‘Well, have a safe flight back to New York.’ James shook Alex’s hand and pulled him into an acceptable one-armed man hug. ‘Good to meet you, take care of her. I’m guessing that one gets herself into trouble fairly easily.’
‘Yes, she does, and she isn’t going to have me to get her out of it any more.’ Jenny threw herself on me. ‘Seriously, Brooklyn, I’m giving you my number before you go tomorrow and I expect you to call me the first time she falls down an open hatch in the sidewalk or something.’
‘I’m not going to fall into a hatch in the sidewalk,’ I mumbled into a mouthful of hair. ‘Honestly Jenny, I’ll be OK.’ I was so going to fall into a hatch in the sidewalk.
‘Yes you are,’ Jenny insisted, flinging herself from me to Alex, who held his arms out, terrified. ‘And I’ll have to accessorize your cast or something. You promise you’ll call me whenever you need me.’
‘I promise,’ Alex said, peeling her off him. ‘And so does Angela.’
They climbed into our cab, leaving me, Blake and James outside the restaurant.
‘So, Blake, I know it’s been a bit weird—’
‘We so don’t need to do this.’ He cut me off and walked off towards his and James’s car, holding up a hand in something of a wave. ‘Bye, Angela.’
‘At least that wasn’t awkward,’ I breathed out, letting James draw me into a big hug.
‘Yeah, thank heaven for small mercies,’ he said. Even now, after everything, I couldn’t help but notice how delicious that man smelled. ‘I’m sorry this week was so difficult but I’m really glad I met you. I think everything’s going to be better though. Even though you can’t tell, Blake is so happy and that’s because of you.’
‘Well, I’m very glad I made him happy,’ I lied. ‘And you promise you’ll take care of Jenny?’
‘Cub scout’s promise,’ he saluted. ‘And you promise you’ll invite me to your wedding?’
‘Baby steps,’ I gave him a stern look. ‘I just hope we can get through all this when we get home.’
‘You’ll be fine.’ James kissed me on the cheek and pushed me towards the cab. ‘You’re so clearly horribly in love.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, peering into the back seat. Alex was cradling a sobbing, slightly worse-for-wear Jenny and mouthing ‘help?’ in the darkness. ‘I hope so.’
‘I think so,’ James said as I slid into the back seat and Alex’s free arm.
‘Don’t come too close, I’ll cry on your dress,’ Jenny sniffed. ‘If I fuck it up, I can’t take it back.’
‘Then James will have to pay for it.’ I wrapped her into a hug across Alex’s lap as James shut the cab door, laughing.
Chapter Seventeen
I hadn’t expected to be sad to be checking out of The Hollywood, but after Jenny and I had bundled all of our bags into the back of the Mustang, I felt strange walking out of the doors for the last time.
‘Are you sure you’ve got everything?’ I asked a very hungover Jenny, who nodded back and draped herself delicately across the back seat, in between her cases.
‘Angie, I’m only moving, like, ten minutes up the road,’ she said from behind her hair. ‘If I forgot something, I think I can come and get it when I turn up for work here tomorrow.’
‘Did you speak to anyone about last night? Is everything still OK about you working here?’
‘Everything’s fine for me,’ she said, sipping from a bottle of water. ‘Joe got his ass fired so I don’t imagine I’m gonna have any hassle.’
‘He got fired?’ I hissed, watching Alex wander outside, looking around for us. ‘How come?’
‘I don’t think the management really like it when the staff get into a bar brawl with really famous movie stars. Or when they sleep with the guests.’
‘But he didn’t sleep with the guests,’ I said quickly as Alex waved and started over to the car. ‘And it was James that hit Joe. Not that I’m defending him, obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ Jenny said. ‘And, don’t get mad, but they think that because I told them he did. And it really doesn’t matter who started or finished the fight, this is Hollywood: celebrities are never guilty. He deserved it, Angie. Don’t start feeling all guilty now.’
‘I don’t.’ I was as surprised as she was. ‘He’s a complete shit.’
‘Yeah, he is.’ Jenny gave me a feeble high five. ‘Hey, Alex.’
‘Hey.’ He stood by the driver’s door. ‘Am I driving?’
