “WHITE HAIR. I always envisioned myself as a silver fox, don’t get me wrong. But I was hoping for another good decade or two first. If—when—we make it back, Lanie will be so mega pissed at me.”

I laugh, dropping my arms in surrender as I make my way to the door. I’ll need Rocco’s help to finish the job. Plus perhaps another Y2K miracle. “It can’t be that bad. The box clearly said ‘Frosty Blonde.’ It may have been my first bleach job, sure, but how hard can it be to—” I unlock the door and tug it open. “Oh.”

A white fox then. Very white. Also very surprisingly foxy. An utter shock to my system, because I’ve never before this moment been so aroused by white hair.

Rocco is looking similarly stunned. His eyes widen as they drink me in, from the intentionally messy updo à la a youthful Alicia Silverstone I perfected back in the day—and was pretty damn excited to pull out of the vault for tonight, no matter how ridiculous it may look on a thirtysomething adult woman—to the tiny sequins that accentuate every curve and dip of my chest and waistline, a few feet of exposed leg, and chunky silver platforms that may very well test the whole “can we die while time traveling?” question many times over before the night ends.

“Wow. You look . . .” He shakes his head. “Like a total ’90s dream girl. Well, woman. Dream woman.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You look nice, too. For a ’90s boy. Man.” And he does, in a way that only Rocco could manage to pull off—fresh white hair and all—in baggy wide-leg black jeans and a funky neon color-blocked button-up shirt. Thick silver chain peeking out from his neckline, a fake mini hoop on his left ear. Large wraparound shades clipped to his shirt pocket for added disguise if needed. Today’s thrift shop—all goods we actually paid for this time, thanks to Rocco’s funds—proved to be a treasure trove. The look is much flashier than anything Rocco would have gone for back in the day. He wore tracksuits or sweatsuits roughly ninety percent of the time; designer suits for five; birthday suit to round out one hundred. A suit guy through and through. But for tonight’s purposes, the more flash, the better.

“Remind me again, though, why you didn’t have to bleach your hair?”

I shrug. “Perk of having a face no one but past me would care enough to recognize, what can I say? Now get in here and help zip me up.”

He steps inside, grinning as he shuts the door behind us. “You sure you got your directions straight? You wouldn’t prefer I maneuver it further down?”

Shit, yes. That does sound appealing. But it seems unlikely we’ll somehow tunnel our way back to the proper year through our twisted motel-room sheets. “Clever. But we have a party to stalk.”

He sighs, laying a warm palm against the exposed skin on my back, lingering for a few seconds, almost long enough for me to change my mind, before tugging the zipper to the top.

I make myself step away to gather my other newly thrifted gems: a long lapeled jacket, easily double the length of this dress—shiny black pleather, the edges and cuffs lined in faux fur—and a sparkly red clutch, label long gone, probably from the Deb.

“Do you think . . . the next twenty-four hours are meant to be our redo?” he asks, suddenly right behind me. Not touching, though close enough I can feel his warmth. The golden Rocco glow that absorbed me so wholly the first time around. A comfort, an invite, a torment, somehow all in one.

Our redo.Past or present, I’m not sure which he means. I’m not sure that it matters, the difference between the two. What the universe is not-so-subtly encouraging us to reconsider or redirect.

I think again about my dad, still alive in Tucson—assuming there’s a whole wide world beyond us, all exactly as it was. That this version of LA isn’t just a rogue glitch, a one-off anomaly.

Even still, the universe put me here. With Rocco. Surely if there’s a solution, a way out, it begins and ends with us?

But how would we change something about our relationship—one small thing, even—without possibly changing everything to come after?

Or is that the point, to change everything? Upend all we hold dear in our normal lives, one massive do-over stretching from here to then, a glittering thread in the cosmos—seventeen years rewritten in the stars, a remaking that transforms everything we know?

Or what if leaving this time, this place, isn’t the end goal? If there’s nothing to correct, alter, shift. Just some tiny tear in the fabric of time, a chance snag we somehow drove through head-on down Sunset Boulevard? Or maybe it’s Delilah. Maybe she’s the bridge between times.

I shrug. Walk toward the door without glancing back at Rocco.

I need fresh evening air. Some space and time—of which there’s not nearly enough, so few minutes separating Rocco and me from the new millennium.

And I need some really fucking expensive champagne.

* * *

“Why did we come here?” Rocco asks, his arm looping through mine as we make our way up the massive circular drive. We’d parked Delilah right inside the front gate, not wanting to bring any valet’s attention to the fact that a 2000 model could look so . . . lovingly aged. “Back then, I mean. It doesn’t seem like our usual jam. Too highbrow. Less Del Taco, more Moonshadows.”

“You forget, you were still a fledgling baby star back then.” I clutch Rocco’s arm tightly, laser focused on the cobblestoned drive and staying upright in these platforms. “You might have had pride—and simple tastes—but you weren’t above a little elbow rubbing for a good cause. Besides, I think you’d heard Steven Spielberg would be here. You never got over losing that part in Jurassic Park and were so determined to make it onto his radar.”

