About a Girl (28 page)

Speak of the devil and she showed her horns. I peered inside my bag to see my phone lit up with two missed calls and a voicemail from my best friend. I wanted to call her back right away, but I didn’t want to be rude to Kekipi. One day my mind was going to explode from trying to make everyone happy. Placing my bag back on the table, I decided to concentrate on the gay at hand and call Amy first thing in the morning. She would totally understand.

‘Amy’s not the best friend, right? I’m not missing something very important here, am I?’ he asked, a look of concern on his handsome face.

‘Nope, she’s the other best friend. The only best friend now, I suppose.’ I was starting to feel very strongly about everything I said. These cocktails were the best. ‘She’s amazing. I love her.’

‘You love everyone.’ Kekipi flapped a hand at me. ‘You’ll be proposing to me next.’

‘One more of these and I will,’ I agreed. ‘So, tell me more about this karaoke bar.’

‘What are you going to sing?’ I shouted as loudly as I possibly could over a group of three Japanese tourists merrily murdering an Adele song. The karaoke bar was everything Kekipi had promised. Dark, dingy and, most importantly, attached to a twenty-four-hour diner. While I was fine with my frozen pineapple daiquiri for the time being, it was good to know that I was never more than seven minutes away from some bacon.

‘I don’t know,’ Kekipi wailed back. ‘I don’t want to be a cliché.’

‘What do you want to be?’ I asked.

‘Fabulous?’ he suggested, complete with jazz hands. ‘Obviously.’

‘You’re such a cliché,’ I said with a half-hug. ‘Just bust out some Cher and be done with it.’

I left him poring over the song book and took myself for a wander around the bar. Not that there was that much bar to wander around. Sipping on a neon-pink straw and bobbing my head to the music, such as it was, I tiptoed through the groups of sunburned American tourists chugging beers and the not-at-all-sunburned Australians chatting away to some happy-looking locals while a group of Japanese men in suits and loosened ties studied another copy of the massive song book. Other than the professional karaoke-goers, I saw so many men in Hawaiian shirts. And there was me thinking that was just on the telly. Pulling at my hem and pawing at my hair, I found an empty bar stool and decided it was time for a sit-down. Nana was tired. And a bit tipsy.

‘But only a bit,’ I said out loud to a passing cocktail waitress with a pretty blue flower behind her ear. What had Nick said about flowers? I couldn’t remember. Not that it mattered. ‘What does Nick know?’

‘Sorry?’ An exceptionally tall, exceptionally blond and, if you liked the square-jawed six-pack surfer type, exceptionally good-looking man sat down on the bar stool next to me. ‘Nick?’

‘He thinks –’ I poked the icy bits left in the bottom of my glass with my straw ? ‘that he is so clever. He thinks he knows everything.’

‘Right.’ The guy laughed. I eyed him carefully and tried to decide whether I had heard an Australian accent or whether he just looked so much like Vinnie from
Home and Away
that I was adding one into the hot mix. ‘That Nick, eh?’

Nope, he was definitely Australian. I had always had a soft spot for an Aussie. Most of the Australian men I met in London were tall. I liked tall. Most of them were gorgeous. I liked gorgeous. Most of them weren’t interested. I didn’t like that as much.

‘He’s a complete cock,’ I confided in my new friend. ‘But you know, whatever.’

‘I believe you.’ He held out his big, strong hand and I shook it, trying very hard not to giggle. ‘I’m Owen.’

‘I’m …’ I paused and looked off to the left. ‘Vanessa?’

‘Is that a made-up name?’ Owen asked, signalling to the bartender. ‘You don’t sound so sure about it.’

‘It’s not made up.’ I shook my head vehemently and almost immediately fell off my stool. I covered up with a cough and casually slipped back up onto the pleather upholstery. ‘It’s definitely my name.’

‘All right then.’ He shifted his whole body to face me and leaned one very brown elbow on the bar. ‘What’s that you’re drinking?’

‘It’s delicious,’ I replied, slurping the last little bit through my straw. ‘But I do not remember what it is called.’

Owen took the glass from me and knocked back the icy remains, never once breaking eye contact. All of a sudden, I was all of a fluster. I wasn’t good at talking to boys and I was even worse at talking to men. Where was Amy when I needed her? In stupid England, that was where. She was so selfish.

‘Pineapple daiquiri, delicious. Can I buy you another?’ Owen asked, interrupting my chain of thought. He had very pretty blue eyes. Like Nick. Only not, because he wasn’t a knob. Probably. He could be. Most of them were …

‘Vanessa?’ He leaned in a little closer.

