I hadn’t seen Jenny since our tuna bagel liaison. I’d called, I’d texted, I’d offered to come over for lunch, for drinks, for coffee, but she was ‘way too busy’. Apparently taking two days out of the office at this time of year was ‘insanity’ and she just didn’t have the time. The fact that I didn’t point out to her that she’d only been working full time in said office for two months was evidence, to me at least, of how I was growing as a person. Not having had time to chat, of course, meant that we had not had the chance to discuss the Jeff situation. Namely whether or not Jenny knew about his bachelor weekend and whether or not the timing of our impulsive getaway was in any way related. I’d told her Alex was going to be in Vegas, I’d told her he was going with Jeff, I’d sighed with frustration when she just replied by reminding me this weekend was about ‘bros before hos’. She was giving me nothing.
‘Yo-yo-yo.’ Jenny utched across the back seat of the car to make room for me and my massively overstuffed satchel. There was nothing I could need that I did not have in this bag. Blanket, snacks, socks, plasters, headache tablets, Berocca, kitchen sink. ‘Are you excited? I’m excited. Vegas, baby!’
‘I’m excited,’ I confirmed with a businesslike nod and pulled out my phone, refreshing the emails and not really giving Jenny the enthusiasm I knew she was looking for. ‘Vegas, yeah.’
‘That was the weakest “yeah” I’ve ever heard.’ Jenny reached across and snatched the phone out of my hand. ‘I’m turning this off. It’s girl time. No emailing Alex, no texting Sigge – see?’
She pressed the power button on my phone first, then hers, and tossed them deep into her beautiful YSL Muse. It was so beautiful.
‘I was actually checking to see if I had heard back from any of the magazines overnight. But thanks.’
‘Any time,’ she replied, missing my point entirely. ‘So, we fly at eleven, we land at two, we need to be at the pool by three, and I want to be drunk by four. It’s been a bitch of a week.’
‘There’s a chance I’m being a bit stupid,’ I acknowledged before I asked my question, ‘but isn’t December in Vegas the same as December anywhere else? Won’t it be a bit cold for the pool?’
‘Why, I’m glad you asked Angela,’ Jenny said in her best concierge voice. ‘The average winter temperatures in Nevada rarely drop below sixty degrees in the daytime, and this week, the city of Las Vegas has been enjoying an unseasonable heat wave of temperatures up to eighty degrees. Should the weather let us down, Hotel De Lujo has a state-of-the-art climate system in their pool area, guaranteeing a balmy eighty-five-degree year-round summertime.’
‘Excellent work.’ I was genuinely impressed. ‘You are very good.’
‘That’s why they pay me the big bucks,’ she said, pulling epic amounts of long, curly hair out from behind her back and flicking it over her shoulders.
‘Do they?’
‘Not really.’
‘Right.’
We sat quietly for a moment, both holding our breath as the car swerved up the ramp and onto the BQE. Once we were sure we’d survived joining the freeway, I breathed out (my jeans wishing I hadn’t) and turned to ask Jenny the question she’d been dodging all week.
‘So.’ I turned on my serious face. ‘Jeff.’
‘Jeff?’ she asked, applying lip gloss. ‘What about him?’
‘He’s in Vegas. This weekend. On his bachelor weekend.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Are you going to tell me you didn’t know that when you booked this?’
‘Angie.’ She dropped the Juicy Tube back in her bag and gave me a smile that was so close to being patronizing, I thought I might slap her. ‘Sure I know he’s going to be there. We’ve still got mutual friends. But I didn’t know until after I booked the trip, honestly.’
‘You didn’t?’ I believed her about as far as I could throw her. Probably not as much as that, to be honest. She was very slim at the moment.
‘No, I didn’t. But even if I did, it wouldn’t have changed my plans. Jeff and I live in the same city. I’m not about to move back to LA to avoid him, am I? So what if we’re in the same town for a weekend? Vegas is a big place, we’re not gonna run into him unless we go looking for him. It’s way less likely that we’ll see him between now and Monday than it would be if I was, oh, I don’t know – visiting you? Since you live in the same building?’
