Lindsey Kelk 5-Book 'I Heart...' Collection (9 page)

‘What’ll it be?’ the bartender interrupted. I looked down at the menu, flustered. Not a Sex on the Beach or a Woo Woo to be seen.

‘We’ll have two Perfect Tens,’ the guy ordered. ‘Sorry, you like them?’

‘This is my first time here, I’ll have to try it.’ It took me a moment to realize he’d just bought me a drink. ‘I mean, thank you.’ I was desperately trying not to blush and completely blanked. He ran his hand through his light brown hair, which moved just enough to make my heart melt but was still short enough to make it through a game of squash unscathed. Probably.

‘So you’re a freelance what?’ he asked as the bartender presented us with a pair of huge, citrussy-looking drinks.

‘Oh, writer,’ I said, taking a sip. Whatever alcohol was in this was well hidden behind a whole lot of pineapple juice. It was the perfect summertime drink. ‘I write children’s books.’ It didn’t seem worth going into any more detail at this point. That and the fact that I was struggling to put my thoughts into a workable sentence. He was so ridiculously hot!

‘That’s great,’ he said, pulling the straw out of his drink and sipping straight from the glass. Manly. ‘It must be fulfilling to do something so creative.’

‘Uh-huh,’ I nodded, realizing too late that I was making really short work of this drink and not really wanting to go into why I wasn’t creatively sated by writing about toys that go on magic journeys when they shake their musical bells. ‘And what do you do?’

‘I work on Wall Street,’ he said, almost an admission. ‘It’s not exactly creative, huh?’ Even sitting down and wearing a suit I could see how worked out his upper body was. As unaccustomed as I was to talking to a hot man in a hot bar, I could feel my confidence having a crack at coming back up again, like the little engine that could. If that little engine was fuelled by vodka.

‘But it must be challenging?’ I said, trying to slide my empty glass back onto the bar without him noticing. No such luck. ‘I can’t imagine how much responsibility that must be.’

‘Well, yeah,’ he agreed, signalling to the bartender to refill my glass. I reached for my purse and he held out his hand. ‘It is challenging and thankfully, it’s well paid, so I can afford to buy children’s book writers drinks.’

‘You buy a lot of children’s book writers drinks?’ I asked, attempting to flirt. I was rusty but good God, I was going to have a go.

‘Just you and JK Rowling, if I ever meet her,’ he joked. Pulling out his wallet, he passed the bartender what looked suspiciously like a hundred dollar bill, simultaneously impressing and terrifying me. ‘So I gotta ask, do two drinks get me your name?’ he asked, passing me a refreshed glass.

‘Angela,’ I obliged, sipping slowly. ‘Angela Clark. And does accepting them get me yours?’

‘Tyler Moore,’ he said, replacing the wallet and removing something else. A tiny silver business card case. ‘So, Angela, are you on vacation in New York or are we lucky enough to add you to our swelling ranks of writers?’

‘You’re lucky enough to have me for a while,’ I said, trying not to stare at his chest. Reaching in and out for the wallet had revealed a thin white shirt that in turn hinted at a very hard, very toned six-pack. ‘I’m staying for the time being, but I’m not sure how long for.’

‘I hope it’s long enough for me to take you out,’ he said, opening the business card holder and passing me one of the cards. I took it and slipped it straight into my bag. I didn’t want to lose it. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘The Union,’ I spotted the men on the sofa standing up and throwing bills on the table. ‘On Union Square?’

‘I love that hotel. There’s this great noodle place across the square too, haven’t been there in ages,’ he said, swapping the business card holder for a BlackBerry. How many pockets did he have in there? His jacket was like the Tardis. ‘Well now you’ve got me hungry, how about dinner on Thursday? Could I get your number?’

‘Oh, I don’t have a phone yet,’ I winced as he stepped down from the stool. ‘But Thursday would be great, really. Would it be OK if I called you?’

‘You got my numbers, I’d love to hear from you,’ he said and held out a hand, which I shook gladly. Soft hands, firm grip and possibly manicured but I wasn’t complaining. The way I figured it, he was a karmic gift from the universe. ‘Bye Angela Clark.’

And with that I was in love.

I stared after him as he vanished down the wrought-iron staircase with his friends and sipped my drink. Oh, his rear view was every bit as good as the front.

‘Could I get another Perfect Ten?’ I asked as the bartender passed my way. He nodded and miraculously, another appeared from nowhere.

I left a twenty on the bar and hopped off the stool. Turned out I wasn’t that steady on my heels and I wobbled over to Gina’s reserved area.

