I Heart Vegas

  Stunned into silence, I had used up my dialogue quota for the day by spouting such epic quantities of shit about how getting married for a visa wouldn’t mean anything to me. Alex, on the other hand, must have taken a vow of silence while we’d been apart because he couldn’t stop talking. My boyfriend wasn’t particularly chatty at the best of times. He was definitely someone who on the whole only said something when he had something to say, but now I couldn’t shut him up. Every thought that passed through his mind was vocalized, and none of them made me feel any better. According to his iPhone, if we got married at De Lujo, they gave you one hundred dollars in chips so that was something. Getting married was a great write-off for the suit. There was definitely a song in this, if not an album. Now he had something to put in his Christmas cards to his family. The list went on.

  His family. I hadn’t even met his family. And he hadn’t met mine. What would my mum say? She would be heartbroken. And that actually made me feel bad. With every step we took towards the chapel, I was regretting this whole thing more and more. To the point where I just wanted to sit cross-legged in the street and cry.

  ‘Welcome to the De Lujo chapel.’ A very polite if slightly tired-looking woman in a smart white suit stared at us from behind a low counter not ten minutes later. ‘How can I help you this evening?’

  ‘We want to get married,’ Alex replied. ‘Can you hook us up?’

  ‘Um, actually …’ The girl didn’t seem particularly phased by the fact that her happy couple was made up of a manic groom and tear-stained bride, but then I had a feeling this wasn’t her first time around. ‘We had a cancellation this evening. We’re all ready to go with an “elegant affair” ceremony right after we finish up with the couple inside.’

  She looked up and gave me her brightest smile. I wondered if she was on commission.

  ‘If you don’t mind using someone else’s colour scheme, I could do you a really great deal. Otherwise I just have to throw the flowers out anyway.’

  ‘Let’s do it,’ he agreed on our behalf, fishing around in his wallet for his credit card. I could feel myself getting hotter and hotter, and the room began to sway.

  ‘Do you have a bathroom?’ I whispered.

  The countergirl nodded. ‘The bridal salon is to your left.’

  I nodded back and turned as carefully as I could. I didn’t know the exact shotgun wedding etiquette on doing the deed in bare feet because your fiancé had made you run in front of cars, across the Strip, against a light because he didn’t want to wait for the walk sign. Maybe he’d been trying to get me run over. Even though I didn’t have health insurance, I kind of wished I had.

  ‘I love spur-of-the-moment weddings,’ the girl confided to Alex as I staggered across the hallway. ‘So romantic.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I heard Alex reply. ‘All my dreams come true.’

  The bridal salon was beautiful. All hand-painted cream wall coverings, overstuffed chaises longues and primping stations for the bride and her entourage. Except I didn’t have an entourage. Because I wasn’t really a bride. I didn’t need the raised dais to make sure my train was properly puffed out because I didn’t have a train. I had a slightly soiled cocktail dress that wasn’t in any way qualified for the upgrade it was about to receive. At least it was borrowed, just like the bag and the shoes. And my fingernails were blue from the cold. The oldest thing I had on me were my pants. Sexy. And as for something new, did this fancy first-time feeling of genuine terror count? I wasn’t glowing. I was sweating. And I had mascara smudges under my eyes. This didn’t feel like the most special day of my life. It felt like I was about to sit the chemistry A level exam. And I didn’t take chemistry A level.

  ‘OK, Angela.’ I leaned against the sink, ran the cold water and held my wrist under the tap, trying to cool down. ‘Just think.’

  My reflection stared out at me, smudged and sad. My sexy up-do had become a not quite so sexy down-do during the sprint to the De Lujo, but the remaining pulled-back strands did give me an oddly bridal air. And if there were going to be pictures, at least I was considerably skinnier than the last time I’d been photographed at a wedding. Two days of booze-related puking really was the perfect pre-wedding detox. If you really hated yourself. But aside from the sexy chignon, razor-sharp cheekbones and distinctly green pallor, my reflection also looked like she meant business, so I listened.

