Lindsey Kelk 5-Book 'I Heart...' Collection (136 page)

For the first hour, I’d done nothing but cry. Face down on the sofa, trying not to throw up. After that we moved on to senseless, tearful babbling. We had now reached the part of the evening where I tried to override my suicidal tendencies by overloading my brain with delicious food and as much booze as it took for me to pass out. Two beers and half a bottle of white was the optimum amount of break-up booze to start telling the story without breaking down at every other word. I wasn’t too drunk to censor it slightly; telling Jenny the things Alex had said about her wasn’t going to help here. I wanted to go home, not to his funeral, and mentioning the words ‘dumb-shit’ in relation to Ms Lopez was tantamount to taking a hit out on Mr Reid.

‘He said he didn’t want to be used again,’ I choked, pausing to regulate my breathing before knocking back the beer bottle.

Since my phone was in a bin somewhere in the De Lujo hotel, I couldn’t even stare at it and wait for him to ring.

‘Used again?’ Jenny snatched up a crisp, popped it in her mouth then made a face. Before taking another. ‘I’m confused. When was the last time you used him?’

‘I don’t think he meant me.’

If only beer bottles were crystal balls. And why didn’t Bed, Bath and Beyond sell magic mirrors? Didn’t they fall into the ‘beyond’ category?

‘The French Bitch?’ Jenny asked. She was referring to Alex’s less than pleasant ex. Cici Spencer aside, I tried not to speak badly of other women, but Alex’s last girlfriend? Now there was a female human being who had worked hard to deserve her given moniker. As far as I was concerned, she was going to that special circle of hell reserved for Hitler, Justin Bieber and the man who invented high-waisted jeans.

‘I guess so?’ My beer refused to show me what Alex was doing, no matter how hard I stared, so I drank it instead. ‘Maybe I should call him. He knows I don’t have a phone.’

‘And he knows where you are,’ Jenny replied. ‘He’s probably freaking out just as much as you are. You did the right thing. Hanging around after an argument like that when you’re both tired and emotional? You only end up saying stupid things that you can’t take back.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ I pouted. So much for Jenny always giving bad advice, Alex.

‘Now he has time to cool down, think about what he said. He’ll realize he isn’t mad at you. He’ll call tomorrow.’

‘He will call tomorrow,’ I repeated until I was almost convinced, literally sitting on my hands to stop myself from picking up Jenny’s house phone. And then I remembered the look on his face and my confidence wavered. ‘He’ll call.’

Three days later, Alex hadn’t called.

After radio silence for the first twenty-four hours, I had called and left a voicemail. Nothing. The longer it went on, the more impossible it seemed to get in a cab, go home and talk to him. On the second day, Jenny got in a cab with me, but the apartment was empty. The glittery landfill that was my wrapping station was exactly as I’d left it, and the only evidence that Alex had been there at all was a scattering of record sleeves by the turntable, an empty pizza box and several dozen empty beer bottles. A half-full carton of fries on the coffee table had been filled up with cigarette butts. Alex never smoked unless he was incredibly stressed or in France. I really hoped he wasn’t in France. Jenny’s reassuring expression slipped as I tiptoed around the place, afraid I’d break something that wasn’t mine.

‘Do you want to stay until he comes home?’ she asked. ‘I’ll wait with you.’

But I didn’t want to stay. I was scared. Instead, I picked out some clothes, grabbed some toiletries and left, careful not to take too much. I was coming back, I told myself. I was absolutely coming back.

I’d hoped he would notice the subtle cues that said I’d been in the apartment. My moisturizer was gone from the glass shelf by the bathroom mirror. I’d taken my ever-present notebook from the bedside table. His Blondie T-shirt that I always slept in came out from under my pillow and went into my bag. I wanted him to see these things and call me, come for me. But he didn’t. At four a.m. that morning, wide awake in Jenny’s bed, I realized he wasn’t going to call.

It had been a tough couple of days for both of us. Jenny was breaking her neck over her job and breaking her heart over Jeff. Since returning to New York, she hadn’t seen Jeff or Sigge. It wasn’t for the want of trying on Sigge’s part, at least. He’d been calling non-stop, but so far Jenny had put him off with cries of late nights in the office and a prolonged post-Vegas migraine. He was buying it for now, but we had no idea how long it would last. Jeff, on the other hand, was a mess. With only two weeks to go until his scheduled New Year’s Eve wedding, he still hadn’t called it off. Jenny had seen a lawyer and confirmed their Vegas trip up the aisle wasn’t legal and didn’t even need annulling. Jeff had seen a bartender and confirmed nothing other than the imminent need for a liver transplant. At three a.m. we got the angry phone call. At four a.m., we got the tears. By ten a.m., I was signing for the flowers with their handwritten apology. But still he hadn’t called off the wedding, and still Jenny wasn’t ready to talk to him. It scared me to think Alex could ever be as mad at me as she was at Jeff.