‘That,’ I poked him gently in the shoulder, ‘is my name.’

‘OK then.’ Despite the slightly troubled look on his face, he turned to the bartender and ordered two more daiquiris and then turned back to me. ‘What brings you to Hawaii, Vanessa?’

For a reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on, hearing this great big strapping surfer address me with Vanessa’s name really made me chuckle. It took me a moment to choke down a laugh and compose myself well enough to answer.

‘I am a photographer,’ I replied with a winning smile. Or at least I hoped it was a winning smile ? there was a chance I had lipstick all over my teeth. ‘And I’m taking pictures for a magazine.’

‘That’s interesting,’ he said, paying the bartender for our grown-up Slush Puppies and brushing his hair behind his ears. He had sexy ears. ‘You’re not a surfer, then?’

‘I am not,’ I confirmed.

‘Right, right.’ He took a deep breath in through his nose and exhaled slowly. ‘I’m a surfer, myself. Chasing the waves. Waikiki has the best waves in the world.’

‘Isn’t the best surf up on the north shore?’ I asked, not exactly sure how I knew that. ‘And isn’t it better in winter?’

‘Uh, nah, definitely down here.’ Owen pushed my drink towards me and held his up in a toast. ‘To Hawaii.’

‘Hawaii,’ I repeated, searching my memory banks for the source of my stellar surfing knowledge. Was it from
Point Break
? Charlie loved
Point Break
. Actually, I loved
Point Break
. But no …

‘And to new friends,’ he added before taking a massive swig of yellow slush. ‘Christ, that’s cold.’

‘Oh, that’s my friend.’ I buzzed into life and pointed at the stage with teenage-girl excitment as Kekipi took the mic. ‘I came with him.’

‘Came with him, came with him?’ Owen raised a concerned eyebrow. Also blond. Pierced. Again, very sexy.

‘Well, no.’ I looked at him like he was very stupid. Which I was starting to realize in all likelihood he was. ‘Obvs.’

‘Obvs?’ He didn’t seem to understand until Kekipi screamed out, ‘Whitney Houston, gone but never forgotten,’ before giving what was actually a surprisingly good performance of ‘I’m Every Woman’.

‘Oh, obvs.’ Owen seemed to get it quite quickly once Kekipi started dancing. Very well. ‘He’s gay?’

‘He’s gay as a goose,’ I nodded.

He seemed confused. Again. ‘Are geese gay?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’ I looked into my lurid yellow drink and was suddenly overcome with the intense desire to not be drinking it any more. ‘It seemed right when I said it.’

‘Yeah, I guess like you thought you knew about surfing,’ he said with an extraordinarily patronizing laugh. Before I could decide how I felt about it, I watched him place his large, tanned hand on my thigh. My eyes travelled slowly from said hand, up his muscular arm, across his broad, tight-T-shirt-covered chest and up to his handsome face. ‘Am I right, Vanessa?’

I stopped and breathed for a moment. It shouldn’t have been so hard to think clearly ? I’d barely had anything to drink. Or at least I couldn’t remember having had that much to drink. Maybe I’d lost track once me and Kekipi had started the boy talk. And we did have those shots while he was telling me all about his ex, the male burlesque dancer.

‘Vanessa.’ Owen squeezed my thigh a little bit higher up than I was entirely comfortable with. ‘How about we finish these drinks and get out of here? I reckon your mate can do without you, don’t you think?’

I was torn. Tess would make an awkward excuse, go to the bathroom and try to sneak off home without him seeing her. Vanessa would have gone to the bathroom as well but only to take off her knickers and save him a job in the taxi.

‘I don’t feel very well,’ I replied, slipping off the stool with all the grace of a drugged monkey and pushing people out of the way until I got to the ladies’ loos. I dug through my handbag, spilling lip balms and old receipts and sticks of chewing gum all over the floor, trying to find my phone. After poking everything in the bottom of the bag and breaking an already manky nail into the bargain, I bashed something that lit up and pulled it out. I had four missed calls from Amy. Backing into a stall and flapping at the lock at the same time, I sat down on the toilet seat and pressed redial. I needed to hear her voice.

‘Thank fuck for that,’ she yelled. ‘I thought you were dead!’

Maybe I didn’t need to hear her voice.

‘What are you doing? You were supposed to call me every day?’ She didn’t even pause for breath. ‘What’s going on? Are you in prison?’

‘I’m in a karaoke bar,’ I whispered as loudly as I dared. I was suddenly gripped with the fear that Owen would come into the toilets looking for me. ‘Why would I be in prison? Are you OK?’

