‘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?’
Chapter Fourteen
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 di
e 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.’
‘I didn’t think I should. And everything’s been happening so quickly again, I thought maybe some time apart would be a good thing. But hey, I have been wrong before.’
‘True,’ I whispered.
Alex was backing slowly towards the bed. The bed that was still messed up from whatever happened the night before with Joe.
‘And I guess that’s why I wasn’t answering my phone.’ He slid his hands up my arms, resting them on my shoulders. ‘I wanted to prove that I wasn’t missing you. That I wouldn’t fall apart again without you. Tragic, huh?’
‘Tragic.’
‘Turns out I was wrong, so I guess you’re stuck with me now. If you still want me?’
‘Of course I do,’ I said, a tiny little tear sneaking out of the corner of my eye. ‘But there’s still stuff we have to talk about, I have to explain. It’s not as easy as—’
‘It’s as easy as we make it.’ Still with both my hands in his, Alex pulled me sharply towards him and I crashed into his chest. He smelled like sleep and the deodorant that sat on his bathroom windowsill. ‘You don’t have to explain a thing. You said nothing happened with that guy and I should have just believed you. There should never have been a question for you to answer. I am so sorry. But I’m here and I want to make it right. Tell me what to do.’
I had never felt like more of a shit in my entire life. Here he was, this beautiful boy that had flown thousands of miles to apologize for believing photographs that thousands of other people all around the world, including my bloody mother, were taking as gospel. He was here to tell me that he didn’t believe them, that he was the one in the wrong, and now he was trying to pull me into a bed that had until very, very recently contained a very naked barman and a very stupid me.
‘Angela, are you OK?’ He held my tear-streaked face in his hands. ‘I know things aren’t going to be OK right away. I don’t expect you to forgive me now. I just want to know that you might be able to later.’
‘I-I can’t believe you came,’ I stuttered. ‘I can’t believe you’re here.’
‘There was nowhere else I could be.’ He pressed his forehead to mine, my tears running against his cheeks. ‘So these are happy tears that I’m here, not sad tears because you hate me?’
‘I don’t hate you. You should hate me,’ I faltered. I had to tell him. It was one thing to keep it to myself when I thought things were over, it was another to lie flat out when the man had flown all the way across the country to see me. ‘I’m so sorry, Alex.’
‘Stop talking.’ His lips found my cheeks and kissed away the tear tracks. ‘You always talk too much.’ Without thinking, I tilted my face upwards and kissed him back, his lips salty from my crying and dry from his flight. I wasn’t sure how something that made me melt so completely could make me feel sick to my very stomach at the same time.
Alex drew me down on top of him on the bed. I awkwardly straddled his lap, my shins against the edge of the bed frame. His lips softened as they turned to m
y throat, to the ribbed neckline of my T-shirt. I let him pull me closer and push me backwards against the pillows as I tried to concentrate on his half-closed eyes, his shortness of breath; but every time I tried to let go, I could feel Joe in the bed with us.
‘Alex, I can’t,’ I choked, reaching out for his hand before he could go too far. ‘I’m sorry, I need to sort some stuff out and we need to talk.’
He brushed his hair out of his eyes and sighed softly. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have.’ He pushed up and sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. ‘You want me to go?’
‘God, no.’ I sat up too quickly and threw my arms around him. What if he left and never came back? ‘I just can’t do this. Yet. But will you stay with me?’
‘I’ll never leave again unless you ask.’ He leant in and kissed me again, deep and warm. ‘Do you have stuff to do today?’
I went through the list in my head: call James, sort out the interview, find Jenny, gag Joe, sew a scarlet A to the front of all my clothes. Nothing that couldn’t wait. ‘Not right now. Can we just lie here for a while?’
Alex nodded and kissed the tip of my nose before kicking off his Converses and crawling across the bed. Silently, I lay back against him, pressing myself against his chest, curling my legs through his. I clutched the arm he draped across me tightly and listened to his steady breathing, felt his breath on the back of my neck as it slowed down. He was asleep inside minutes but I just couldn’t close my eyes without seeing Joe’s naked back in front of me.
What had I done?
Once I was certain I wasn’t about to wake up from my dream-slash-nightmare and find my bed had been completely empty for the last twenty-four hours and not taken on a revolving-door policy when it came to hot boys, I crawled out of Alex’s grip and pulled on some long overdue jeans. I padded as quietly as I could into the bathroom and stared at my phone. Whom should I speak to first? What should I say to any of them? Better to just make that call than to sit on the toilet staring at a mobile phone, surely that wasn’t overly hygienic.