‘Hey, girl!’ Jenny waved me over from a low bench by the window. ‘I was worried about you until I saw you talking to tall, rich and handsome over by the bar. Johnny yesterday, hot banker tonight, seriously, why do you need my help again?’

I flopped onto the bench and sighed. ‘But they’re both because of you,’ I said, throwing an arm around her. ‘It’s the hair and the make-up and stuff. Not me. Jesus, I couldn’t even get my own boyfriend to have sex with me, let alone seduce strangers.’

‘Seriously?’ she asked, sipping on what looked like a Cosmopolitan. Hmm, I thought, apparently not a cliché. One of those next for me. ‘But why wouldn’t he want to throw you down and ravish you?’

‘Because he was ravishing someone else,’ I laughed loudly. ‘And he never saw me looking like this. I wore nothing but hoodies and baggy jeans. We had sex about once a month on principal. And it had been shit for about, God, do you know I can’t actually remember the last time it was good.’

‘That’s really sad,’ sighed Jenny. I dropped my head onto her shoulder and nodded. ‘He has absolutely no excuse for cheating but if things were that bad, you should have been out of there a long time ago.’

‘And you know what’s really sad?’ I whispered loudly with dramatic hand gestures. ‘He is the only man I’ve ever done it with.’ I nodded to myself and finished my drink. It was definitely time for another. ‘Yeah, maybe I should do it with Tyler, that man at the bar. He asked me out for dinner.’

‘And you’re gonna go, right?’ she asked, taking my empty glass. ‘You should totally go.’

‘I said I’d let him know about Thursday,’ I noticed I was slurring a little bit. The two drinks I’d necked at The Union must have been really kicking in. ‘He was really, really good-looking.’

‘Well, don’t make it too easy for him,’ she said, patting my hand. The room was starting to spin a little, it was so hot. I really wanted another drink. ‘But you should definitely go out on Thursday and if it goes well, I say you do whatever you gotta do. You so need to get back on the horse, Angie.’

‘Yeah, ride that horse,’ I sighed, looking for a server. How long did it take for a waitress to make her way around here? ‘What about you? You’re bloody gorgeous? What about you and horse riding?’

Jenny laughed out loud. ‘How many drinks did you have over there?’ she asked. ‘I’ve ridden far too many horses, kissed too many frogs. When I turned twenty-nine I decided I wasn’t going to keep dating useless guys just for the sake of dating, so I’m holding out for a good guy.’

‘That’s great,’ I said, squeezing her hand hard. ‘That’s really, really great. You know what? I feel a bit sick.’

The room started to spin a little bit faster and I started to feel a little bit hotter. Jenny helped me up and somehow we made it outside to the little yard on the side of the hotel.

‘How many drinks did you have?’ Jenny asked, returning from the bar with a tall glass of water. It was the most wonderful thing I’d ever drunk.

‘Just two at the hotel and three pineapple things here,’ I said, breathing deeply. ‘But I have only had breakfast.’

‘You really will fit in here if you carry on like that,’ Jenny said. ‘Drink that water and we’ll stop on the way to Planet Rose for food.’

‘Planet Rose?’ I asked, trying to stand up, starting to feel a bit drunk again rather than a bit sick. Standing up still felt a long way away.

‘Karaoke,’ Jenny said, looking back towards the garden entrance where Gina and the rest of the gang were starting to bring their party out on to the pavement. ‘Will you be OK? Do you want me to take you back to the hotel?’

‘Nope,’ I said, flinging myself to my feet. Man, these heels were high. ‘I might not be able to hold my drink or my man, but what I can hold, is a tune. Point me in the right direction and give me a bloody mic.’ I was wobbling a bit but at least I was upright.

‘Okaaay,’ said Jenny, looking at me nervously. ‘Sure you’re gonna be OK?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ I slurred, ‘let’s just get to karaoke. Seriously, I have Singstar, it will be fine.’

‘I kinda meant are you sure you’re not gonna puke,’ Jenny said as I marched off after the girls. ‘But apparently you’re good.’

We walked until I sobered up and hit a completely different part of town. The shops and hotels of Soho gave way to dark loud bar after dark loud bar, punctuated by little random-looking shops.

