‘First there are all these photos of you practically dryhumping the first celebrity you ever meet, then you’re not answering your phone, then you’re calling me at four in the morning and saying, well, whatever. What am I supposed to think? What do you want me to say?’
‘Don’t make out like I’m the one who’s been ignoring you! I’ve been trying to talk to you since I got here,’ I protested. ‘You were the one who didn’t want to talk to me. You were the one who wasn’t answering his phone.’
‘And the fact that I actually have things to do here without you holding my hand means you get to fuck around behind my back?’ he yelled.
I almost dropped my phone. ‘What?’
‘What do you mean what?’ he asked. ‘One day you’re holding hands on the beach, leaving his hotel room in the middle of the night, and the next you’re kissing him outside a club? You’re gonna tell me there’s nothing happening there at all?’
There weren’t many times in my life I’d been stunned into silence but they were racking up tonight.
‘Tell me you haven’t slept with him.’ Alex’s voice was rough and low. ‘Say it. Now.’
‘I-I haven’t slept with him,’ I stuttered. He hadn’t asked if I’d thought about it; he’d asked if I’d actually done it. I heard a sigh and more keystrokes. ‘Please stop looking at the pictures. I haven’t done anything, Alex, I would never. Please just believe me.’
‘And that’s where we have a problem,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t think I do believe you.’
My phone was burning hot against my ear but I couldn’t put it down. Long after Alex had hung up, I was still standing in the middle of the hotel room, clutching the tiny piece of plastic as it cooled slowly. Did he really just say that? After what seemed like a lifetime, my brain flicked back on and I redialled. There was no way I was leaving it like that. But Alex’s phone didn’t even ring; instead I got a ‘cannot be connected message’ right away. I tried again from my room phone just to make sure but it wasn’t happening. He must have taken the battery out or something.
I sat down at the desk and flicked through the pictures online. I scrolled through the galleries that had already sprung up across the gossip sites, dedicated to me and James. It was so weird. And not just because most of them were slaughtering my outfits and the size of my arse, although they were all taken from extraordinarily bad angles. Honest. The strangest thing was that to hundreds—if not thousands—of girls around the world, it must look like a dream come true. Ordinary girl is sent to interview hot movie star, hot movie star falls for ordinary girl and whirlwind romance ensues.
It certainly was far more romantic than the truth: ordinary girl is sent to interview hot movie star, falls for hot movie star’s clichéd fake flirting, lets hot movie star kiss her then discovers he’s gay but is plastered all over the internet, gets dumped by actual love of her life and ends up with no one. Yeah, who was going to pay to read that? Flipping down the lid of my laptop, I wondered if anyone was going to pay to read anything I wrote ever again. Surely this was going to push Mary over the edge. If ever I needed Jenny Lopez, it was now, but she was nowhere to be found. Again. Probably still pissed off after our face-off in Bar Marmont. I stared at my mobile, frustrated. And then almost crapped myself when it started to ring. It was Louisa.
‘Hello?’ I answered cautiously. A lecture was absolutely guaranteed. Louisa loved to make a drama out of a crisis.
‘Hey, Angela!’ she chirped. ‘I just had to call you. We had the most amazing meal ever last night. We went to that Alta place you told us about, oh my God. I had to call you. There were these prawns, God, honestly.’
I listened to her rapturous restaurant review, silently confused. She wasn’t going to even ask about the photos?
‘And then we had this cheese thing for dessert. Honestly. Wow. I don’t think I can ever eat again. Are you having fun in LA, babe?’
I really didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know. Louisa had never been much of a one for celebrity gossip, but then before I moved to New York, neither had I. It was hard to avoid it in America.
‘Ah, not really,’ I said slowly. It was actually very nice not to be shouted at for two minutes. ‘I’m having a bit of trouble with the interview. And Alex and I are having a row.’
‘Oh honey,’ Louisa said down the crackly line. ‘What about?’
‘He thinks I’ve cheated on him.’ With James Jacobs, I added silently.
‘But of course you haven’t! You would never do that. Why on earth would he think it?’ It was reassuring that, after everything, Louisa would automatically believe I was the wronged party without even getting half the story. But then, she hadn’t seen the photos. Or the video on TMZ. Or the E! News bulletin.
