in another life, i could be your girl
we'd keep all our promises
it'd be us against the world
in another life, i would make you stay

the one that got away - katy perry

5 Minutes, 1 Second:

Sometimes, at night, when he is laying in bed next to his wife and he's in that stage where you know sleep is about to come but it is still five minutes away, he likes to imagine that they were in love once. That they laid in the grass with their hands all over each other, whispering secrets and watching daytime fade into the moon and the stars, talking and doing nothing, nothing at all but being them, but being eternal and infinite and everything that is good and right in the world. He can tell himself all the times they went to the mall and sat on the benches and ate ice cream out of each other's cones and smiled at each other with red lips that were cool to the couch, kissed with mouths that tasted of mint chocolate chip (her) and straight vanilla (his) meant something. He can go over that the sunsets spent at the beach, tucked in a corner formed out of rock and cliff and beauty, watching the waves roll in with their toes in their sand and sitting on his favorite blue beach towel that always smelled like sun, sand, and her, all the times he wants, but that doesn't mean anything.

He will always lay on his side and tuck an arm around his wife's midsection before drifting off into sleep. He is in love with his wife and she knows it, it was in their handwritten wedding vows, and as he reaches up to stroke a piece of her hair, he will fall asleep knowing that the past and the present are two very different things but that doesn't mean he can't carry regrets and wishes. Then, he will wake up in the morning with nothing on his mind except floating memories of odd dreams in his head, until his wife groans and his daughter cries for Daddy or Mommy. As of late, he's been saying good morning to his wife's belly and their soon-to-come son.

His days are filled with kisses and hosting a talk show, finger-painting and breathing exercises, the short commute between fabulous studio and breathtaking Los Angeles home. His days are filled with love, and honestly and truthfully he doesn't think about her at all, not at all, even shuts her out if he sees her face on a magazine. There is no thought of her in his head if he can help it. After all, he is the author of Old Flame Old Shame, an amazingly popular self-help book for getting over exes.

But in those minutes, he relives the infinite.

5 Minutes:

The last time he sees her (for good) is the day that he proposes to Cat Valentine. He's in the grocery store with the ring in his pocket, buying everything he needs to formulate a romantic home-made meal of all of her favorite foods, when he meets her in the baking supplies isle. She is clutching a bag of flour to her chest with one arm and holding the hand of her daughter, barely four, with the other hand.

She almost drops the bag of flour when she sees him. "Robbie."

He almost lets go of the cart when he sees her. "Trina."

The ring in his pocket feels very heavy and he can feel the slight push of the corner of the box against his thigh all of a sudden. He doesn't know what to do so he stands there, staring at her, at the little girl with a lollipop in her mouth, at the engagement ring on Trina's finger.

"What have you been up to?" She asks, shifting weight from one side of her body to the other and visibly tightening her grip on the little girl as if to say, do not speak, I will tell you later.

"Um. Not much, actually. How about you?"

"He asked me to marry him," Trina says. She offers a meek smile.

This is not the Trina Vega I knew, he thinks. "That's fantastic. I'm, um, I'm asking Cat to marry me tonight, actually. What a coincidence."

"So you don't love me anymore?" Trina laughs it off.

"Nope."

"Well, I have to go-"

"I have to go-"

"Another coincidence? How funny."

It's not funny. "Yeah. Well, hey, Trina, you look great, and it was so good to see you."

"You too, Robbie."

She walks by him on the way out and whispers in his ear: "That's a fucking lie. You'll always love me."

She might as well have turned into a vampire and bit him, burned her name into his arm, or scarred her face across his chest, or something more dramatic in nature, because whispers and awkward meetings are not what the old Trina Vega was made out of.

4 Minutes:

His second guest on The Juice is Trina Vega, but he's still the co-host to Adrian Romano, who introduces Trina with a sweep of her arms. Trina walks in from the right of the stage (left on the screen) and hugs Adrian, tells her she looks great, and Adrian returns both favors. When the women have taken their seats back, Robbie starts to sweat.

"So, Trina!" Adrian chirps, crossing her legs. Adrian is ridiculous, nothing but a caricature of perfection with blonde hair and skin so tan it's almost orange, currently wearing a yellow dress with a modest neckline but a short skirt and white heels. She looks like virtually every other talk show host out there, and that irks Robbie, and he decides to think about that while Adrian asks The Question: "Can you tell me more about your little scandal?"

"My little scandal?" Trina is shocked and scoffs, her eyes widening. "Do you mean my daughter?"

"Yes. That name you gave her. . ."

Trina smiles. "Well, it was up to me. Beck was with her at the moment, probably fucking her brains out while I was giving birth to our child, and that sort of pissed me off. So I named her after her and stuck her daddy's last name onto her. Jade West Oliver. It has kind of a nice ring to it."

Adrian is a little taken aback, but decides to ask another obvious question: "How did you meet Beck Oliver?"

"I've known him since Hollywood Arts. He was dating Jade back then, and I had a relationship in my senior year with somebody I would prefer not to say-" there was no glance, no giveaway that this somebody I would prefer not to say was sitting in the seat beside Adrian- "but we really met, if you know what I mean, on the set of Summertime. We fell in love instantly. There were a few months between their second-to-last split, and we took advantage of these months, until she-Jade-wanted him back. And that was that. I spent some more time with that somebody I mentioned earlier, but it's always been Beck. He just has a grip on my heart. We're back together, now, and I've legally changed the name of the child to Quinn Natalie Oliver. We are all happy together."