‘Welcome to the East Village,’ Jenny gestured around. The glossy girls looked a little out of place alongside the hipsters and goths that spilled out of the bars and smoked on the pavement, but they really didn’t look as if they cared. A couple more blocks away, we piled into a slightly slutty looking bar, all red walls and zebra skin booths with Black Velvet belting out of the stereo, with more than thirty of Gina’s friends, colleagues, well-wishers and good-looking people picked up along the way. And it seemed that out of all of them, I was the only one half-cut. It was only once I’d been pushed all the way down the narrow bar, I realized they weren’t playing Black Velvet. Someone was singing Black Velvet. Someone really bloody good. This wasn’t Singstar territory.

I’ll just take it easy, I told myself as I slid onto a bench and tried to look casually through the song list. I won’t drink, I’ll just sit here and be calm. These people are my potential friends. I don’t want them to think I’m some loser lush who got dumped and came to New York to drink herself to death.

‘Hey, English,’ Gina stood in front of me with an enormous, lurid margarita. ‘This is yours. I put me and you down for some Spice Girls. Make you feel at home.’

‘Oh, thanks.’ One more drink couldn’t hurt, could it?

The next morning, or early afternoon, came all too quickly, given that I couldn’t remember anything after my rousing rendition of ‘Wannabe’. Glancing around the room (which would have been much easier if it would have just stopped spinning) I saw my dress, my shoes and my handbag all littered across the floor, so at least there didn’t appear to be too much collateral damage. As I tried to roll over, the bed covers turned into a straitjacket and alcohol induced kitten-like weakness or not, I had to get them off. Kicking madly, I pushed all the sheets off until I was laid, in my underwear, diagonally across the bare bed.

And that was when I heard the shower.

Nowhere in the room was there evidence of another person. I hurled myself off the edge of the bed, fighting back the urge to throw up, and pulled on the first thing I found, yesterday’s white shirt, but the shower stopped. I froze, squatting in the open shirt, hanging onto the edge of the covers. The lock on the bathroom door clunked out of place. Unkindly, the full-length mirror showed me exactly what the person in the shower would be seeing in a couple of seconds and it wasn’t pretty. Elegantly messy bob was a bird’s nest and Razor had lied. There was definitely a cut-off point when smudging my eye make-up did not just make it look better. And the idea of a woman in a black bra, black pants and white shirt over the top might sound sexy, but trust me, right then, it was not. I desperately, desperately tried to think back – who could it be? It wasn’t the banker guy, he hadn’t even been at karaoke, it could be Gina’s friend, Ray, who had performed a show-stopping duet of ‘You’re the One That I Want’ with me, but no, he was definitely gay. What about the short bellhop who had completely wowed us with ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. Nope, gay again. Shit, it couldn’t be Joe. Not the impossibly gorgeous waiter, Joe. Please no. Please no. Please – too late, the bathroom door opened.

‘Afternoon, sleepyhead,’ the voice sang happily. ‘Now, I had a great time and I think you’re a great girl but, well, I have to get going.’

Thank God, it was Jenny.

She stood in front of me, all smiles, fluffy towels and wet hair, laughing her back off.

‘You didn’t know who I was did you?’ she managed to squeeze in between chuckles. ‘Shit, Angie, you are the worst drinker I’ve ever seen. And not to be funny but you’re not looking your best either. You might want to work on that before you ride that horse.’

I stood and stared for a moment, waiting for it all to come back to me. Nope. The only thing that was coming back was … sushi. I’d eaten sushi. And now, it really was coming back to me. I pushed past Jenny and headed straight for the toilet. Thankfully, this time she didn’t just laugh and proved herself to be not just a great life coach but a great hair-holder-backer and glasses of water provider. Once she’d stripped me down and helped me into the shower, I began to feel slightly more human. This was definitely a crash course in friendship.

‘Feeling better?’ Jenny was back in last night’s dress and had pulled her hair into a high ponytail. At least she sounded sympathetic even if she looked as though she might crease herself laughing at any second. ‘I guess you learned not to mix your drinks. Those Perfect Tens you were drinking in the Grand so do not mix well with margaritas.’

‘I thought they were non-alcoholic,’ I said, slathering my face in moisturizer and slipping into a waffle robe. It felt as if dozens of little clouds had attached themselves to my body to carry me back to bed. ‘I guess not.’

‘Not so much,’ Jenny said. ‘Listen, I have to get back to the apartment to see Gina off, but meet me in reception at seven – sound OK?’

I nodded. ‘Will you tell her I’m sorry I can’t be there and about last night and stuff?’

‘You don’t need to apologize,’ Jenny said as she slipped into her stilettos as if they were slippers. A skill I needed to learn. ‘Seriously, we had a great night. And I was glad for the excuse to leave when you passed out. It was way past my bedtime.’