Lindsey Kelk 5-Book 'I Heart...' Collection (12 page)

‘But don’t you lie awake at night, wishing he was with you?’ she said, tipping her head back and leaning into me.

‘Actually, no,’ I said, the fresh evening air hitting me as we staggered down the steps outside. ‘We had really different sleep patterns anyway so we didn’t often go to bed together. I can’t recommend being dog tired at the end of every day enough as a break-up recovery system.’

‘You so know what I mean,’ she slurred, throwing herself into the road without even looking for the walk sign. ‘Don’t you want him with you? You know, with you? Just to feel the weight of him on top of you?’

‘Oh.’ I walked a little further in silence. ‘Well, I sort of haven’t felt that for a while anyway. We didn’t have the best sex life ever. I suppose if I think about it that way, I’ve been on my own for a long time …’

As I thought about how long I had been on my own, I realized I really was on my own. Jenny wasn’t beside me. Looking back, I spotted her hanging in the doorway of a diner, shouting at someone.

‘Turn it up!’ I heard her yell as I scurried back down the street. ‘Turn the goddamned song UP!’

‘Get lost!’ The guy behind the counter turned away as I grabbed for Jenny’s arm. ‘Control your friend, lady,’ he muttered at me.

‘Hey, Jenny,’ I pulled her gently away from the door, ‘come on, let’s get you home.’

‘This song was on all the time when we were dating,’ she said, allowing me to move her down the street and towards her doorway. ‘I hated it.’

‘Jenny, listen to me,’ I said, fumbling in Jenny’s handbag for her keys while she slumped against the doorframe. ‘You’ve got to snap out of this. Would Oprah behave like this after too many cocktails?’

‘Fuck Oprah,’ she said, falling through the door and up the stairs to the second-floor apartment.

‘God, this is serious,’ I said to myself. It didn’t take me long to realize that firstly, this is what happens when you spend a lot of time with someone you don’t know and secondly, my time in New York was not going to be all hot boys and fabulous shopping.

Bugger.

As I watched Jenny throw herself into a sobbing heap on the sofa, I wondered if this was how I was supposed to be feeling about Mark when in reality, I just felt empty when I thought of him. ‘Let’s get you into bed,’ I said. ‘Hopefully, tomorrow, you’ll have stopped putting yourself through this, whatever it is. Try and get some sleep.’ I felt awful, but I just didn’t know what to do and she seemed pretty happy wallowing.

‘Hey, Angie, I’m really sorry,’ she said as we staggered through the dark apartment towards what I assumed was her bedroom. ‘Why don’t you stay here tonight? I’ve got to be back at the hotel in the morning anyway and I don’t want you to have to get back on your own.’

‘Well, it is late and I am lazy …’ I pushed Jenny across the giant squishy mattress and dropped down beside her. ‘Only on the condition that you promise not to spoon me.’

‘I won’t spoon if you won’t sing.’

‘Shut up, Lopez.’

‘Night, English.’

Eventually, after rolling over seven times, the summer sunshine streaming through Jenny’s windows forced me to roll out of bed.

‘What, I don’t even get a kiss?’ Jenny mumbled from under the covers.

‘Not until you’ve brushed your teeth.’ I stretched and took a look around. Jenny’s room was a mess. Aside from piles of self-help books peeking out from underneath half a dozen half empty coffee cups, every surface in the room was taken up by shoes. There were shoes in boxes, shoes spilling out of the wardrobe, even shoes on display in the bookcase – half sling-backs, half self-help books. The walls were lined with hundreds of photos in clip frames. Several were dedicated to Jenny and a good-looking blond guy who I guessed was Jeff. No wonder she didn’t have a new boyfriend, the walls of her room were like a shrine to her ex.

‘So, I was thinking,’ Jenny started, holding her arm across her eyes to block out the sunlight.

‘Really? I didn’t see an awful lot of evidence of that last night.’

‘Shut up before I change my mind.’ She sat up, looked down at last night’s clothes and shook her head at herself. ‘Like I said, I was thinking. So, Gina left yesterday and won’t be back for at least three months, if she comes back at all, and I can’t afford to maintain what you can see is a very expensive shoe habit unless I find a new roommate. I figure you can’t afford to stay at The Union for ever, and I don’t think you want to go home yet. You want to be my roomie?’

