Lindsey Kelk 5-Book 'I Heart...' Collection (67 page)

‘So you weren’t going to tell me?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t know what there was to tell.’ I looked up but Alex was leaning back on his elbows, staring out at the sea. His nose was bright pink. ‘OK, no I wasn’t going to tell you.’

‘Even when you thought you’d slept with him?’

Was there even a right answer? ‘I think I would have told you when we got home. But when it turned out nothing had happened, no, I don’t think I would have said anything.’

He didn’t move, didn’t speak.

‘I couldn’t see the point in making things worse than they were. Nothing happened; I didn’t think it made sense to hurt you for no reason.’

After what felt like for ever, he breathed out and nodded. ‘Makes sense.’

‘And the rest of it is all sorted, right?’ After being almost scared to make eye contact with him all morning, now all I wanted was for him to look at me. ‘All the stupid photo internet stuff.’

‘Did you know James was gay when you were in his hotel room that night?’ he asked.

What happened to ‘you don’t have to explain anything to me’?, I thought, puffing out my cheeks in concentration. ‘No, but there was nothing going on,’ I said. That wasn’t a lie. Nothing actually went on.

‘I don’t want to come off as paranoid, but it seemed kind of strange that you would call me at four in the morning and tell me you love me hours before the pictures of you and James came out.’ He turned his head to look at me and took off his Ray-Bans. ‘Why do you love me, Angela?’

Arsehole. Turning my question back on myself. ‘Why do I love you?’

‘It’s really easy to say I love you, it’s another altogether to explain why,’ he said. ‘As you know.’

‘Yeah, OK,’ I closed my eyes again. It wasn’t that bloody easy, was it, or I would have told him weeks ago and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Why was this so tricky? I was for ever telling other people why I loved him.

‘I love you because you always have a T-shirt under your pillow for me, even if you don’t know I’m coming to stay. I love you because you know I want sugar in my tea in the morning but not at night and because you always pretend you forgot I wanted a skinny hot chocolate in Starbucks because you know I really prefer full fat but don’t like to order it in case the girl behind the counter thinks I’m fat.’

Alex started to smile. So I carried on.

‘I love you because when I get out of the subway and I see you in the coffee shop by your place or I’m coming back home and you’re in the deli buying me Lucky Charms, I actually get butterflies in my stomach. Every time. Or when I’m knocking on your door, just before you answer, I can feel them bubbling up inside me. And when I wake up, I look for you, even if you’re not there. It’s like my brain just thinks you should always be there, like waking up with you is my default setting.’ I copied his pose and leaned back on my elbows. Damn, the sand was still hot. ‘Is that OK? Did I pass?’

He leaned over and kissed me gently on the lips, his skin warm against mine. For the longest moment, no one said anything.

‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t a test for you,’ he said, pulling away slightly. ‘It was a test for me. I didn’t mean to make you feel shitty, I never wanted to be one of those asshole boyfriends who doesn’t trust his girlfriend but, there’s no excuse, I guess I’m not totally over what happened with my ex. But you’re not my ex. I know that. I promise I’ll never ever question you, ever. I was totally being that asshole.’

‘Is that it?’

‘That’s not enough?’

‘I mean, you’re not going to say you love me but you can’t be with me?’ I pressed my forehead against his, wondering why I couldn’t just shut my mouth.

‘I was just going to stop at I love you,’ he said, pushing me back into the sand and kissing me again.

‘I can work with that,’ I said, rolling on top of him. The sand was still awfully hot.

‘Jenny, it’s me,’ I mumbled into my mobile. ‘Pick up if you’re there?’

Nothing. And I was trapped in a pitch-black apartment with none of the lights working. No matter how many times I flicked the light switch by my bed on and off. My mum would have been very proud.

‘Shit,’ I sighed. ‘Well, if you get this, can you call me back and tell me where the fuse box is? Seriously, what were you thinking, moving to LA?’

I pressed the red button to cancel the call and waved the light from my phone around the room, wandering out into the hallway. Surely it would be somewhere around here? I’d been living in the apartment on my own for a week and so far I’d had to call a plumber in when I dropped my Tiffany necklace down the plughole in the kitchen, call an exterminator in when I mistook one of Jenny’s old clip-in hair extensions for a mouse, and call some random stranger in off the street when a massive spider decided it wanted to share the shower. I was determined to conquer this crisis on my own.

