I Heart Hollywood (28 page)

Walking my fingers along the floor until the tips just reached my top, I noticed another larger, darker shirt beside it. A black, collarless shirt looking just like the millions of work shirts from The Union that Jenny left lying around our apartment. Oh shit. Oh shit shit shit shit shit. Really not wanting to confirm what was already coming rushing back to me, I turned my head slowly. Lying beside me, completely out of it, was Joe. I didn’t dare peek under the covers but next to his shirt were his shoes. And next to them, his trousers. Oh shit shit shit shit. Without thinking, I bolted out of the bed as fast as my wobbly legs would carry me, grabbed my phone from the bedside table and made for the door.

‘Jenny!’ I yelled, hammering her door down, while pulling on my T-shirt in the hallway. I nodded at a passing couple, too stressed to be embarrassed about being busted in my underwear in a hotel hallway. This was the walk of shame in the extreme. ‘Jenny, for fuck’s sake, open the door.’

A couple of seconds later, I heard the latch click and the door gave way to reveal a mighty pissed-off-looking Jenny. ‘Angela, it’s really, really freaking early. What the fuck?’

‘Just let me in,’ I pushed past her into the identical hotel room. Unsurprisingly for Jenny, it was a complete shit-tip. Clothes, carrier bags, shoes and towels everywhere. ‘I need your help.’

‘What else am I here for?’ she muttered, closing the door behind me. ‘It’s not like I have a hangover or anything.’

‘Where were you last night?’ I asked, surveying the bombsite that was her room. From the four-inch heels and slinky dress lying in a silky, spiky pool by her bed, I guessed she’d been out.

‘I told you, Tessa invited me to the awards thing she was doing. You got my message, right?’ Jenny yawned and grabbed the hotel phone. ‘Hi, could I get coffee and uh, I don’t know, toast?’ She paused and gave me a questioning look. I nodded back, knowing for a fact that I wouldn’t be eating anything for a good couple of hours yet. ‘Yeah, coffee and toast sent up? Thanks.’ She threw herself backwards on the bed and started popping M&Ms from an open pack on the bedside table. ‘I love being on the other end of that phone. So what’s up? You look like shit.’

Gingerly, I joined her on the bed, trying not to make it bounce for fear of vomming. ‘Uh, I think I’ve done something really stupid?’

‘So what’s new?’ Jenny raised an eyebrow. ‘I told you not to go meet James yesterday. What did you do now?’

‘It’s kind of a “who did I do?” problem.’

‘What?’

I knew she was paying attention when the M&Ms she was throwing down her throat missed her mouth and clattered against the window. ‘Angie, what the hell?’

‘Well, things didn’t go well with James and so I came back and had a couple of drinks.’ I really hadn’t thought this through. How could I phrase this? ‘A lot of drinks, actually. And then I went upstairs for more drinks.’

‘When we get back to New York, I swear I’m putting you in AA,’ Jenny muttered. ‘Or at least getting you one of those Lindsay Lohan ankle monitors. You picked up a guy in the bar?’

‘Mm-hmm,’ I traced the edge of my big toenail and wondered when I’d chipped my pedicure. ‘Jenny, I’m such an idiot.’

‘Angie,’ Jenny scooted across the bed and put an arm around my shoulders. ‘People do stuff when they’re stressed, calm down. What was it your mom said to me when I lost Kirsten Dunst’s dry cleaning? Worse things happen at sea?’

‘I think in this instance my mum would say, “Angela you great big dirty slag, I can’t believe you shagged the barman”,’ I took a deep breath and looked up. This time Jenny couldn’t even pick up the M&Ms; her hand was frozen in mid-air.

‘Joe?’

‘Joe.’

I wrinkled my nose, trying to force my prickling tears back into my eyes.

‘You slept with Joe?’

The arm around my shoulders had got very tense all of a sudden.

‘I think so.’ I picked out a red M&M and passed it to her. ‘I just woke up and, I don’t remember, but he’s in my bed and his clothes are not.’

‘He’s still there now?’ Suddenly she was on her feet. ‘He’s in your room?’

‘Yes, hence my being in here,’ I replied, steadying myself on the bed. Fast movement, queasy stomach. Badness. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Angie, you were so drunk you don’t even remember what happened, right?’ she bolted towards the door. I followed as quickly as I could. Not that quickly. ‘And he was working so he was sober, at least he should have been. And I hardly think you threw yourself at him, you don’t exactly have any precedent for one-night stands. I’m gonna kill him.’