‘Wow, Jenny, really?’ Moving in to an apartment would be huge. It would mean I was staying. ‘I don’t know …’

‘But you’ve already proved that you can get me home safely when I’m wasted. Would you want me wandering around alone on your conscience?’ Jenny said. ‘And I’m really sorry about the whole freak out thing last night. Promise that won’t happen again. I so need to get over Jeff.’

‘Have you thought about taking some of his pictures down?’ I suggested. They really did make a gorgeous couple. Jenny’s big dark eyes and wild curly hair contrasting against Jeff’s close blond crop and crinkly blue Robert Redford eyes. ‘I hear that helps.’

‘Yeah, not gonna happen just yet,’ she shook her head. ‘Unless I had a new roomie to take pictures of? So, you in?’

‘If you take the pictures down,’ I nodded and held out my hand.

‘Well, OK,’ she sighed, ‘but only because I already gave your room away at The Union from tomorrow, so if you don’t move in here you’re pretty much screwed.’

The pain of moving out of The Union was cushioned slightly by the fact that Jenny’s apartment was practically a two-bed mini version of the hotel. Every single thing that wasn’t screwed down had been ‘borrowed’ by Jenny and Gina.

‘Welcome home!’ Jenny said, waving her arms around the place. The whole apartment worked out to be the size of my room at The Union, but it was nice. Hardwood floors, creamy walls, a kitchenette in the living room and a hallway that led off to three doors.

‘OK, so this is the bathroom, only one person will actually fit in, so you take a quick look,’ Jenny opened the door closest to the living room. I peeped in, toilet, basin, shower cubicle, Rapture towels, robes and product everywhere. ‘And here’s your room. You’re lucky, Gina was the one with the view.’

Jenny opened the door on my new room. It was perfect. A huge double bed took up most of the floor space, leaving a tiny desk-cum-dressing table nestled in next to a hanging rail for clothes. Gina had more or less stripped the room bare, but the bed was made (Union bedding, I noticed) and a little TV was perched on the desk. I placed my bags carefully on the bed and manoeuvred past it to the window. We were seven floors up on Lexington Avenue, just by 39th Street and when I craned my neck, I could see the Chrysler Building, pushing up into the early evening sky. So beautiful. Below, people wandered around, the hustle and bustle of their working day left behind as they meandered, enjoying their lunch hour in the sunshine.

Inside I was grilling Jenny on the sexual preferences of my favourite celebrities who had stayed at her hotel.

‘Vince Vaughn?’

‘Straight.’

‘Owen Wilson?’

‘Super straight.’

‘That really cute boy off that TV show I like?’

‘Flaming.’

‘Does flaming mean straight?’

‘Nu-uh.’

‘Oh.’

‘So, what do you think?’ Jenny asked, leaning against my doorframe. ‘Not bad, huh? Gina’s cousin sublet to us, we got so lucky.’

‘Jenny, it’s gorgeous,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe how lovely. You only ever hear horror stories about New York apartments on TV.’

‘Yeah, well, I won’t deny that you might see a roach before you leave,’ Jenny admitted. ‘But they’re few and far between. It’s a good building. But now,’ she held out a hand and pulled me up off the bed as the buzzer went. ‘We celebrate!’

Since Jenny’s idea of a celebration was an afternoon of pepperoni pizza and some beers sitting on her living-room floor watching America’s Next Top Model, I knew we were going to get along just fine. We ate, we bitched and she filled me in on her New York apartment history, rat-infested flatshare on the Lower East Side before it got trendy, studio in a Harlem building that was converted into luxury apartments, a one-bed in Chelsea with her ex, and then this place with Gina. Not too bad, she assured me.

‘I’ve only ever lived with Mark, how tragic is that?’ I said, chewing a slice thoughtfully. ‘Apart from at college but even then, we were together all the time. God, that’s so pathetic.’ I felt the gloom settling around me.

‘You know I think you’re amazing, right?’ Jenny started, flipping the tops off two more beers and passing one my way. ‘And that coming here to work out what you want out of life is great. Really great.’

‘I feel like there’s a but coming,’ I said, taking a precautionary swig.

‘Well, not exactly, but I think the best way to get over your Mark, is to talk about it,’ Jenny said cautiously. ‘Not just push it away. Otherwise it pops up when you’re not expecting it and makes you feel crappy.’

‘I suppose,’ I mumbled through my pizza. That was exactly what I’d been trying not to do. My Mark issues were happily between me and my computer at that exact moment in time. ‘But whenever I think about him, no matter how great I feel, I just come crashing down. I was going to ask you about that actually. I’m normally a very stable person.’