I could tell she was annoyed because she was doing the fun thing where she went up at the end of every sentence, and she only did that if she was drunk or pissed off. Her very best Valley Girl accent. It was a fair point. New York was a small town; you saw the same people every day. I had any number of friends I nodded to on a regular basis – Chihuahua Man, Pink Coat Lady, Sir Coughs-A-Lot. OK, so I hadn’t slept with any of them, but I ran into them endlessly. She was a lot more likely to have to deal with Jeff on her home turf (or rather mine) than she was in the wild and wacky world of Las Vegas. But still.
‘Fine. If you say you didn’t know, you didn’t know,’ I said, softening my stern face slightly. But only slightly; I still wasn’t utterly convinced. ‘Just, is there a contingency plan for what happens if we do run into them?’
‘No. There isn’t a plan. I don’t do anything,’ Jenny replied, a little bit sad. ‘He’s getting married. I’m with Sigge. How many times have you and Erin and Vanessa and Gina and my therapist and my doorman and that guy in the bodega told me? I need to move on. I’m moving. If we see them, I’ll be polite, I’ll probably need to do a shot, and then I’ll cry myself to sleep later on.’
‘Oh, Jenny.’ I launched myself across the back seat, aided by a very cavalier swing into the next lane by the driver, and gave my friend a huge hug. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s still shit. I didn’t mean to be an arsehole.’
‘It’s always shit, no matter how happy you are,’ she sniffled. ‘You’re kinda lucky you don’t have a big heartbreak in your past.’
‘Don’t tempt fate,’ I warned. ‘Nothing is official, is it?’
‘Hmm.’ Jenny checked her manicure. ‘There’s every chance I might veto an engagement anyhow.’
She didn’t look like she was joking. I raised an eyebrow.
‘What does he think he’s doing at my ex’s bachelor party?’ she said, starting on a semi-rant. ‘What happened to Team Lopez? You’re my best friend, he’s your boyfriend. Doesn’t he realize his loyalty is automatically with me? He’s being an asshole.’
‘Ahh.’ Gotcha. ‘Yeah, apparently he just really loves Vegas. And I suppose he and Jeff are kind of friends?’
I shrank back from whatever form her rage would take. They were kind of friends. Admittedly they weren’t giving each other makeovers and having sleep overs every weekend, but they went for a drink occasionally.
‘Friends my ass,’ Jenny said quietly, calmly. ‘If I see him out there, he’d better be careful. That’s all I’m saying.’
And it was all that needed to be said.
‘Where is she?’
Jenny was well into her second Starbucks and starting to curse Erin White’s name. ‘If she makes me miss this flight, I will kick her tiny ass.’
‘She’d have called you if there was a problem, wouldn’t she?’ I looked at my watch again. We only had twenty minutes until boarding and I had no idea where in LaGuardia we needed to get to make the flight. Plus I was wearing heels; there would be no running in heels. In an attempt to avoid checking my suitcase, I’d packed as light as possible, but that meant I was hobbling around the airport in six-inch tassled Giuseppe shoeboots that Jenny insisted were ‘totally Vegas’ when she’d brought them home from the sample cupboard. At the time I’d agreed: they were totally Vegas. But they were not totally running around an airport in Queens. I looked like a tit. A tit with tassles on. So yes, totally Vegas.
‘Hey!’
Across the airport, we saw a tiny blonde hurtling towards us. I couldn’t help but notice she was not in any way, shape or form packed for a trip. Hmm.
‘Jenny! Angie!’
Erin raced over, her cheeks red, her perfectly coiffed blonde bob fluffy from the cold. ‘Why the fuck aren’t you answering your phones?’
‘We’re answering if someone’s calling.’ Jenny scrabbled in her handbag to pull out her phone and wave it in Erin’s face. ‘See? No missed calls.’
‘It’s turned off, genius,’ she said, tapping at the blank glass. ‘Oh my God, I thought you were both dead.’
‘Oh, yeah …’ Jenny had the decency to blush and handed me my phone. I took it back and apologized effusively.
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Erin waved away our words and beamed. ‘I only came to tell you I’m not coming.’
‘Huh?’ Jenny was genuinely flummoxed. ‘Shut your face, White, and get on the plane. We’ll buy you new shit when we get there.’
