Lindsey Kelk 5-Book 'I Heart...' Collection (113 page)

After a couple of seconds, he gave up, kissed me on the top of the head and made a beeline for the tree. Sigh. He’d only been home a couple of days and already nearly all my candy canes were gone. I had tried to explain that tree candy was not for eating until after Christmas day, but he argued a very strong case against me. Primarily because he’d found two empty Cadbury’s advent calendars and a whole pack of chocolate tree ornaments hidden in the recycling. I was just going to have to buy more candy canes. That was $1.99 coming straight out of his Christmas present fund.

‘Yeah,’ I said, snapping shut my MacBook. ‘I can’t believe she’s going to have a baby. She is a bloody baby.’

‘People do keep on doing that.’ He tore the wrapping from the sugary goodness with his teeth, tiptoed through my ‘office’ and sat down beside me. It was so good to have him home. So good, the little ‘I Love You’ butterflies fluttered into existence in my belly. Better butterflies than candy canes – less fattening. ‘She’s all good, though?’

‘All good,’ I nodded. It was still weird to me that two such important people in my life had never met. ‘Jealous of me going to Vegas without her. I think it’s fair; she’s having a baby without me.’

‘That’s not really something you could have helped with,’ he said, leaning his head back against the sofa and giving me a look. ‘Your mom didn’t tell you about the birds and the bees?’

‘No, of course she didn’t. At the time I thought she was being a prude, but now I’m thinking maybe she was too high to actually know herself.’

He nodded thoughtfully, sucking on his candy cane. ‘Well, when two people really love each other …’

It only took one bash with a cushion to shut him up.

‘About Vegas.’ He snatched the cushion from my weak and feeble hand and threw it across the room. ‘When are you going?’

‘Allegedly this weekend. On Thursday.’ I looked doubtful. ‘Jenny claims it’s all organized, but it’s just so last-minute. At least Erin’s coming. I’m sure she’ll keep us in line.’

‘Right.’ Alex sighed and turned to face me. ‘So, I saw Jeff in the elevator this morning.’

Uh-oh. Any story that involved Jeff ended badly. The former love of Jenny’s life, current fiancé of a girl named Shannon and our next-door neighbour. Stories involving Jeff often ended in tears or at least drunken recriminations. Unless I bumped into him while I was taking the recycling out, in which case it all ended very well for me. I’d read everything by Germaine Greer (well, skimmed it at uni and seen her on Newsnight), and I had decided there was nothing anti-feminist about letting men carry heavy things. Especially heavy dirty things.

‘So yeah, we went to grab coffee and he got to talking about his bachelor party and how they had someone drop out at the last minute and, yeah, he kinda ended up inviting me along.’ He crunched off a piece of candy cane and chewed for a moment.

I did not have a good feeling about this.

‘It’s in Vegas.’

Oh no.

‘This weekend.’

Oh, good God, no.

I really wanted to believe that Jenny had no idea her ex-boyfriend was going to be in Vegas at the exact time we were going to be there. I really wanted to believe that she was genuinely over him and moving on with Sigge. But then, I also still believed that if you went to sleep naked the house would burn down, and if you wore mismatched socks, you were guaranteed to get run over. Sometimes I was stupid. And sometimes I was not.

‘You think she knows?’ Alex asked.

‘You think she doesn’t?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with her. She’ll only deny it if I ask her, but there’s just no way it’s a coincidence. Someone is going to die on this trip, aren’t they? Someone’s going to die, and I’m going to prison.’

‘Right?’ Alex agreed. ‘Good thing I told Jeff I’d go, so you’ve got back-up.’

‘You did?’ I couldn’t remember a time I’d actually been happier in my entire life. Maybe when I found a Cadbury’s Creme Egg in my knicker drawer a month after Easter and I thought I’d eaten them all. Maybe. ‘You’re coming to Vegas?’

‘I did and I am,’ he nodded, and carried on crunching. ‘I haven’t been in the longest time. Vegas is the best.’

Vegas is the best? I sat back and observed my boyfriend. He was the last person on earth I’d have had pegged as a Las Vegas fanboy. What other secret passions did he have hidden away? Was he buying porcelain dolls from QVC every night after I went to sleep?

‘What do you do in Vegas?’ The words were out of my mouth with way too much emphasis on the ‘you’ before I could stop them. It was all I could do not to add ‘please don’t say hookers’.