‘No, I haven’t,’ I agreed. ‘But he’s seen a photo that sort of makes it look like I did. And he just doesn’t want to listen to me.’
‘Oh babe, just let him calm down and then talk to him,’ she reasoned. ‘I’m sure it will blow over once you’re back in New York. Just concentrate on getting your job sorted out.’
‘You’re probably right,’ I said, wishing the issues weren’t quite so interwoven. ‘Anyway, you didn’t call to listen to my problems. I’m really glad you liked Alta.’
‘Loved Alta,’ she corrected. ‘We should definitely go when I come back to visit you.’
‘Definitely,’ I agreed. Unless I lost my job and my visa and then we’d be going for dinner in Nandos in Wimbledon.
‘Call me if you need me, babe, got to run. Love you.’ She blew me a kiss down the phone.
‘I will, love you too.’ I hung up. Well that was weird. But just as weirdly, what she said made sense. I had to concentrate on getting things back on track.
Tomorrow wasn’t going to be fun and even less so with the hangover I’d just guaranteed. Flicking on the TV (was Friends ever off television?), I pulled my worse-for-wear-but-still-the-best-thing-I’d-ever-owned bag up onto the bed. When everything else was going wrong, at least a girl could still rely on Marc Jacobs to make her smile. Dredging through the crap in the bottom, I eventually found a pen and notepad, scowling at my BlackBerry as it blinked at me.
‘Sometimes I just want to write things down, OK?’ I told it. Before looking around to check that no one had just seen me go completely insane and talk to a phone. Just Ross and Rachel, thank goodness.
1. Call Mary
2. Call Alex or Alex’s friends
That would prove trickier, since the only phone number of any of Alex’s friends I had ever had was Jenny’s ex, Jeff, and Jenny had made me delete it after a healthy night in our apartment of Ben & Jerry’s, red wine, and burning everything he had ever come into contact with, including an old brush they had used to tease their hair for a hilarious Eighties fancy dress party. The brush nearly took the entire apartment block with it when Jenny tossed it in the burning bin. It turned out to be not only disgusting but also a very dangerous fire hazard. But there was a chance I’d written it in the back of my diary—I was just too drunk to work that out at that exact moment.
3. Speak to James
As much as I wanted to just call The Sun and tell them that James was as gay as a goose, I just couldn’t do it. Damn that stupid misguided sense of dignity. Or was it pride? Or maybe just the idea of me stretched across the front page of the News of the World in a pair of La Senza lace shorts with everything padded, pushed and teased under the headline ‘James Jacobs’s Beard Tells All!’ was just too much. Actually, the News of the World wouldn’t say beard, they’d probably go straight to ‘Pathetic fag hag, Angela Clark spills the beans on James Jacobs’s late-night gay orgies in Hollywood’s public bathrooms…’ My mother would be so proud.
4. Sort things out with Jenny
It was just too much that things were weird between us, especially with everything else going on, but I had a horrible feeling that things were going to get weirder before they got better. Or was that just a horrible feeling that I was about to throw u
p? Dropping the pen and pad, I raced to the bathroom to double up over the toilet just in time.
When would I learn?
‘Jesus Christ, Angie, what the hell happened to you?’
I woke up slowly, my face cold and seemingly stuck to something hard, a flip-flopped foot in my blurry eyeline. Trying to move my head hurt far too much, and for some reason my left arm was completely paralysed.
‘Angie, can you hear me? Did you take something?’ The voice carried on but it sounded so far away. ‘How long have you been on the bathroom floor?’
Ahh, that made sense, I was still on the bathroom floor. Which was why it was cold. Which was why I couldn’t move my arm. Which was why Jenny’s feet were almost touching my nose.
‘For Christ’s sake, Angie, are you thinking your answers instead of saying them again?’
Yes, I thought.
‘Mmhuh,’ I said.
With the help of Jenny and a towel rail not meant to be used to hoist ten stone of incredibly hungover girl up off the floor, I was soon sitting, or slumped, on the toilet seat. I readily accepted the glass of water she held out to me, not bothering that it came from the bathroom tap, and glugged it down. Which was my first mistake.