‘I can’t.’ She pulled what looked like a slim white pen from her pocket and held it out to Jenny. ‘I’m pregnant.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Jenny immediately dropped the pregnancy test on the floor. ‘Did you pee on that? You gave me something you’ve peed on?’
Erin stared her down.
‘I mean, congratulations!’
We wrapped the tiny lady up in a big hug and bounced around for a moment. As much as the shoeboots would allow. Erin was older than Jenny and me, and we both knew she’d been trying to get pregnant for a while. This was big news. It was also my first stateside friend to get on the baby wagon. Scary. I could happily convince myself Louisa was doing nothing more than waiting for Amazon to deliver a Tiny Tears doll because she was a whole ocean away, but Erin? I saw her all the time. I would see her getting fat. I would see her in those amazing-looking jeans with the big elasticated pouch. This one would be real. A real baby. Eeep. I hoped she wouldn’t give it to me or Jenny to hold; one of us would definitely break it.
‘Yeah, I just did the test this morning.’ Was it possible that she was glowing already? ‘I’d been kinda sick for a few days, but I just put it down to a bug or something. Then, I don’t know – I just decided to do a test before I left this morning, and there it was. Positive. We’re having a baby.’
‘And we’re going to be awesome at it,’ Jenny said, giving her one last squeeze.
‘I did mean me and Thomas, but sure, why not?’ Erin smiled. ‘It just sucks that I can’t come with you guys. I don’t want to be an asshole, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to deal with the partying and everything. I’m exhausted already.’
‘We completely understand,’ I answered on both our behalves before Jenny could argue. ‘Go home, rest, paint a room yellow.’
‘You guys are the best.’ Erin, my most composed and sophisticated friend bounced from foot to foot, pressing both hands against her stomach. ‘I can’t even tell you. I won’t be that mom, I won’t, I swear. I just … I’m so happy.’
With one last flurry of kisses, Erin bounced out of the airport and back into her glossy black town car. As we passed through security at last, I thought about how much things would change. Erin was tiny and perfect and terribly glossy. Soon she’d be massive and messy and terribly stressed. Goodbye Bottega Veneta handbag, hello nappy mat. Louisa was having a baby, Erin was having a baby, Jenny was behaving like an adult. Sort of. The world had officially gone topsy-turvy.
After we had taken our squishy leather seats and I had prepped my seat-back pocket with all the magazines on earth, I slipped on my flight socks, wrapped myself up in my blanket and readied myself for a lovely, lovely nap. The flight from New York to Las Vegas took six hours. That was a decent four-hour kip with an hour either side to read my Las Vegas guidebook and make my list of ultimate Vegas to-dos. I already had quite the list as a starting point: I wanted to see a real-life showgirl show at Crazy Horse, I wanted to ride the rollercoasters at the Stratosphere, I wanted to take photos of myself with every single Elvis impersonator that crossed my path, I wanted to put everything on red 36, I wanted to take photos of myself outside the Little White Wedding Chapel and give my mother a heart attack. It would serve her right for thinking it was appropriate for us to be Facebook friends. There were so many things: everyone had a recommendation for me.
But on the plane, I wanted to rest. Possibly watch Captain Americawithout Alex around to make me skip through those scenes where Chris Evans took his shirt off. This was not meant to be. I managed about seven minutes of reading and listening to my iPod post-take-off when Jenny tapped me on the shoulder.
‘Angela, we are so lucky,’ she declared.
‘And why’s that?’ I asked, suspiciously eyeing the six burly men seated in front of, behind and across from us, and staring at Jenny as though it were feeding time at the zoo.
‘Because Brad here is a world-class poker champion and he’s headed to the De Lujo for a tournament,’ she gestured towards a very large, very smug-looking man who resembled a strongly medicated game-show host. ‘He’s going to teach us how to play poker.’
For every ounce of mania in Jenny’s grin, I mustered up an equivalent lack of enthusiasm. Really? We hadn’t even crossed the state line yet and she was already encouraging attention from men who, as far as I was able to ascertain, loved nothing as much as poker, double denim and Subway sandwiches. There wasn’t a single one of them who wasn’t clutching a foot-long sandwich. A meatball sub at eight a.m.? Ick. If Brad Pitt wanted to reprise his Ocean’s Elevenrole and show me the way around a game of five-card stud, I’d consider it. Until then, I was out of any and all card games.