‘Well she’s not.’ I looked back at Jenny, who was getting greener by the second. ‘And if I’m being totally honest, I don’t really fancy it. I have no idea where we’re going.’
‘Then I’m driving.’ He opened the door and dropped in beside me. I hadn’t ever really thought about it, but living in New York, I’d never seen Alex drive. I didn’t even know that he could, but as if he wasn’t amazing enough, he put on a pair of Ray-Bans, turned over the engine and pulled out onto Hollywood Boulevard.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ I smiled happily. ‘I just didn’t know you could drive.’
‘I guess there are still lots of things you don’t know about me,’ he said, slowing down for a red light. ‘And I guess there are lots of things I don’t know about you.’
‘Guys, pull over,’ Jenny groaned, batting me on the back of the head. ‘I’m gonna be sick.’
‘Well there’s one less thing not to know about, Jenny,’ I said, stroking her hair while she threw up into her handbag, trying not to think about what Alex could mean.
‘So, I’ll call you when we get back?’ I said to Jenny, carrying her bags into the living room. Daphne’s place was beautiful, all open plan, big windows and a terrace with a view out over LA. Maybe there was something to be said for having a sugar daddy.
‘Yeah, call me when you’re back at the apartment.’ Jenny propped herself up against the doorframe. ‘I guess I might need you to send some stuff.’
‘I suppose so,’ I said, thinking how weird it would be to walk in without her, not knowing when she would be home. If she would be home.
Jenny slipped down the frame, buzzing her own door bell. ‘I have to be sick again.’
‘Do you want me to stay for a bit?’ I risked her puking down my back and went in for a hug. ‘I can stay if you want?’
‘I’m cool, go get your flight,’ Jenny said, falling on the bell again. ‘What is that noise? Angie, say you don’t hate me for staying here?’
‘Of course not, I do get it,’ I said reluctantly. ‘I just wish you didn’t have to be so far away to sort your head out.’
‘You could always move here with me for a while?’
I looked back out at the car. Alex’s head was bobbing along to whatever he was listening to on the radio.
‘Or you could stay in New York with him.’
‘If he still wants me to after all of this,’ I said.
‘Jesus, Angie,’ Jenny let go of the doorframe long enough to slap me round the side of the head. ‘I’m gonna have to get more minutes on my call plan if I have to talk you out of this every time you guys have a row. You’re just gonna get in the car, fly back home, maybe fool around a little on the plane and then pretend that none of this ever happened.’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ I said, letting her out of the hug. ‘I love you, Jenny, you always know what to say.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s my thing,’ she said. ‘Love you too, Angie. You always know how to mess up and make me feel needed.’
Walking back to the car, I tried not to cry but I couldn’t help it. When everything else had gone wrong in my life, Jenny had always been there to help me make sense of myself. What would happen now? And why was it so easy for us to throw around the reasons why we loved each other when I couldn’t say to the person who needed to hear it the most?
‘She OK?’ Alex asked, turning down the radio.
I nodded. ‘She will be.’
‘You OK?’ he asked, wiping away the tears that were rolling down my cheeks.
/> ‘I will be.’ I ran my fingers under my eyes to pick up any stray mascara streaks and smiled. ‘Airport?’
‘We’ve actually got a couple of hours,’ he said, rolling out into the street. ‘And I’m not desperate to spend any more time than we have to in LAX.’
‘What do you want to do?’ I asked, suddenly nervous to be alone with him, even though he was smiling.
‘I know this is going sound weird, but I was kind of thinking the beach? Who knows when I’m going to be back in LA, right? I feel like I should at least see the Pacific Ocean.’
‘Alex Reid, beach bum,’ I shrugged off my cardigan, getting my last few rays of LA sunshine. ‘Who would have thought it?’
I paused on the boardwalk to kick off my sandals while Alex strode on across the beach. Seeing him silhouetted against the sky and the ocean was so surreal, I hardly dared to follow, in case he disappeared like a mirage. Except instead of a palm tree and a sparkling spring, there was a pair of black jeans and an un-ironed Kellogg’s Corn Flakes T-shirt hanging from his wide shoulders and slim hips. He turned and smiled, interrupting my shameless ogling.
‘You checking me out?’ he held his hand over his eyes, the Santa Monica sun too much for his Brooklyn-bred eyesight, even with his Ray-Bans.