‘Why can’t I hear karaoke then?’ Amy wanted her own questions answered before she got to mine. ‘Hmm?’

‘Because I’m in the lav?’ I offered.

‘Tess Brookes, if you are having a slash while you’re on the phone to me, we’re going to fall out.’ Once again, she was using a volume and a pitch that a pre-puberty Justin Bieber would have found difficult to emulate. ‘Call me back, you filthy mare.’

‘I’m not having a …’ I couldn’t bring myself to say it. ‘I’m just in the toilet. I’m hiding from a man. My friend is singing Whitney.’

‘Friend?’ She was immediately suspicious. ‘Is this the hot guy?’

‘He’s gay,’ I replied.

‘The hot guy is gay?’ she asked.

‘No, not my hot guy guy.’ I answered. ‘But the gay guy is hot.’

‘And where is your hot guy?’

‘He’s not my hot guy. I’m with the gay.’

‘So you’re out with a hot gay guy and not the hot guy who isn’t gay?’

Now I was confused.

‘Why would I be in prison?’ I pressed my entire face against the cold metal of the toilet stall and sighed. It felt lovely. And then I remembered I was in a toilet stall and that was disgusting. I rubbed at my cheek with toilet paper and made a very unattractive face. I was almost definitely going to throw up.

‘Um, the whole identity theft thing?’ she reminded me.

‘I don’t think you can go to prison for that,’ I said, a hot feeling flushing across my face, followed by a very unpleasant cold sweat. Bleurgh. ‘I haven’t, like, taken out credit cards in her name or anything.’

‘No, you’ve just stolen loads of her stuff and are using her name to get a job,’ Amy reasoned. ‘Totally legal. Anyway, tell me everything. I need an update.’

‘Aims, I’ve got to go,’ I said, now desperate to puke and convinced that Interpol would be outside with a warrant for my arrest. Oh, to go back in time by five minutes when the only thing I had to worry about was a vaguely rapey Australian who knew nothing about surfing. ‘I’ll call you later.’

‘You won’t, though,’ she wailed. ‘Talk to me now. I miss you.’

‘Amy, seriously.’ I retched as delicately as possible and crashed forward, kneeling on the floor and trying to wheel around in the tiny cubicle. It was like trying to get a Chieftain tank to do a three-point turn in a phone box. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later. I love you.’

I just managed to get my phone back in my bag and pull my hair up behind my head before I let out a spectacular technicoloured yawn into the toilet bowl. Sitting back against the metal partition, I panted, dabbing delicately at my mouth with toilet paper. I was such a lady. Even my puke was neon yellow.

‘Nick told me about the surf,’ I told the little white toilet paper dispenser, my voice full of awe. ‘He told me this afternoon at the waterfall.’

‘Of course he did,’ the toilet dispenser said back to me in a squeaky, judgemental voice, ‘because Nick knows everything.’

‘Nick does know everything,’ I agreed, hoping the toilet dispenser was taking the piss, like I was. I would be so mad if the inanimate object I was talking to was Team Knobhead. But it didn’t have another answer. And so I leaned over the toilet, threw up once more, rinsed out my mouth at the tap and gave a very confused-looking Hawaiian woman a very serious nod on my way out.

‘
Mahalo
,’ I whispered.

Back in the bar, Kekipi was still on stage. The crowd didn’t seem terribly enthused with his performance, which as far as I could tell was quite good. Then I realized I’d been in the toilets for fifteen minutes and he was singing a different song. Kekipi had taken the stage and he was not giving it back.

‘Hey, Vanessa.’

Someone reached out and grabbed my arm. That someone was Owen.

‘I wondered where you’d gone.’ He loosened his grip slightly but did not let go. I did not like it. ‘Where were you?’

‘Throwing up,’ I answered. Owen let go of my arm. ‘I think I should go home.’

It was fascinating to watch whatever internal drama was going on inside his head play out on his handsome, simple face. Still sitting on the bar stool, I saw him weigh up his options. It was late, there weren’t really any other girls in the bar, he had already bought me a drink and, to be fair, I’d been quite flirty. But I had also vomited. What would he do?

‘Fuck it, let’s go back to mine.’ He tightened his grip again and hopped off his stool. ‘Come on.’

‘I don’t want to go to yours,’ I said, shaking my arm loose. ‘Get off.’

‘The lady said get off,’ a voice boomed across the room, backed by a Casio keyboard version of ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’. ‘Don’t make me come over there.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Owen said with a wildly unattractive snigger. ‘Gay as a goose.’