Lindsey Kelk 5-Book 'I Heart...' Collection (61 page)

‘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 minibar 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 Icon 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?’

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 Icon. 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?’

I paused. ‘Could you get them sent up? Thanks so much.’ Probably best not to get them read out loud. I scrambled to my feet and attempted to make myself presentable. My mother would die if she thought I was opening the door to – well, anyone, looking like this. It was the same logic as cleaning the house from top to toe before she went on holiday in case she had burglars. Hair in a ponytail, teeth very quickly and not at all thoroughly cleaned, followed by mascara and lip balm. I was scouting for an appropriate bottom half to my inappropriately short T-shirt and stripy pink pants ensemble when I heard the knock at the door. Damn, they were fast in this hotel.

‘Come in,’ I called from the wardrobe but, instead of hearing the door click and sweep open, there was another knock. Fine, they would just have to see my pants. Again. Figuring half the hotel had seen me in my underwear already, and what difference did one more bellboy make?, I opened the door.

‘Hi.’

It wasn’t a bellboy.

It was Alex.

‘I know LA is a little more dressed down than New York but, Angela, that’s ridiculous.’ He tucked a pair of tiny white earphones down the front of his T-shirt and shook his head.

I hung onto the door for fear of falling over. It was really him.

‘Can I come in?’ he asked, his long dark fringe dropping into tired-looking eyes. I nodded and moved backwards with the door to make room for him and his rucksack. ‘So you trashed the room already?’

I nodded again, still not letting go of the door. It was really him. Standing in front of me, in my hotel room in his creased-to-death jeans, holey green T-shirt and battered black Cons, looking so ridiculously anti-LA that my mind refused to compute the image of him against the window, against the backdrop of the Hollywood sign.

‘Angela, please say something,’ he said after another minute of silence. ‘Or at least close the door?’

I prised my fingers from the wood and allowed the door to swing itself shut but I couldn’t cross the room. What if I touched him and he disappeared? What if I said the wrong thing and he walked out for ever?

‘OK, one thing at a time.’ Alex set his bag down on the table by my laptop. ‘I have to use the bathroom and then maybe we can talk?’ He walked towards me but I couldn’t read his face as he slipped by into the bathroom. He looked tired, that was for sure, but tired because he’d just got off a plane, tired because he hadn’t been sleeping? And he definitely didn’t look happy.

When the bathroom door opened, I was still frozen to the spot. Alex looked at me, looked down at the pile of bottles Jenny had moved from the floor into the bin and then back up at me. His face was damp and slightly pink from where he’d splashed it with water and a few strands of his long fringe clung to his cheek. I reached out slowly to brush them away but Alex caught my hand and held it to his cheek.

‘Hi,’ he said softly.

‘Hi,’ I replied.

‘Should I go out and come back in again?’

I shook my head slowly. He really was here. I was touching him and everything.

‘I am so sorry for everything I said,’ he bit down on his full bottom lip, ‘on the phone. I just, I don’t know, I freaked out.’

‘That’s OK,’ I mumbled. His hand was so hot.

‘No, it’s not.’ His green eyes were so bloodshot, I could barely stand to look at them. I knew he wasn’t someone that slept a lot at the best of times. ‘I didn’t even start to listen to you. I didn’t even try.’

‘That’s OK,’ I repeated. It really wasn’t but then that was before I shagged the barman.

‘Angela, stop saying it’s OK. It isn’t.’ He pulled me towards him gently. ‘I sat staring at the phone for something like three hours after we spoke. I was so completely wrong to have said what I did.’

‘That’s – I mean, you could have called?’ I said, painfully aware that a) I looked like absolute shit and b) my room stank of booze. ‘Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you answer when I called you?’

‘I thought a grand romantic gesture would be better?’ Alex took my other hand in his to stop me pulling at the hem of my T-shirt. ‘Or, after we talked and I saw the pictures of you online, I threw my phone out the window. Which made calling you kind of tricky.’

‘Right,’ I replied.

‘I know you must still be angry,’ he went on. ‘But can I just explain? Just let me say what I’ve spent the last ten hours practising and then if you still want me to go, I will.’

‘Want you to go?’ I wasn’t sure what parallel universe I’d been pulled into where Alex thought my inability to string a sentence together was because I was angry with him. I was angry – furious in fact – but only with myself.

‘OK, the last time we spoke I was a complete asshole but that was only because I was so insanely jealous. I knew that you would never … you know. I did know that. You’re not my ex or – well – me.’ He tried to draw me across the room but I couldn’t be moved. ‘But my head was kinda messed up. I guess I didn’t want you to go to LA.’

‘You could have said that before I left.’ Finally I started to get the feeling back in my feet and allowed myself to be pulled along the carpet. ‘You could have come with me.’