After I’d thrown the first glass of water up, I slowly sipped a second, Jenny shaking her head at me from the edge of the bath.
‘I cannot believe you, Angie.’ She pushed my hair back off my face. ‘What happened after I left?’
‘What happened?’ I closed my eyes again. It didn’t help. ‘You want to know what happened?’
‘Yeah,’ Jenny said, taking my empty glass and refilling it from the bath tap. Was it weird that it tasted like heaven? ‘I mean last night. What happened to “I would never cheat on Alex, even if we’re on a break?”’
‘I remember, I wasn’t that drunk,’ I replied, despite the fact that that was clearly a lie. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The photos of you and James?’ Jenny gave me her ‘duh’ face. ‘The ones that Erin and Vanessa and Gina all emailed over today? I kinda didn’t expect you to be here. Did he leave already or did you just come back to the hotel after you did the deed?’
‘Oh my God.’ I suddenly felt very, very sick again. ‘It’s so not what you think.’
‘You didn’t, did you?’ Jenny asked, her annoyingly healthy face lit up like Christmas.
‘Jenny, he’s gay,’ I said into the palms of my hands.
She scoffed. ‘If he said no, you can just say so.’
I looked up, my attractive white pallor apparently adding to my serious face.
‘No. Way.’
‘Yes.’
‘No. Way.’
‘With Blake.’
‘Really? That’s hot.’
‘Missing the point entirely, Jenny.’ I pulled a flannel from the towel rail, ran it under the cold water and pressed it against my face. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Well, you’re gonna take a shower first,’ Jenny said, standing up and pulling the shower curtain across behind her. ‘Then you’re going to explain to me every last little detail of how you uncovered this juicy, potentially financially rewarding piece of gossip, and then you’re coming with me to go shopping for Tessa DiArmo’s award show tonight.’
‘You’re seriously doing that?’ I asked, peeling off my sweaty dress and stepping into the shower. Ahh, the sweet relief of running water.
‘Don’t ever doubt me, Angela Clark,’ Jenny called, closing the bathroom door. ‘Get your ass clean and be downstairs in ten minutes.’
Ten minutes was always going to be a stretch but, fifteen minutes later, I emerged from the lift with a very roughly blow-dried bob, hastily applied make-up and my satchel thrown across my body. Jenny looked my jeans and T-shirt up and down and sighed.
‘That’s so not the ensemble to be photographed in, honey,’ she said, wrapping her arm around my shoulders and guiding me out to the car. ‘Where’s the big hat? The dark glasses?’
I pulled my sunglasses triumphantly out of my handbag. ‘I’m wearing the exact same outfit as you,’ I protested. But of course I wasn’t. My baggy boyfriend jeans and little pink American Apparel T-shirt couldn’t compare with Jenny’s skintight Sevens and clingy, white, deep V-neck. At least our black Havaianas were identical.
We picked up iced coffees en route, me thankful for any reason to get out of the car-slash-death-trap, Jenny ecstatic to be able to demonstrate her ability to sip a Frapuccino whilst driving, and I filled Jenny in on the James/Blake situation. Once I’d finished the story for the third time, I tilted my head back and stared up at the beautiful blue, cloudless sky. At least if I looked up there, I couldn’t see Jenny running red lights.
‘So what are you going to do?’ Jenny asked, swerving around a tight corner onto Melrose Avenue. ‘Did you make everything OK with Alex? Did you speak to Mary?’
‘I spoke to Alex but it didn’t go that well.’ And that’s putting it mildly, I added to myself. ‘I have to call Mary but I’ve been sort of putting it off. I’m guessing the fact that she hasn’t called me yet is not a good sign.’
‘It all sounds pretty clear to me, honey,’ Jenny said, swinging the car into a car park beside a building that seemed to be covered in grass. ‘You just have to tell her the truth. It’s just gonna sort this whole thing out.’
‘I know but, well, actually, I don’t know…’ I pulled my frizzy hair into a loose ponytail and wrapped a band around it. ‘I can’t just out him, can I? Obviously he’s hiding it all for a reason.’
Jenny stopped the car with a jolt. ‘Are you fucking with me?’