‘Jenny, wait,’ I chased her down the corridor, pulling my T-shirt as far over my pants as I could. ‘I don’t even know what happened, please don’t—’

But it was too late: she’d swiped her key card and thrown open my room door before I could catch her.

‘OK assface,’ I heard her yell as I staggered through the door.

‘Jenny, please.’

But aside from the wild-eyed brunette slamming into the bathroom, it was empty. No barmen in the bed; no closeted gay movie stars in the bathroom: no one.

‘Jenny, will you please calm down and talk to me?’ I closed the door behind me, giving the same couple that had passed me in my pants earlier a polite wave. ‘Please?’

‘Angie, I just can’t believe he would do this,’ she said, dropping to her knees and checking under the bed.

‘I don’t think he’s under there.’ I stepped around the pile of bottles by the mini-bar and retrieved the last standing Diet Coke. ‘As embarrassed as he might be about waking up in my bed.’

‘He had better be on a plane to Mexico,’ Jenny said, clambering back to her feet.

‘I’m not that bad.’ I closed the curtains, still feeling a little mogwai-ish. Turned out bright lights and eating-slash-drinking after midnight were bad for me too. ‘Although I’m guessing it wasn’t my best performance.’

‘Oh shit, Angie,’ Jenny stopped for a split second. ‘That’s so not what I mean. Don’t you even feel bad about this for a second. He
totally
took advantage of you and for that I’m going to end him.’

‘You’re not pissed off?’

‘Why would I be pissed?’

‘Because I’m a big slag who can’t remember doing it with the boy you were planning on doing it with?’

Jenny laughed. ‘Honey, I think we already agreed that I’m so not ready to do it with anyone. Of course I’m not pissed—not with you, anyway. You’re my best friend. You do stupid stuff. I sort it out. This is our thing, it’s the thing that we do.’

‘This is true,’ I agreed, starting to sip the water. At least the drama had taken my mind off my hangover. Until now. ‘I just can’t believe I’m so stupid. What am I going to tell Alex?’

‘You’re not going to tell Alex anything,’

‘But I can’t lie to him.’

‘And what’s going to happen? Assuming he comes to his senses over all this James Jacobs shit and I allow him to get back with you, if you tell him he’ll break up with you all over again.’ Jenny pulled me over to the bed. ‘It’s not like you’re getting a free pass, you still have to feel like a piece of crap, but telling Alex is the stupidest thing you can do. Yeah, you’ll clear your conscience but he’ll never ever forgive you. You want to lose him over a drunk one-night stand?’

‘Not really. Not if I haven’t already lost him over a nonexistent affair. I can’t believe this has happened.’ I buried my face in a pillow. ‘As if things weren’t shitty enough.’

‘So, you keeping your mouth shut and my kicking Joe’s ass off the continent aside, what happened with James yesterday?’ Jenny softened for a moment. ‘He wouldn’t speak to Mary?’

I shook my head. ‘He wouldn’t risk it. To be honest, I can completely understand. He doesn’t really know me; it’s not like we’re lifelong besties, is it? And I’m asking him to risk everything he’s worked for by confessing this huge secret that will completely change his life. I suppose there’s a bit of difference between him losing his job and me losing mine. Who am I compared to him, really?’

‘You’re someone who’s telling the truth. That counts for something.’ Jenny picked up my phone and flicked through my messages.

‘Not enough,’ I said. ‘Mary said she was going to give the
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interview the go-ahead if I didn’t get back to her last night. I didn’t get back to her last night. God, how have I managed to get myself into this state?’

‘The state where we’re two hot single girls.’ She gave me my phone back. “And you’re about to make a ton of money from selling a sordid sex story? Awesome.’

‘I do love that you always find a bright side,’ I said, giving her a squeeze.

‘That’s my job,’ she replied. ‘Alongside my new stellar styling career. Tell me I can style the shoot?’

‘If there has to be a shoot, you can style the shoot,’ I choked. And then burst into tears.

Jenny pulled me in for a full-on, nose-squishing, tear-choking hug. ‘Angela Clark, what am I going to do with you?’