"That's fantastic, I guess, thanks for the scoop. Robbie, you have been just awfully quiet, is there anything you would like to ask Trina?"

"No, Adrian," Robbie says, averting eye contact with anybody and everybody, "I think your interview just about summed it up."

3 Minutes:

Breaking and making up is a blurry concept, at least to Robbie, though he firmly believes that something like this should be black and white. He knows that they were together at one point, a couple of points they were (best) friends with benefits making out in the back of her car, parked by the beach, and she's a little bit tipsy with her fingers curled around a martini glass and she's laughing-honestly laughing, a sound like champagne bottles clinking together-and he's kissing her and everything is perfect, and he knows that at one (expanding) point they were no longer together. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally.

He knows that he asked her out on a date, but they weren't official after that. No, they became official on December 27th, when he gave her edible glitter for Christmas and within the hour they were painting each other's lips with the sugary substance and kissing it off. They didn't even make a dent in the tub, and he told himself that as long as she had edible glitter they would be together, which was weird, but it was exactly the type of thing his paranoia needed. Reassurance.

Trina was not good at reassuring people. Sometimes she would hold his hand in the hallway and literally shout, "This is my boyfriend!" and other times she would push him away. She was like Jade, but worse and better at the same time, and all-around Robbie considered his relationship with Trina to be better than Beck&Jade. Even if his status on TheSlap was always It's Complicated while Beck&Jade's were always In a Relationship with Jade/Beck.

Robbie did not like the lack of black and white. He blames this lack on the fact that he can not tell you the official ending date. He thinks it was the 27th of June, but he isn't sure. All he knows is that she slowly faded away until he did not hear from her for a week, and then he assumed they were done, and he dated this chick named Olivia Nance for a little while.

(Then, Robbie and Trina started up again, except this time there was real glitter to kiss off and pretty lights to steal Trina away from him. Parties. Movie premieres. Everything. Everywhere.)

2 Minutes:

There is a beginning, and that beginning is on Robbie's first day of Hollywood Arts after getting accepted for guitar, and he has not yet picked up Rex. (He would lose Rex shortly before picking up with Trina-Rex was nothing but a crutch.)

He bumps into Trina and she spills her coffee all over her fabulous-first-day outfit, and she slaps him and walks away until she has no reason to care about him after her sister gets accepted. (Their first official words to each other were, "You spilled coffee on me." "I'm sorry." "It's cool. That outfit was stupid I don't know what I was thinking. I was a sophomore, y'know?" "I'm a sophomore. "So you get my point.")

They always had a bond. He guesses the bond really started with Pooka fish and grew with manicures. (Their third official date-he thinks-was to a nail salon.)

They did not have enough firsts or enough lasts to satisfy Robbie and he knows that. But Robbie is married and Trina is the one that got away. After high school, Robbie should've known he was doomed, because people changed and suddenly their changed selves just weren't compatible and Trina traded fruity slightly-alcoholic drinks for tequila, playful edible glitter for the real stuff, and she had several fifteen minutes of fame. Dating Beck Oliver. Naming her kid Jade West. Marrying Beck Oliver. (Trina Oliver still sounds weird on his tongue, but he's never said it out loud, just thought it.) Renaming her kid. She was always just looking for another fifteen more minutes, like a teenager reluctant to get out of bed in the morning, she just wanted fame. And, he supposes, fame she did get. She always looks great with Beck in those pictures he tries really hard not to look at, the ones in the magazines with the silly captions like, TRINA OLIVER SPORTS A STYLIN DRESS WITH HER HOT HUBBY, BECK.

There is an ending, Robbie supposes, but nothing is ever black and white and he doesn't know with Trina and tomorrow everything might be different. He has learned this lesson. He has taught this lesson in a book, though this book was not based off of Trina because Trina was too special to be an Old Flame, and there was nothing shameful about her.

In Robbie's opinion, anyway.

1 Minute:

One time, they had taken a road trip to find a cliff.

That is the way that Trina's mind works. When she found something dramatic that she wanted to do, she did everything she could do to do that dramatic thing, and Robbie was just lucky enough to come along for the ride.

They made out, on the hood of his beat-up light-blue car, under the stars and the moon, on a cliff overlooking the sea, and that feeling that he felt was right underneath Marrying Cat, Cat Giving Birth to Ruby, Finding Out Cat is Having a Son. Though the first two are tied. But the feeling wasn't from Trina, the feeling was from feeling like himself, from feeling love, and he tells himself over and over that he loved Trina but Trina did not love him and the words are never enough.

He knows she had some passion in there. Their relationship pre-Trina's-several-fifteen-minutes was not for anyone else but themselves.

He remembers that when they were making out, Trina pulled apart suddenly because there was a Katy Perry song on the radio and apparently her sister really loved this particular song. In another life, I could be your girl. She presses his lips against his.

0:01:

Robbie is sleepy. His five minutes of infinity are up. He wraps an arm around Cat and settles in against her, and like always she murmurs softly. "I love you."

"I love you too," Robbie says, and he kisses her neck, and then he is asleep.