‘I’m all right, thanks,’ I said, popping my earbud back in, only to have it yanked back out.
‘Angela!’ Jenny wasn’t having any of it. ‘Brad and his friends would like to show us a few basics. Isn’t that nice of them?’
I gave Brad and his friends a courtesy smile and an acknowledging, but not encouraging, nod. One of the friends giggled. Good grief.
‘Jenny …’ I was as polite as I possibly could be for someone who had woken up at five a.m. ‘I can’t even play snap without getting confused. Why don’t you take point on the cards, and I’ll look after the slots.’
‘I would totally look after their slots,’ Brad stage-whispered to the giggler.
‘Excuse me?’ I pulled out the second earbud and sat up straight.
‘Angie.’ Jenny placed a calming hand on my arm. ‘Don’t mind the boys. They’re excited. They don’t get out much.’
‘So we’re on for drinks tonight, hot stuff?’ Brad leaned over out of his seat to give Jenny the full force of his drunk-in-the-morning leer. ‘Play some cards? Or some slots?’
‘No.’ Jenny sighed and leaned back in her seat. ‘I’ll look after my own slots.’
Like all good gamblers, Brad knew when he was beaten. He slunk back into his seat, ignoring the jibes and jeers from his friends. Swing and a miss for the big guy.
‘What was that all about?’ I hissed at my seat buddy. ‘Has dating Sigge messed you up? Are you incapable of registering the relative attractiveness of any other man alive? Because Brad is not attractive.’
‘I know. Shut up,’ she sulked, waving down a stewardess. ‘Two margaritas, please.’
‘I don’t want a margarita,’ I told her. ‘It’s eight in the bloody morning.’
‘Who said it was for you?’ Jenny pulled down her tray table. ‘But actually, yeah, you are having one. Better make it three.’
The stewardess gave me a quizzical look but headed back off to the galley, under orders.
‘Is everything OK?’ I wrapped the earphones around my iPod and put it away. Clearly my services were needed. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Vegas, baby.’ She played out a feeble drum roll on the table. ‘Can we please agree that we’re going to have an awesome, awesome time?’
‘Can we please agree that we won’t speak to Brad ever again?’
‘Yes, we can,’ Jenny nodded, taking her drinks from the returning stewardess. ‘If you drink this.’
‘I hate drinking on planes,’ I whined, sniffing the marg. Nothing like a tequila-based
cocktail before midday. ‘It makes me sick.’
‘Vegas insists you drink this,’ she said, waving it around under my nose. ‘If you don’t drink this, you’ll make Vegas sad. Do you want Vegas to be sad?’
‘Do you want me to be sick?’ I asked.
‘If you puke, I’ll buy you a steak dinner,’ she promised, handing me the glass and clapping with glee.
‘If I puke I won’t want a steak dinner,’ I pointed out, taking a sip. Actually, it wasn’t so bad. There was hardly any tequila in there. I would be fine. And I needed to do something to distract myself from Brad picking his nose across the aisle. Ewww.
‘How’re you feeling?’ an irritatingly fresh-looking Lopez asked as we joined the line for taxis in fabulous, freezing Las Vegas several hours later. So much for a heat wave: the sun was blazing, but it was definitely on the chilly side. My in-flight jeans and jumper combo were not nearly enough.
‘Not brilliant,’ I replied, fumbling for my sunglasses and trying not to hiccup. There really hadn’t been a lot of tequila in my margaritas, but if you drank enough of them, it turned out there was just enough. Mid-air drinking was even worse than midday drinking. And I’d been drinking in mid-air at midday. And now I felt like I was going to die.
‘You’ll be fine.’ She punched me in the arm and flashed the guy behind me a huge smile.
A lot of people say best friends usually share a similar level of attractiveness or earn a comparable salary. I believe the most important thing to have in common with someone for a friendship to work out is a comparable alcohol tolerance. It’s impossible for a monster drinker to be BFF with someone who is on their arse after a sniff of the barmaid’s apron. Usually, Jenny and I went at an even three-martini maximum, but the lack of breakfast combined with drinking at altitude meant I was very much on the back foot. In fact, I felt very much like a back foot. The back foot of a badger.