Chapter Fourteen

Once she’d run me a bath, removed all sharp edges and laid out a comfortably noncontroversial outfit on the bed, Jenny left the room, allegedly to call Tessa about a styling meeting that afternoon, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it was to go and find, beat and kill Joe. Luckily, there was altogether too much going off in my head for me to process any of it—James, Alex, Mary and—not least of all—my very first-ever one-night stand, which had been so incredibly fantastic that I couldn’t remember any of it and he had vanished off the face of the earth. I stripped off, dropping my T-shirt and underwear straight in the bin. I was in no rush to remember anything that had happened in them ever again.

The bath was reassuringly hot, taking my breath away as my legs turned tomato red under the water. I breathed out slowly, slipping the rest of my body under the water, feeling the scorching heat turn to comforting warmth. I pulled my arm up out of the water and considered how the bottom half had already gone fully lobster, while the top was still pale pink. And that was as about as intellectual as I felt like being.

After the third failed attempt at turning the cold tap on with my left foot, I realized the insistent chirping coming from the bedroom was my phone. I let it ring through three times, before I realized whoever was calling was not giving up easily. Sloshing out of the bath, I padded through the bedroom, to see who wanted to speak to me so desperately. Three missed calls: two from Mary, one from a strange 818 number but no messages. Before I could take a look at the 818 number again, the phone buzzed into life in my hands. Mary again.

‘Hi, Mary.’ I had to bite the bullet sooner or later so it might as well be while I was dripping wet and naked.

‘Why the hell aren’t you answering your hotel phone?’ she yelled. I glanced over to see the receiver hanging off the bedside table. Clearly a casualty of my night of passion. ‘Or the ten thousand emails I’ve sent you?’

‘Sorry.’ I looked around for my handbag. Had I taken it with me to the bar? ‘Slightly mad night.’ All I wanted to ask was whether or not I was fired, but I was so scared that she’d say yes.

‘You had a mad night? Were you on a conference call until eleven with the publishers, trying to convince them to hold your James Jacobs story? They’re convinced it’s going to leak before we publish next week. Tell me you’ve got him sitting tight?’

‘Well he’s hardly going to go and brag about me elsewhere, is he?’ I grumbled, looking around for something to wear. The air-con in The Hollywood was not conducive to solo nudity.

‘Angela, I don’t think you understand,’ Mary carried on. ‘Once someone’s made a decision like this, there’s usually not a lot of time to capitalize on it. The last thing we want is for him to change his mind or, even worse, decide that he’s so happy with the world knowing he’s gay that he runs around the city making out with God knows who before the issue breaks.’

I froze on my hands and knees, pulling open the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. ‘What?’

‘What do you mean what?’ Mary sounded as confused as I was. ‘Tell me you’ve booked in the new interview time?’

‘New interview?’

‘With James and his boyfriend?’

I sat back on my knees. ‘You know?’

‘Of course I know. Are you OK? Have you been drinking?’ She started talking very slowly. ‘I spoke to James yesterday. He said it was all organized, that you were going to do the interview and that he wanted it to run in this week’s
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. Angela, I need your copy by tomorrow. We’re booking the photo shoot for Sunday but you don’t need to be there for that, I need you back here. Tell me you’re going to pull this off.’

‘He told you?’ I asked, dazed. ‘He told you everything?’

‘He told me he prefers kissing boys to girls if that’s what you mean?’

I felt as if the room was shaking beneath me and peered over the bed like a meercat, checking that Los Angeles wasn’t being swallowed up by The Big One outside.

‘Angela, this is not a game,’ Mary said. ‘And if you thought the publishers didn’t want you on original interview, you can’t even imagine what they think about you covering this. I need your copy filed by tomorrow lunchtime—one p.m. your time—for subbing and then I need you back here. We’ll have to release the story Monday before the magazine comes out Tuesday. Cici is booking your flight back Sunday afternoon.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’ I stared into the glass, not even out at the hills, just at the glass. ‘I actually don’t.’

‘You’d better have something worked out for first thing Monday morning,’ she said. ‘Because I want the whole story in my office at nine a.m.’

Putting the phone down, I finally came to my senses long enough to pull on a pair of knickers and a T-shirt and sat with my back against the bedside table, my legs stretched out in front of me. James had called Mary. He was going to do the interview. I pulled my feet upwards, feeling the stretch in my calves. Why hadn’t he called me to tell me? I fumbled behind me for the hotel phone receiver.

‘Hi, this is Angela Clark in room six-oh-eight…do I have any messages?’

I heard the breathy girl on the front desk click on a keyboard. ‘Good morning Miss Clark, I think we do. Actually, you have quite a few. Should I send someone up or would you like me to read them to you now?’