Stupid Alex and his stupid three a.m. phone call. I squinted up above the doorframe, was that big white thing a fuse box? But as much as I appreciated his semi-drunken declaration of love at all hours of the night, if he hadn’t called this time, I wouldn’t have woken up, then I wouldn’t have had to go for a wee and found out the electricity was off. Which would have meant I wouldn’t have worked myself up into a panic that there was a blackout, which would have meant I wouldn’t have called him back and he wouldn’t have worried me even more by saying it was just my electric that was out. Living on my own was not working out well.

I bit down on my bottom lip and pressed my hand to my forehead, not knowing quite what to do. I glanced around, looking for inspiration, and found it sparkling through the window. The city skyline lit up the living room, the Chrysler building outlined in white light down the street. I felt my way across the room, successfully only stubbing my big toe twice.

Leaning against the windowsill, I stared out onto the still busy street below and I breathed out, slightly calmer. How could Jenny leave this? How could year-round sunshine and a convertible compete with New York City? Even now, in the middle of the night, the streets were alive with people. Could Jenny pop on her Uggs right now and be eating chow mein within five minutes? Not likely. Well, it was possible but I was pretty certain she’d have to at least get in that convertible and drive ten miles to find it. I watched a stream of yellow cabs and police cruisers rolling past, couples holding hands and running across the street, trying to beat the light; a general assortment of characters wandering around, ridiculously early on a Tuesday morning, not freaking out because they couldn’t reset their electricity.

‘Come on, Angela,’ I said to myself, ‘this is stupid.’ For a second, I considered just going back to bed and worrying about it in the morning, but I knew it would keep me awake. I was going to beat this. I padded back through the living room, bashing my knee as I went.

On closer, tiptoe, inspection, the white thing over the door did look an awful lot like a fuse box. Only one of the switches was down and, from my feeble recollection, that meant a fuse had tripped. Of course, I didn’t have a stepladder. Or a step. Or anything that could feasibly be used to climb on to reach. I looked at the phone in my hand – I could call Alex? He could probably reach but that would feel a tiny bit like admitting defeat. And I had to be in the office at nine. If he came over now, half cut, there was no way I’d be getting to sleep anytime soon. Which wasn’t a horrible thought, I smiled to myself, but no, I had to do this. I refused to be such a rubbish girl. Unless being a rubbish girl might be just the thing … I dashed back into the bedroom, looking for my highest heels. Two minutes later, I’d accessorized my hot pink Victoria’s Secret pyjama top and American Apparel hot pink boy shorts with my gold Christian Louboutin stilettoes. Very sexy.

I grabbed a can of hairspray from the side of the sink on my way back into the hall and reached up as high as I could, bashing at the cover of the fuse box until it flipped down.

‘Come on,’ I puffed, extraordinarily pleased with myself. I pushed up onto my toes, trying to flip the tripped switch without spraying myself in the eyes with Elnett. Every part of me strained. If I could do this, I could do anything. I could sort out all the bills I had to transfer into my name. I could work out what the 401k thing was on my wage slip from The Look. I could work out what the equivalent to Night Nurse was in the chemist – how many variations on a cold medicine did one city need?

On my seventh little leap, I bashed the lid of the can against the switch, clattering backwards into the door.

‘Angela?’ yelled a voice on the other side.

I jumped up, my heart pounding from the shock of my late-night caller and my admittedly surprising (even to me) success at resetting the fuses.

‘Angela, are you OK? I heard a bang?’

I pushed myself up out of the pile of shoes I’d landed in (Jenny had always been on at me to put them away) and peered through the peephole. It was Alex.

‘Ange, let me in.’ He was standing with one arm against the wall, staring at the floor. ‘I’m not drunk. Well, not really.’

I opened the door slowly, so happy that my heart still skipped a little when I laid eyes on him, even with his flushed cheeks and wide eyes.

‘Very sexy,’ he slid through the door, taking me around the waist. ‘Promise you’ll always be waiting for me in heels at three in the morning?’

‘Oh,’ I blushed, trying to kick my way out of the shoes. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ I’d spent months trying to maintain an illusion of sleeping exclusively in sexy nightdresses or Alex’s old Tshirts. This was not a look I’d have chosen for an impromptu sleepover.