‘Maybe?’ I said, stepping into the sand. Good God it was hot. Good God he was hot. So much hotter than James Jacobs. Anyone could spend half their life in the gym and get a two-hundred-dollar haircut. Only Alex could pull off that too-long-on-one-side fringe that hadn’t seen a comb in—well, how long could it be since he’d had it cut? A month? But it was still so soft when I tiptoed across the sand towards him and cautiously brushed it away from his face. ‘You’re going to burn even faster than me. Do you have any sunscreen?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, taking my hand from his face and holding it in his. ‘Don’t tell anyone but I actually tan pretty well. I just don’t see that much sun at home.’
‘I suppose you don’t get many tanned rock stars,’ I said, happy to be talking about nothing. ‘It’s not very hipster, is it? Not very—’
‘Angela, I love you.’
I knew that my mouth was hanging open in a slightly unattractive fashion but I couldn’t move a muscle.
‘Angela?’
I blinked. Nope, he was still there. I wasn’t asleep. Maybe I had sunstroke from not wearing a hat in the car on the way to the beach. Or maybe I was still drunk from, well, the whole week.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes,’ I said finally. ‘What did you say?’
‘Something I should have said before you left but I didn’t want you to freak out and then be too far away to do anything about it. I love you, Angela.’
‘Why?’
‘What?’
‘Why do you love me?’
Well, why not try and ruin this perfect moment? Well done, Angela.
‘Sit down,’ Alex sighed, pulling me down onto the sand beside him. It really was red hot; fine for him in his jeans but more than uncomfortable on the backs of my legs. ‘Of all the responses you could have given me, I wasn’t expecting that. You want me to tell you why I love you?’
‘Yes please,’ I said quietly, not quite able to meet his eyes. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him—well, it was; but more that this scene was so surreal—Alex sitting there next to me in his skinny jeans, his crumpled T-shirt, all pale skin and black hair clashing against the sun and the sand—that it genuinely felt as though I was dreaming.
‘OK, I love you because you have that knee-high stack of books at the side of your bath that are all curling up at the corners because you spend hours in that tub when you should be working. I love you because you put my socks on the radiator if you get up before me, which you always do. I love you because you make me want to do things that I would never have done six months ago.’ He shook his head. ‘I love you because you make me want to come out to LA and tell you I love you.’
‘Oh,’ I pushed my hair behind my ears and tried to smile at the sand, ‘really? Even after all this week’s nonsense?’
‘Any particular bit of nonsense you’re referring to?’ he asked.
I actually wasn’t sure if there was. ‘No?’
‘So no four a.m. phone calls you want to elaborate on?’
Well, that could have been worse. ‘Oh. Yes. There was one of those,’ I nodded, looking away again. ‘That would be the one when I said I love you.’
‘That was the one I was thinking of, yeah,’ Alex replied evenly. ‘Why, what did you think I meant?’
I shrugged, drawing a figure eight in the sand with my finger. ‘Just been such a mad week. I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular.’
‘So you weren’t thinking about you spending the night with that guy James knocked out last night?’ he asked.
I paused my circling, paused my breathing for a moment. ‘Not especially.’
‘You know that trust is really important to me, Angela,’ Alex said, putting his hands over mine. ‘It’s not like we didn’t have this conversation already.’
Oh God, I thought, squeezing my eyes closed tight. Don’t let this be happening again; don’t let him do this again.
‘I would really appreciate you telling me what happened instead of me having to piece it together from what I heard last night. I’m guessing whatever I dream up will actually be way worse than what actually happened.’
‘I didn’t know you were there,’ I said. ‘You heard all of it?’
‘I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?’
‘OK,’ I started, trying to run through the story in my head before it all came spilling out. Was there any way for me to tell him the whole story without him getting up and walking away at the end of it? Probably not. ‘Right, short version? I thought I’d lost my job, I thought I’d lost you, James was refusing to sort everything out and so I got totally wasted at the hotel bar. Joe helped me get back down to my room, he kissed me and I passed out. The next thing I knew, I woke up, he was there, I freaked out and that was that. And I only really found out what happened last night. Which was nothing. Nothing at all. It was just so stupid. I was just so stupid.’
‘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.