“You had to remind me,” he mutters. “The role that got away.”

I laugh. It stops short, however, as we step off the drive onto the lantern-lit walkway to the house, a walkway that ends with two dapperly dressed Hulk-like security guards overseeing the door.

I pull Rocco to a stop. “Why is it just now occurring to me that there’s a list? And we aren’t on it? Or we are, but, you know, the ’99 version of ourselves, who are either here or expecting to be let in shortly.”

“Please, Bea. Who do you think I am?” He turns to me, his grin so disarming I’m unable to do anything but nod and follow as he tugs me forward.

“Good evening,” the elder of the two guards says, a pristinely mustached Black man who’s roughly Rocco’s height and perhaps double his width.

“May I ask your name?” the second chimes in smoothly before we can answer, like these are their assigned lines for the evening. Bodyguard#1 and #2, all speaking bits split fifty-fifty. What #2, a white man who looks fresh out of school, lacks in height he makes up for with thickness, and his beady eyes say less “Happy holidays to you and yours!” and more “I’ll serve your innards for Christmas dinner if you mess with this family.”

I smile too widely—not fooling anyone, I’m sure—and turn to Rocco.

“Good evening, I’m Tom Richards, and this is my wife. Debbie.” He pulls me in even closer, my parakeet heart nearly beating a hole through my chest.

Bodyguard #2 pulls a list folded like a handkerchief from his breast pocket. Unfolds it, too slowly, and reads through, even more slowly still. I watch as his eyes skim, nearing the bottom, until he gives the tiniest of tight-lipped smiles. “Welcome,” he says, at which point #1 steps to the door, pulling it open with one arm, grandly gesturing us inside with the other.

“Who the fuck are Tom and Debbie Richards?” I whisper as we step into the glistening marble foyer, surrounded on all sides by organized chaos. Servers in tuxedos and little black dresses shuffling around with silver trays heavy with bubbling flutes, a woman on a harp stringing a New Age version of Jingle Bells, and other newly arrived guests, all staring up at the three-story staircase spiraling like a vortex above our heads.

“My old manager,” he laughs, pulling me further away from the door and into the crowd. “My current manager, too.”

“Right. I remember seeing him on set. But was that a good idea?”

“I think so? If I recall correctly—and I’d say I’m ninety percent certain about this—he didn’t show that night. He was planning on it, mostly because he’s the one who put the bug about Spielberg in my ear. But he got too shitfaced at the other rounds of holiday parties and never showed. It was a rough time for him. He sobered up soon after. ‘New millennium, new man,’ he’d say.”

“Okay.” My nerves loosen, at least marginally. “That might work then. If you’re sure he won’t show up and get disgruntled when they turn him away.”

“Nah. And old Tommy is harmless. He’d probably just smile and walk off, secretly piss on their bushes on the way out.”

He sweeps me through the room then, parting the crowds like he was born to do this—which, really, I suppose he was—until we’re stepping back outside through wide glass doors opened to what feels like an endless patio covered in twinkling trellises on all sides, a canopy of lights strung above us as far as my eyes can see. It’s pure magic and also deeply bizarre, the immediate sensation that I’ve been here before, done exactly this. I’m reliving a moment over again in a way that should absolutely be impossible.

There are familiar faces in the crowd, but not ones I knew personally, aside from a few acquaintances from Cutie Central. B- and C-list mostly, with a few up-and-coming As. One corner of the patio is especially rowdy, swallowed up by a small mob of Nickelodeon elite, cast members of All That. The redhead boy from the show—Danny something?—appears to be enjoying a massive ice luge. Upside down, ankles held high up in the air. He can’t be a day over eighteen, but who am I to judge? I was practically a kid, too.

My eyes continue their scan, and I see it then, the towering fountain, four ornate tiers spraying golden bubbles into the large circular pool at the base. A server on each side dips flutes in, hands them out to guests, most of whom seem to be double fisting. Pure class.

We’d had too much fun mocking the fountain that night, Rocco and I. And by mocking, I mean we couldn’t resist sampling one glass after another, valiantly doing our best to help drain the supply. We likely consumed thousands of dollars’ worth between the two of us. It’s why I’d been so hungover the next morning, Rocco resuscitating me with my favorite muffin and coffee.

So it shouldn’t shock me as much as it does, what I see next:

Rocco and I, sneaking over on exaggerated tiptoes—my feet bare, heels abandoned (and then lost altogether, I remember now, a fresh pair of patent leather Steve Maddens)—to the edge of the fountain behind the servers’ backs, dipping our flutes in for a refill before running off, flushed and giggling, disappearing back into the crowd.

I follow them.

It’s not a conscious decision; I just need to see them again. Need to see me. Because I’m so wildly, out-of-my-mind desperate for some scrap of a clue, any kind of sign, about why now, why us, why any of this bizarre fucking traipse back to 1999.

“Be careful,” Rocco says quietly, following close behind. “Don’t let them—”

It’s too late, though, because she, me, Trixie, she’s looked back over her shoulder.

And she’s staring straight at me.