  ‘There are two ways to look at this.’ I breathed out slowly, trying to regulate my hammering heartbeat. ‘Alex has agreed to do this. Yes, he’s gone mad, but he’s agreed. Which is a good sign. So I could just go out there, do this, forget that I’m wearing a dress with a damp arse and know that it’ll all be OK at the end of the day.’

  This all seemed relatively sensible and potentially do-able.

  ‘Or you could go out there, sit Alex down and apologize for being such a selfish wanker, tell him you love him, tell him he’s the reason you don’t want to go back to London and of course you want to marry him, but you don’t want it to be like this.’

  That also sounded sensible, but this time, it was also true. Weirdly, though, it also felt like the more difficult option.

  ‘This isn’t happening like this,’ I told myself, wiping away the tears and standing up straight. ‘None of it.’ And what’s more, the shoes were coming off.

  Emptying my clutch out onto the countertop, I flicked through all the crap looking for my powder compact. A girl can’t walk into a situation like this unarmed and shiny. It was already going to be difficult; I didn’t want Alex distracted by his reflection in my nose. With a final swipe of the powder puff and a slick of lip gloss, I stared myself down and tried to remember all the wonderful, empowering things Jenny had told me over the years. But for some reason, the only advice I could seem to summon was blow-job related, and this was neither the time nor the place. Apparently my subconscious had already decided this wasn’t going to go well.

  ‘Now or never,’ I muttered, ignoring every voice clamouring for attention in my head. I’d listened to everyone else’s advice, I’d heard every side of every story, and where had that got me? Sobbing in the toilets. Again. Twice in one Vegas. If there was anything that was going on the ‘what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’ list, it was crying in the bogs. Probably not what the marketing team at the tourist board had in mind, but that wasn’t my problem.

  I scooped my make-up together and dropped it all in my bag, being careful to make sure all the lids were tightly fastened – it was my something borrowed after all. But one of these things was not like the others, in that it wasn’t mine. Stashed among my prized collection of NARS neutrals was a small black bullet covered in bling. It looked like something I might have used when I was seven. Or like it belonged to Paris Hilton. Either or. I popped off the top to find a bright red lipstick that looked familiar. Where had I seen this before? Of course – it was Sadie’s. Everything she owned was covered in finger-slicing Swarovskis. It was the safest bet in Vegas that she’d been first in the queue for a vajazzling. But what was it doing in my handbag? I puzzled for a moment. For Sadie’s lipstick to get into my make-up, Sadie would have had to have been in my make-up. But since Sadie wasn’t familiar with little things like boundaries, privacy or locks, it wasn’t beyond the realms of imagination. Not that it was important at that exact second. I congratulated my brain on a well-played game of procrastination, hopped from one bare foot to the other and shook myself down.

  As soon as I stepped out of the bathroom, Alex stood up quickly and, without a word, knocked the confidence right out of me. He still looked great – beautiful, really – but something was wrong. His eyes were red and he looked like he was about to tell me he’d just remembered that he’d bought me a kitten for Christmas and forgotten to put air holes in the box. It wasn’t a positive look. But I had to say what I had to say, dead kitten or no dead kitten. I really hoped there wasn’t a dead kitten.

  ‘Alex, I need to talk to you.’ I put the shoes on a low couch and rushed over, hands out in
front of me, ready. ‘This is stupid.’

  ‘I think you should sit down.’ He covered my arms with his, pushing them down by my side. ‘I just—’

  ‘No, we need to talk.’ I would not be silenced. I had to tell him everything. I had to … sit down. Alex physically pushed me onto the low sofa and shot his own do-as-you’re-told face my way. I busted mine out monthly, but I’d only seen Alex’s once before, and that was at Thanksgiving, when he’d pulled rank and insisted I didn’t need a fifteen-pound turkey to feed four people.

  ‘Will you just fucking listen to me for once?’ He squeezed the tops of my arms.

  ‘Ow.’

  It didn’t actually hurt, but I had to prove a point. It was difficult to give a speech about how much you loved someone and wanted to be with them for ever when they were swearing at you and leaving indentations in your bingo wings.

  Trying not to pout, I looked at him and bit my lip. Aside from the fact he’d clearly had something of a cry himself while I was over-emoting in the toilets, he looked so serious I couldn’t bear it. I wanted to lean in and kiss him and make all of this go away, but I was frozen in place. Partly by his vice-like grip, but mostly by the paralysing fear that had struck me ever since I was pinned to the couch.