‘So this blackout thing, just a ruse to get me over?’ he asked, pushing me gently backwards towards the bedroom.

‘No,’ I protested, albeit not very strongly. ‘The fuses tripped but I fixed it. Are you proud?’

‘Absolutely,’ he smiled glassily, flicking lights out as we went. ‘I think we should turn the lights out though, just in case.’

‘Just in case,’ I agreed. So I’d be going into the office knackered in the morning. Again.

‘Morning Cici,’ I yawned, sailing past her desk, bright and early and absolutely shattered. ‘Is Mary in yet?’

‘Morning girl-who-turned-James-Jacobs-gay,’ she sang back. ‘Of course she is. Gonna try and turn her too?’

‘It’s been a week. You’re not even starting to get tired of that joke yet, are you?’

She shook her head and smiled sweetly. ‘It’s so not a joke. You turned one of the hottest guys on the planet gay. I should kick your ass. You turned that hipster boyfriend of yours yet?’

‘Not as far as I know.’ I was fairly certain he wasn’t gay after last night. And this morning. And hopefully later this evening.

‘Good, he’s kind of hot. For a hipster,’ she shrugged. ‘Don’t come any closer, I’m dating someone who doesn’t seem to be a complete loser at last and I don’t want you turning me gay either.’

‘I’ll try to keep my distance,’ I promised. Shouldn’t be too bloody hard.

Mary sat at her computer, as always, sharp grey bob swinging as she tapped away at the keyboard, little square glasses halfway down her nose. ‘Angela, honey!’

I froze. Honey? What was wrong?

‘Sit down, honey,’ she said, looking up and switching off her monitor.

Double honey? Something was definitely wrong. And she had never, ever turned off her computer in my presence. I hoped she wasn’t ill.

‘Circulation figures are in for the James Jacobs issue of Icon,’ Mary said. ‘And they’re good.’

‘What’s good?’ I held my breath.

‘Two and a half million good. Up from one and a half.’ She could hardly sit still. ‘There are a lot of very happy faces on the exec floor this morning, Angela Clark.’

I bit my lip a little bit too hard. Two and a half million people were reading my interview? OK, really two and a half million people were reading about James Jacobs being gay, but still, it was my interview.

‘And that’s without factoring in the website hits, the uplift in traffic to your blog, even subscriptions are up. To Icon and The Look.’ Mary broke out into what could only be described as a grin. ‘Angela, I’m so, so proud. And so, so sorry about how hard it was to get here. I know I was kind of an asshole when you were out in LA.’

‘Not at all,’ I said, thinking quite the contrary but being far too English to agree with her. ‘So I’m not in trouble with anyone?’

‘Hardly,’ she beamed. ‘As of the second those numbers came in, you are the A-number-one golden girl of Spencer Media. I think you could march up there and demand your own magazine right now if you wanted it.’

‘Might be a bit ambitious,’ I said, feeling myself colour up. It was now or never. ‘I was thinking, though …’

‘Dangerous pastime.’ Mary raised an eyebrow.

‘What do you reckon the chances would be of me writing more stuff for The Look. I mean, the magazine.’

‘Like?’

‘Like maybe a column? Or some features?’ I sat on my hands to try and avoid biting at my nails. ‘Or anything really?’

‘You know I was joking about your own magazine, right?’ Mary pressed her finger against her lips and shook her bob. ‘You want to write a column in The Look?’

I pushed out my bottom lip and nodded. ‘Any chance of that?’

‘You know I don’t work on the magazine, Angela. It’s not as though I can commission a column for the magazine, just like that.’

‘But you could speak to someone?’ That golden girl status had dropped pretty bloody quickly.

‘Yeah, I could speak to someone. But so could you.’

‘I know I could speak to my editor on the magazine but I really don’t know her as well as you. She just sends me CDs and stuff to review but I don’t see her, hardly ever, and—’

‘That’s not what I meant, Angela,’ she said. ‘I meant, given the position you’re in right now – and I do mean right now as in today – you could go and talk to some other magazines. Your profile is very, very high, but that won’t last long.’

‘But I don’t want to go elsewhere,’ I protested. ‘I love working with you and I don’t—’

‘Yes, but imagine you’d come in here this morning and told me that you’d been approached by another publisher, maybe one of our rivals, and they’d offered you a blog and a column and that you were considering it …’