‘Jenny—’
‘This ass-hat makes out with you in public, allows photos of the two of you to be published all over the internet, effectively destroys your relationship and costs you your job and you don’t want to casually drop into conversation that he’s the new Clay Aiken?’
I wrinkled my nose. ‘Yeah, well.’
‘Great argument,’ she climbed out over the locked car door.
‘They do open, you know,’ I grumbled. ‘Where are we anyway?’
‘And I thought I’d made a shopper out of you.’ Jenny held her arms out in a flourish. ‘This, my British friend, is Fred Segal. Fashion emporium and Los Angeles institution. And where we’re meeting Teresa inside in a half-hour, so we need to get our shit together.’
‘Tessa’s really coming?’ I asked, pulling off my sunglasses and following Jenny past a row of tables and chairs, already packed with pretty people. ‘Jenny, that’s incredible.’
‘I know, crazy right?’ Jenny smiled and nodded at the man holding open the door for us. ‘She texted me this morning to say she’d meet us here. Daphne is going to freak out when she finds out. Tessa DiArmo is a big get for a stylist.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be happy for you,’ I lied. ‘Where did she go, anyway?’
‘Uh, she went home with that guy she was…talking to,’ she muttered into a clothes rail.
The store appeared to be split into lots of different little sections but, unsurprisingly, Jenny knew exactly where she was going. It was as if she had inbuilt shopping GPS: I was fairly sure I could drop her in any major shopping capital in the world and she’d be able to find the nearest Starbucks, bathroom and Marc Jacobs concession. It was a talent I very much hoped to develop when I grew up.
‘Well, if she’d stayed maybe she would be styling Tessa,’ I said in my least judgemental voice. Which was still fairly judgey. ‘But anyway, I wanted to talk about last night. About what you said before you…left.’
‘I called ahead to set up a room for Tessa DiArmo?’ Jenny confidently accosted a passing salesgirl. ‘Can you please make sure that it’s ready? We’re going to be sending things over soon. Thanks.’
The girl looked us up and down once, nodded and then rushed off to the back of the store. Jenny kept her back to me.
‘Do you think this would suit Tessa?’ She held out a Twenty8Twelve T-shirt dress. ‘Too casual for an awards show,
though, right? But maybe with heels and the right jacket…’
‘Jenny, you realize I’m not going to let this go, don’t you?’ I said, pushing the dress away. ‘What you said last night? And no, it wouldn’t suit Tessa. It would suit me though.’
She tossed the dress towards me. ‘I have to find like ten outfits before Tessa gets here, so can we not do this now?’
‘We are doing it now; you do your clearest thinking when you’re shopping.’ I passed the dress on to the assistant that had appeared back at Jenny’s side. ‘I thought this trip was all about you getting laid. What’s happened with Joe?’
‘Turns out maybe it wasn’t as easy as I’d thought. Or at least he isn’t any more,’ she said, turning her attention to a grey strapless Hache mini-dress. ‘The folds on this are really interesting. This could look gorgeous with—like—a little leather jacket and some chunky heels?’
‘Yes, it would,’ I agreed, passing it to the assistant at her elbow. ‘So that’s the problem? Joe? Because you could get men loads better than Joe, you know.’
‘Yeah, for sure. Except it turns out maybe I don’t want to. What about this?’ She pulled out a gold sequined tank dress.
‘Jeff?’
‘Jeff.’
‘Oh, Jenny.’
I watched her lips press into thin, colourless lines as she systematically flicked through the rail of clothes in front of her, from left to right.
‘I’m gonna get you guys some water,’ the salesgirl said eventually, backing away from the awkward silence. I nodded and smiled as she scuttled away.
‘You know, I’m not the best person to be giving out relationship advice, but you will get over it eventually. That is actually a fact. And I’m pretty sure one you told me once,’ I picked out a red Hervé Léger number and held it up to Jenny. ‘I wish you’d just talked to me about this. Practise what you preach and all that?’
‘Yeah, except I’m not that good at taking my own advice,’ she said, nodding at the red dress. ‘He’s moving in with his new girlfriend, you know? He called me to tell me in case I found out from Alex. I guess, even after everything, I really thought we were supposed to end up together. Now I’m not so sure.’