  Alex looked towards the doors of the chapel and then back at me. ‘I just took a look inside and …’ He shook his head and relaxed his hands a little. Shaking his head, he made a soft laughing noise that I did not enjoy. ‘Angela, I don’t know what to do.’

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, I burst into tears. And as soon as I burst into tears, the doors of the chapel burst open, ‘I Like It’ by Enrique Iglesias blaring out at a million decibels. Interesting replacement for Mendelssohn, but each to his own. It was only when Alex let go of my arms and took my hand instead, whispering ‘I’m sorry’, that I got really worried. And it was only when I recognized the screeching blonde rolling out of the chapel in a white strapless dress that could have doubled as a handy compression bandage for my dicky knee and a bouquet of peonies, held up by the tall, gorgeous, blond man, that I started to panic.

  ‘Sadie?’ I let go of Alex’s hand and stood up. ‘Ben?’

  ‘Angela! You got my message!’ Sadie threw every single one of her ninety pounds across the room at me, knocking me right back down on the couch. ‘Isn’t this awesome?’

  ‘Is it?’ I blew her hair out of my mouth and looked at Alex with wide eyes. He quickly leaned backwards, trying to avoid the heavily perfumed mess that had collapsed in my lap. ‘I mean, congratulations?’

  ‘I didn’t get married, you dumb shit.’ She clawed her way up my front, getting a good handful of boob in along the way, and pushed off my lap until she managed a shaky upright position. ‘See?’

  Showing me her back, I saw the word ‘bridesmaid’ scrawled on her beautiful, beautiful dress in bright red lipstick. Ah-ha. And of course Sadie was wearing a painted-on white dress to someone else’s wedding. But … oh, shit. Just which someone else were we talking about?

  ‘Angie!’

  The shriek was loud enough and high enough to break every window in the hotel. And there were a lot of windows. Jenny stumbled out of the chapel towards me in the ruffled, feathered dress. So transfixed was I for a split second that I failed to notice Jeff staggering out of the chapel behind her.

  Mew.

  ‘I saw them while you were in the bathroom – I didn’t know what to do?’ Alex said into my hair as Jenny and Jeff held hands and bounced up and down on the spot before pausing, staring deeply into each other’s eyes and collapsing onto each other for a full-on slobbering session. It was quite possible I’d never ever seen her so drunk. And I had seen her Drunk. I’d only been gone a couple of hours. What the hell had she been doing?

  ‘I think the traditional thing is to object,’ I replied, too scared to move. A sparkly diamond ring winked at me from Jenny’s left hand. So this had really happened? ‘With shouting.’

  ‘I’m not getting involved.’ He pulled his phone out of his suit pocket, checked the screen and put it back. ‘This is nothing to do with me.’

  ‘It’s everything to do with you.’ I turned, stunned. ‘Jenny’s my best friend. Jeff is supposed to be your friend. You’re here on his bachelor party and might I just remind you, that would be a bachelor party that was not related to this wedding.’

  ‘Uh, yeah, she’s your friend, emphasis on the your, and I was a last-minute stand-in for the bachelor shenanigans. At no point did I sign up for groom shepherding.’ He shrugged, upsetting me and the line of his suit. For the first time that evening, I wished he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. I wanted my Alex, not this fancy-dress imposter. ‘I sent the best man a text. I think we should just get out of here.’

  It was just all too much. Jenny and Jeff had moved onto the next sofa and the gratuitous snogging had descended into an orgy of hands. Thank God that dress was so involved – the wedding video was already something they could never show their kids. And it was also being filmed on Sadie’s jewel-encrusted silver iPhone. That didn’t add to the sense of occasion.

  ‘We can’t just leave.’ I jumped up after Alex and followed him out of the chapel, shoes in one hand, bag snugly under my arm. ‘This is ridiculous.’

  ‘This whole night has been ridiculous.’ He turned quickly, taking me by surprise. I dropped the shoes. I dropped the clutch. I stared at the angry man in the suit. ‘What a surprise. You’re knee-deep in Jenny’s shit again.’