‘Hookers?’ he shrugged. ‘And, you know, poker. I like to play sometimes.’

‘I don’t know which I’m more shocked about,’ I said. ‘Probably the poker.’

‘Thanks,’ he replied. ‘I haven’t played in a while but I’m pretty good. Maybe I’ll win big and buy you something pretty.’

‘I won’t hold my breath.’ It was a lie. I was holding my breath while I said it and I would be holding my breath all the way to Nevada.

‘How about a beer for now?’ He clambered over the back of the sofa to avoid my magazine madness. ‘Looks like you’ve been working hard.’

‘Very hard,’ I confirmed, tearing out an article on how to make your own Christmas crackers. ‘Some of us can’t hibernate through winter.’

I turned back to my pile of magazines and waited to be inspired. And waited. And waited.

‘Angela?’

‘Alex?’

Hmm. Was I interested in a feature on transforming your life through fish ownership? Maybe not.

‘What the fuck is this?’

I froze. Tongue sticking out. Sharpie in hand.

‘What the fuck is what?’

Ohhhhhh shiiiiit.

I’d left my handbag on the kitchen top. My handbag full of wedding magazines.

‘This?’

I turned slowly, ready to launch into my ‘they’re research!’ speech, but instead of finding Alex with a fistful of bridal porn and eyes full of fear, all he had in his hand was a white sheet of paper. Oh. The Letter. I really had to stop carrying that around with me.

‘Right.’ I uncrossed my legs and crossed them again. ‘That.’

‘This.’ He waved The Letter at me. Unnecessary, really – I was already very aware of what it said. ‘What the fuck is this?’

‘It’s a letter,’ I replied. ‘From the INS. It’s not a big deal.’

It was quite amazing how I was able to utter those words given my initial reaction to The Letter, but as I said them now, I almost believed them. I was very, very good at deluding myself.

‘Not a big deal? It says here they’re gonna kick you out,’ Alex reread as he yelled. Quite the multitasker, my boyfriend. ‘In a month. In less than a month. That’s your idea of not a big deal?’

‘Well, it has the potential to become a big deal,’ I replied calmly. ‘But it’s going to be fine.’

‘How? How is it going to be fine?’

I couldn’t remember a time I’d seen him this angry. The edge was taken off his rage by the fact that he was still only wearing a T-shirt and boxers, but still, he was not a happy bunny, and that fact was weaving a very unpleasant knot in my stomach.

‘I just have to get another visa,’ I whispered. The louder Alex was, the quieter my voice became.

‘And I’m gonna guess there’s more you haven’t told me about that too?’ He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes off the piece of paper in his hand. Well, it was that or he was just too mad to look at me, and that didn’t make me feel any better. ‘Do you want to tell me what’s going on, or should I hope some more pieces of paper fall out of your purse when I walk by?’

Fall out my arse. I knew he’d been rooting around in there for sweets. Hopefully, he hadn’t found them. I had a feeling I would want them later.

‘Well, maybe the lawyer wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about me getting a new visa as I might have suggested,’ I said slowly. ‘But it’s not like he said it was impossible. I just need to put together a case. Or get a contract from a UK magazine. And some references. And a portfolio. And some other stuff. But it’s not impossible.’

‘It isn’t? Because it sounds pretty tricky.’

He had a point. When I put it like that, it did sound quite impossible. Or at the very least, a bit difficult.

‘What the fuck, Angela? Why didn’t you tell me about this?’ He was really very mad. This close to naptime, Alex was usually as mild-mannered as a man could be. Between his sleepy demeanour and floppy indie-boy fringe, the most he could manage was crossing the street without getting run over, but right now his eyes were bright and sparky with rage. He looked like he could quite easily go Godzilla on the street.

‘OK, please calm down,’ I said. Stupid. I was waving a metaphorical red rag at the metaphorical bull. ‘I just haven’t had a chance to tell you yet, that’s all. I was going to. Honestly, it’s not going to be a problem.’

‘Bullshit you haven’t had a chance. And how is it not going to be a problem?’ He threw The Letter back into my bag and his hands into the air. ‘How is you getting your ass thrown out of the US not going to be a problem?’

‘This really isn’t helping,’ I pointed out. ‘Shouting at me isn’t going to get us anywhere.’

‘I have to shout because you don’t talk,’ he shot back. ‘I’m not helping? You’re not helping. You not dealing with things like an adult, as usual, isn’t helping. You not telling me shit again. Again, Angela! That’s what’s not helping. Jesus Christ.’