Instead of waking up someone who was self-medicating just to get to sleep, I wandered into the front room and opened the blinds. New York was never that dark, even at four a.m. The room was lit up by the lights of Lexington Avenue, taxis racing up and down, people running in and out of the deli, stumbling out of the diner. If you lay down on the sofa and pushed yourself right back into the corner of the cushions, you could see the Chrysler Building.

When I first got here, that was enough to put a smile on my face, no matter what was happening, and I was heartbroken then, wasn’t I? But this wasn’t the same. The last time, I felt betrayed. It was as though everything I’d ever known had just gone away. But this was different. If I lost Alex, I wasn’t losing everything I’d ever known, I was losing everything I ever wanted. He was my future, not my past. At least, I hoped he still could be.

With an uncharacteristic display of action, I picked up the phone and dialled his number. I knew it off by heart now. It rang through and I waited for the click of redirection to voicemail.

‘Hello?’

He’d answered. I had no idea what to say.

‘Hello?’ His voice was tired but he was awake. I knew the subtle differences. I knew everything about him. Or I had thought I did.

‘I’m hanging up now. Do me a favour and delete my number, OK?’

‘It’s me,’ I said hurriedly, stretching out my toes until they tingled. ‘It’s me.’

He didn’t say anything.

I didn’t say anything.

‘Where are you?’ he asked eventually.

‘Jenny’s.’ If only I could have said anywhere else in the world.

‘Of course you are,’ Alex replied. ‘It’s four a.m. Can we do this another time?’

‘When?’ My heart rose: he wanted to talk. My stomach sank: he didn’t want to talk now.

‘I’ll call you,’ he said calmly. ‘When I can.’

He didn’t hang up right away and the sound of his breathing down the line made mine stop altogether. And then I heard the click, the dial tone, silence. The lights on the Chrysler Building blurred before me and I closed my eyes to make the tears go away. Going back to bed would mean moving, and moving would mean crying, so I rolled over, stuffed my face into the back of my old couch and let the tears seep into the cushions instead. He would call me when he could.

‘So this is nice?’ Jenny did not look amused. ‘Is this supposed to be funny?’

‘I forgot how loud it was here,’ I admitted, wishing they would dial back the Beyoncé just a touch. ‘It was just handy for everyone.’

Three days after the late-night phone call and I still hadn’t heard from Alex. Apparently ‘when I can’ was some sort of symbolic answer, because I was certain he had the physical and financial ability to make a phone call whenever he damn well pleased, and yet … nothing. I was still crying on a daily basis – at toilet paper adverts, at little old ladies in the deli, at the ovulation kits in Duane Reade – but some righteous anger was starting to creep in. As was the need to distract myself. Luckily, I was armed with willing accomplices.

Crowded around a shiny silver table in Vynl, the gayest diner in all Manhattan, were Jenny, Erin and Mary, my editor from The Look. I was about to unveil The Plan. Just as soon as our waiter brought me my disco fries and Bloody Mary.

‘They have Justin Timberlake dolls in the bathroom.’ Sadie took her seat at the table with delight in her eyes. ‘Like Justin Barbies. And they’re playing ‘Sexy Back’. This is the best place ever.’

‘No it isn’t.’ Mary was never one to mince her words. ‘Can we please get on with this so I can go back to work and be miserable in the comfort of my own office?’

‘Yes we can, and no you can’t.’ I looked at the door. We were still waiting for one more person. ‘I mean – well, obviously you can because it’s your job, but don’t you wish it wasn’t?’

‘I wish a lot of things,’ she said. ‘I wish I could win the state lottery. I wish George Clooney would stop lying to himself. I wish they would hurry up and bring my pancakes. None of these things are happening soon.’

Not the most inspiring start to my proposal, but I continued regardless.

‘What if I had a new job for you?’ I raised my eyebrows and waited for a reaction that didn’t come. Sadie looked at me blankly. Jenny and Erin exchanged small shrugs.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ I folded my arms and pouted. ‘I want to start a new magazine and I want you all to help.’