‘Stable, or just not feeling one thing or the other? Sometimes we get so used to not really feeling anything, just going with the flow, that we forget how it feels to be really happy or really sad. And if Mark is the only guy you’ve ever gone out with, I’m guessing heartbreak is a new one to you too.’

‘I don’t think I’m heartbroken,’ I shook my head. ‘He was cheating on me, I’m best off out of it. Besides, I think you’re right. We hadn’t really been happy together for the longest time, I’d just shut myself off to it and convinced myself it was normal. I’m probably just still jetlagged if anything.’

I reached out for more pizza and looked up at Jenny. She was staring at me intently with the same sympathetic look she’d given me the morning I threw up.

‘Angela, you’re totally brave and a genuine hero,’ she began, ‘but it’s OK to be upset about this. You put all your trust and ten years of your life into that relationship, even if they weren’t all great, and he cheated on you, no one gets over something like that in three days.’

‘I’m OK,’ I said. Here came those crashing lows again. ‘I’ve never had a break-up to get over before. Maybe I’m just really really good at it?’

‘I’m just saying, it’s OK not to be OK,’ Jenny scooted across the floor. ‘You might even feel better if you let yourself get upset. Might even out some of those crazy emotions.’

‘I just think, I would never have cheated on him,’ I said slowly. ‘Even if I’d met someone else, I would never have cheated on him.’

The tears started to come, slowly at first.

‘I know, honey,’ Jenny said, taking the beer out of my hand. ‘You’re a good person and you’re right, you are better off out of the relationship.’

‘But why did he do it?’ I wailed. ‘Why did he cheat on me? And why doesn’t he love me any more?’

I turned to Jenny’s shoulder and saturated her T-shirt.

That was what I’d been avoiding. The hair, the make-up, the clothes, they didn’t cover up the real me, the me that Mark had spent ten years with and then decided to trade in for a cheap tennis playing tart.

‘People fall out of love, Angie,’ Jenny said, her voice thick with a few of her own tears. ‘It’s happened to all of us, it’s just going to be a bit of a shock to the system because, well, most people go through it before they get to twenty-seven. You’ll be OK though, look at what you’ve already achieved.’

‘Twenty-six!’ I bawled, grabbing the beer back and gesticulating wildly with the bottle. It made a brilliant prop. ‘And what exactly have I achieved? Mark had known me for ten years and he couldn’t love me. Anyone I meet is going to sit down, talk to me for ten minutes and come to the same conclusions he did, new hair or not.’

‘That’s not true,’ Jenny said. ‘Did that guy the other night only ask you out because of your hair?’

‘He probably thinks I’m a prostitute like the one in the park. Or at least a piss-head English girl on holiday who will be an easy shag.’

‘And what did you think about him?’ Jenny snatched my beer back again, trying to avoid spillage.

‘I thought he was lovely.’

Jenny gave me the look.

‘And really hot. And probably quite rich.’

‘And you didn’t think about hooking up with him?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose I did. And you told me to!’

‘There you go,’ she said. ‘Maybe he was just thinking, I’d like to get this girl into bed, but you were thinking the same thing! You weren’t thinking about marrying him, you just wanted to get laid. That is allowed, you know.’

I was thinking about marrying him a bit, I thought to myself. Probably best not to share that right now.

‘But I, I wouldn’t know how to just “get laid”,’ I panicked, realizing she was right. ‘Me and Mark were just awful in the bedroom, I just thought it wasn’t the most important thing. What am I supposed to do now I’ve got to do it with other people?’

‘Hey, you don’t know that you were awful,’ Jenny pointed at me, turning serious. ‘A workman is only as good as his tools and, sorry, but if he was getting it from someone else, how were you supposed to keep it going? And FYI, it’s totally that important.’

I thought about it for a second. It made sense. Mark hadn’t even really tried to get me into bed for months, and even though I knew why, that didn’t make me feel better about having to get into bed with anyone else.

‘But what if he fell out of love with me because I was so bad in bed?’ I went through a mental replay of our last few half-arsed fumblings.

‘Then maybe, maybe, a little more experience will help, if that was a contributing factor,’ Jenny said. ‘And after ten years together, if that’s why he cheated then he’s even lower scum than I have him down for right now. The bottom line is, you might never know why he did what he did but you do need to own up to the fact that you’re single now and make that work for you.’