It was everything I could do not to cry. I hated to row, but he was right. I’d brought this entirely on myself.

‘Alex, don’t,’ I sniffed. ‘It’s not like I wasn’t telling you for fun. I really thought I could work it out on my own.’

He opened the fridge calmly, took out a beer, popped the cap and then slammed it shut again. Inside, everything rattled.

‘Because that’s worked out so well for us in the past?’

Ouch.

‘Alex –’ I started, but he just took a deep swig from his bottle and held out a hand to keep me away.

‘I’m going to take a bath.’ He shook his head to shut me up. ‘You didn’t want to talk to me, and I can’t talk to you right now.’

I turned back to my piles and piles of paper, my heart sinking down into the pit of my stomach. Every second that passed made it more and more difficult to try to speak. Instead of saying sorry, I sat with my mouth open, guppy-like, second-guessing myself into silence.

Looking around at the chaos I’d created, my confidence started to ebb away. I wasn’t extraordinary. I wasn’t even really a journalist. I was just a chancer who got lucky and my luck had run out. Also, I was a petulant brat who thought kicking the stack of magazines to the floor would make her feel better. It didn’t, it hurt my knee and gave me a paper cut on my big toe. See, this was why I shouldn’t have moved in with a boy. Jenny would have had at least two inspirational spreadsheets, an action plan and a flip-chart displaying my progress on the go by now. Alex was sulking in the bath with a beer. Admittedly I would much rather have been moping in the tub, but as I had learned, that didn’t get you anywhere in life. Baths were for wallowing like a grumpy hippo, and I did not have time to be a grumpy hippo. I didn’t have time to sit here and fret over Alex’s really quite extreme reaction. And I certainly didn’t have time to keep being distracted by the new YSL bag in Marie Claire. Adopting the tried and tested ‘What Would Jenny Lopez Do’ approach to life, I wiped away a stray tear, banished Alex’s angry words from my memory and opened my notebook to a blank page. And pushed Marie Claire right under the sofa with my foot. I was going to do this. I was going to get my visa. And then I was going to punch Alex in the arm for being such a tit.

I looked at the blank page. It looked right back at me. OK, maybe he wasn’t being a complete tit. He was angry because he was scared I was going to have to leave, right? And not because I had accidentally forgotten to tell him about my getting deported, although I was prepared to accept that might be a possibility. A slight possibility. Well, maybe it was a bit of both. I took the lid off my pen. I looked at my pen. I wondered how people got over writer’s block when all they were trying to write was a list. I pulled Marie Claire back out from under the sofa to inspire me.

Angela’s Action Plan

1. Identify relevant magazines

2. Write proposals

3. Contact editors

4. Write my blog

5. Pray to all known deities

There. That was enough to prove I was serious, wasn’t it? And I could definitely accomplish something within the next four weeks, give or take a weekend in Vegas. But that still didn’t resolve the problem of the angry boyfriend. Naturally, my reaction to our first proper argument was to stay on the sofa, bottom lip out and wait for him to surface, hopefully pretend it had never happened and let it stew until one of us threw it in the other’s face during a completely unrelated row in seven years’ time. That was the British way, after all. But if I was going to be a big girl, I figured I might as well start acting like one sooner rather than later. First time for everything.

‘Alex?’ I knocked lightly on the bathroom door, knees pulled up under my chin, back against the wall. Better get comfy for this.

No answer. Time to pull out the big guns.

‘Alex, I’m sorry.’

Cue the sound of water sploshing around the bath and a rather loud sigh.

‘Can I come in so I can talk to you, please?’

‘Door’s locked.’

‘You could unlock it?’

‘I’m not getting out of the tub to let you in.’

I was so glad he bothered to clarify his reasons.

‘Fine, I’ll talk out here,’ I started. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the letter. I’m not making excuses – I should have told you right away, but it only came the other day and you’d only just got home. Then we had such a busy weekend and you’ve been so jetlagged, I didn’t want to stress you out with it. I really did think I could sort it all out. I really do think I can sort it all out. There is a plan, you know.’

‘There’s always a plan,’ he replied. ‘But your plans suck.’

‘They don’t all suck,’ I frowned, trying to come up with a plan that was unsucky. Just because I couldn’t think of one off the top of my head didn’t mean there wasn’t one.