‘That’s a cute idea, Angela.’ Mary was the first to shoot me down. As predicted. ‘But this isn’t college. You can’t just stick a bunch of photos together and take the whole thing down to Kinko’s. Launching a magazine costs millions in marketing, and the Internet is kicking the whole industry in the ass right now. There’s no way a new indie could make it in this market without huge backing.’

‘Not even if you were editor-in-chief?’ I asked. ‘And if we had Sadie Nixon as our fashion director? And James Jacobs as our entertainment director?’

‘No.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘But keep talking.’

‘And what if Erin Stein PR was behind us?’ I looked at Erin and really hoped she was. Pregnancy had lowered her standards and she smiled beatifically, nodding along.

‘It is,’ she replied. ‘And so are all of our clients.’

‘And I could be the life coach,’ Jenny jumped in. ‘Can I be the life coach?’

‘You can be whatever you want to be,’ I said, beginning to feel a little better. ‘It’s your magazine, after all. Remember what we said on the way to the airport in Vegas? How there isn’t a magazine for us? Well, if we feel that way, surely other women must feel that way? So why don’t we start one?’

A buzz of ideas travelled around the table and I started to get excited. This was what I needed right now. This and my bloody disco fries.

‘I don’t want to be the one who kills this,’ Mary interrupted, killing it. ‘But everything I said still stands true. You’d need such a huge investment, and sure I’ve got experience, but you need money and a publisher, and that’s not me.’

‘I’m sorry I’m late.’ A tall blonde of the less pneumatic variety dropped into a chair beside Sadie. ‘Did you already tell them?’

Mary looked appropriately confused. ‘Cici?’

‘Delia.’ Cici’s good twin held a hand out across the table. ‘You can tell us apart by the fact I’m not Satan. And I’m left-handed.’

‘I did,’ I confirmed.

‘Did they tell you it would never work?’ she asked.

‘They did,’ I confirmed.

‘So here’s the thing.’ Delia was considerably more persuasive than me. As soon as she started talking, everyone perked up and leaned in to listen. Even Mary. ‘My grandfather is Bob Spencer, as in Spencer Media. And while I’ve spent a lot of years avoiding nepotism in all of its forms, I’m ready to cash in. Angela came to me with a great idea involving a lot of great people, and I want to present this to my grandfather and have him back us. I mean, why isn’t there a great weekly for women that isn’t just full of celebrity gossip and crappy fashion? Other countries have made weeklies work – we can do the same.’

‘So you have a business model?’ Mary was clearly still having issues with the fact that this was not Sadie. ‘As much enthusiasm as there is around this table, we’d still need a staff. We’d still need a sales team, a marketing team, a web team, all of it.’

‘And we’ll work that out,’ Delia agreed. ‘With you as editor-in-chief and me as publisher. And yes, Angela and I have been working on a business plan. The idea is that we’d start out as a free magazine, funded by advertising with an exclusive online component, sort of combining strong editorial with an online deal site. We’ll distribute through high-end fashion retailers in New York who will benefit from the deal side of the business, then we move to LA and – stage three – we’ll revisit our expansion plans across the US.’

‘Delia did most of it.’ I sipped my water with forced modesty. ‘I just came up with the idea of the magazine.’

‘You should get dumped more often.’ Sadie patted me on the back and I fought the urge to take her arm and break it. ‘This is awesome. When do we start?’

‘We’ve started.’ Delia looked around and smiled. ‘If you’re all in, I’m going to schedule a meeting with my grandfather next week.’

‘And what are you going to do?’ Jenny asked me. ‘Because this is awesome, but it needs to get you a visa, otherwise I swear I will marry your ass.’

‘That is very sweet, but I’m going to be web editor.’ I patted her hand in an attempt to get the scary look out of her eyes. ‘I talked to Lawrence and he thinks that will be enough to put through an application, so don’t worry – that’s one less wedding for you this year.’

‘I knew you’d work this out,’ she smiled. ‘And it’s a relief. I’m trying to keep it down to just one ceremony per annum. You know you’re amazing, right?’

‘I’m pretty good,’ I laughed. ‘I’d be better if I had my disco fries.’ Our waiter was busy behind the bar, back to the restaurant, arse bopping along in time to Donna Summer. Clearly he had better things to do than feed his customers. Like, oh, texting. I nudged my poor, poor bag open with a booted foot and checked my new iPhone. Nothing. But just looking at the iPhone made me happy. I was such an Apple whore.