  He walked straight out of the chapel, leaving me and the girl at the counter very confused.

  ‘Is he coming back?’ she asked, pointedly looking away from the sofa where Jenny and Jeff were mere moments away from consummating their marriage. Sadie and Ben were nowhere to be seen. I had to assume, classy gal that she was, they’d vanished into the toilets. ‘Are you going ahead with the wedding?’

  ‘I’m going to say no,’ I replied, without the mental strength to think about what that meant. All I knew was that Alex was walking away from me. Whether it was for now or for ever, I had no idea. ‘So sorry.’

  ‘No worries,’ she chirped. ‘No shortage of weddings around these parts.’

  ‘So I see.’ I ran out into the casino, leaving my shoes and clutch where they fell. ‘Alex, please.’

  He stopped right by a bank of Wizard of Ozslot machines, giving us an audience of little old ladies with an awful lot of hair. One eye on us, one eye on the Dorothy, they nudged each other and kept pumping the quarters.

  ‘Alex,’ I yelled one more time, accompanied by a chorus of ‘We’re off to see the wizard’. Moments like this were supposed to be soundtracked by Adele or Beyoncé, not Judy Garland and a bunch of Munchkins.

  He leaned against the side of the nearest slot, much to the chagrin of its player, until she checked out his backside and nodded at me in approval. ‘I have to go figure this out. Leave it.’

  ‘Wait.’ I reached out, needing him to fill the empty space between us. It felt too permanent. But it wasn’t. Alex came back to me, pushed my hair back and held my face in both of his warm hands. He leaned in to kiss me, warm and soft as always, but it didn’t feel right. It felt like a sigh. And just like I knew he would, he broke away first, ran his thumbs across my cheekbones and stroked his hands down my neck, resting on my collarbone.

  ‘Just let me go,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’

  And then he walked away.

  ‘Don’t worry, honey,’ slot-machine lady yelled over the clicking and whirring. ‘You’re in Vegas. Plenty of fish in the sea.’

  ‘But that’s my fish,’ I replied, watching him disappear around a corner. I never wanted to see that suit again.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Shoeless, bagless, cashless and Alexless. I slouched over to the bar and hopped up on a bar stool. At least that was easier in bare feet.

  ‘What can I get you, miss?’ the bartender leaned across the gilt surface to give me his best smile.

  ‘Can I charg
e it to my room?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied.

  ‘Dirty martini. Big one.’

  These were desperate times and desperate times called for desperate measures. And loads of gin. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t get drunk tonight, that a little wine with dinner, maybe one cocktail afterwards, was more than enough. But that was before. I wanted to be wankered. The bartender was quick and the martini was strong; both things made me very happy. There was no way I could process the night’s events without at least one drink in me. Not for the first time, I wondered if I had a drinking problem. No, I decided, I’m just turning into a real New Yorker. Just in time to be sent back to London, where I will be labelled a lush and sent to bed without any dinner.

  ‘Are you going to drink that or swim in it?’

  I looked up from my massive martini to see James, phone in hand, grin on his face. A sober, smiling man. It was a refreshing change. Setting the precious martini safely on the bar, I let James scoop me up in a hug.

  ‘I’ve been calling you, piss-head,’ he said, letting me go and ordering a whiskey and Diet Coke. ‘Should have known I’d find you here.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I lost my phone,’ I explained. ‘It’s been one of those days.’

  ‘Why do I feel like that’s an understatement,’ James asked, throwing a fifty-dollar bill on the bar without looking. Flash bastard.

  ‘What gave it away?’

  ‘No shoes, knackered hair, no lipstick and you’ve clearly been crying.’ He took a sip of his drink and carried on. ‘You’re here on your own, you’ve lost your phone, and you’re drowning in a martini so big it needs a life guard. Can’t have been your best day.’

  For some reason it was easier hearing that in a British accent.

  ‘It wasn’t my best,’ I admitted, taking another glug of lovely booze. ‘How was yours?’

  ‘Got up at midday, had a massage, gave myself skin cancer at the pool, had a nap, had dinner, came here. Can’t really complain.’