It was difficult not to start playing air violin.
‘It’s not an excuse, but when no one’s listening, you get used to just giving orders instead of asking questions.’ The music in the lounge almost drowned out her gentle self-analysis. ‘So, yeah, maybe it looks like I always get what I want, but I don’t.
I didn’t think she was trying to make me feel bad on purpose, but she was doing a fine job.
‘I don’t have that many friends, I can never make it work with a guy. I always pick the wrong one. I don’t know.’
‘You’re not seeing anyone right now?’ I hoped her tales of celebrity shagging would take the edge off the guilt trip I was enjoying so much.
‘Been single since my last boyfriend.’
Bugger.
‘He really messed me up.’
Double bugger.
‘I mean, how screwed in the head do you have to be to only date models then spend all your time telling your girlfriend you hate her because she’s a model? That was pretty confusing.’
Fine, I admitted to myself; maybe having a twenty-three-inch waist wasn’t worth all this drama.
‘You’re so lucky to have someone like Alex. He wouldn’t care what you did for a job. He loves you whatever, right? It’s so obvious.’ Sadie sniffed loudly and kept talking. ‘I don’t know, maybe I need to be on my own. Until I stop being a bitch.’
‘OK, enough is enough.’ I couldn’t cope with any more self-deprecation from the model and it was never a fun time hearing someone tell you how lucky you were immediately after you had fucked up big time. ‘You don’t sound like you’re particularly happy with your lot in life? What’s that all about?’
Two could play at the Jenny Lopez game; I’d learned a trick or two in my time.
‘I am happy,’ she said slowly. ‘I think. I know I’m super-lucky to do what I do. I just don’t love it as much as I used to. Meeting Jenny, seeing her go off to work every morning smiling? That’s crazy. And even seeing how upset you got when you didn’t get those jobs, I was like, huh. When I don’t get a job, I’m pissed off, but I’m not upset. I’m kind of relieved.’
‘So if you weren’t modelling, what would you be doing?’ I templed my fingers and channelled our very own Oprah. ‘If you could do anything?’
‘I’d still want to be involved with fashion somehow,’ she answered, quickly this time. ‘Or maybe more on the beauty side. I’d love to have my own make-up range. Or design a denim line. Or write about fashion?’
‘Can you write?’ I asked.
‘No.’ She admitted. ‘But I’d like to try.’
‘I’d start with the first two options then,’ I replied.
It felt a bit like the time my twelve-year-old cousin told me he wanted to be an astronaut – such a pipe dream; but I tried to remember how well-connected Sadie must be. Without even knowing how well-connected she was, Jenny and Erin worked with dozens of top beauty and fashion companies. She could absolutely make this happen if it was what she really wanted. ‘Life’s too short to be miserable, you know?’
‘I never think about things like that,’ she replied. ‘I guess that’s why I’m such a bitch.’
‘I didn’t think about things like that until I met Jenny.’ I gave her our first official hug. ‘You’re in good hands.’
‘Come and have a drink with me.’ Sadie leapt off the bed with all the energy of someone who hadn’t technically been jilted less than twelve hours earlier.
‘I’m ever so tired.’ I yawned for effect. ‘Maybe I’ll just crash?’
‘No way – it’s our last night.’ Sadie threw the sweater to the ground and shimmied her dress into position. ‘Haven’t you been listening? I always get my own way.’
‘Then this will be a good learning experience for you.’ I turned back onto my front and breathed face down into the pillows. Bliss. ‘I’ve done my good deed for the day.’
With one vaguely horse-like whinny, she left my room without even slamming the door. I smiled. A great big, half-drunk, entirely exhausted smile. It was the expression of someone who knew one of the worst days ever was almost over. When I woke up, it would be tomorrow, and honestly, how could tomorrow possibly be as bad as today?
But then I heard the door open again. I should have known she wouldn’t give up that easily.
‘Get your arse out of bed, Clark.’
She had returned with reinforcements in the shape of James.
‘I’m not having you moping in here.’ He started playing the bongo drums on my backside until I rolled over. ‘Where do you think you are? This is the land of bad decisions. You can’t start punishing yourself for anything that happens here until you get home. You’re going to have a good time whether you like it or not.’
‘Maybe being a martyr is my idea of a good time,’ I grumbled. Sometimes I really was my mother’s daughter.
‘Damn it, woman,’ James shouted. ‘What is moping around in here going to achieve? Apart from nothing. You can either stay in here and ruin your holiday altogether, or you can come outside, do shots you can’t stand and dance to music you hate, just like everyone else, all right? In fact, there isn’t a choice. Letting me dry-hump you to Katy Perry is not optional.’
It was a beautiful image.
‘But I’m tired, and it’s not like I lost fifty quid on the roulette table, is it?’ I tried to kick him away, but James was considerably stronger and more committed to his dream than I was.
‘I once dropped a hundred grand on a party at the Palms, got coked off my tits and gave a very famous movie star who insists he is not nearly as gay as everyone thinks he is a blow-job on the ghost deck at the Palms,’ he reminisced happily. ‘I woke up in the middle of the desert in a convertible Mustang with three puppies in the back of the car and a crate of Cheez-Its. And I still think Vegas is a good thing.’
‘Classy,’ I replied, desperately wanting to ask who the movie star was.
‘I woke up in Paris one time,’ Sadie offered.
‘Where did you start out?’ James asked while trying to heave me off the bed. I let my entire body go limp, refusing to make it an easy task.
‘Uh, Hard Rock?’ Sadie did not attempt to assist with the heavy lifting.
James pished her attempt to black-dog him. ‘That’s hardly a million miles away.’
‘Oh, right.’ She pulled her hair out of its ponytail and shook it out. ‘I meant Paris, France.’
James and I locked eyes in silence.
‘Long story.’ She put her hands on her hips and assumed her best Jenny pose. ‘Now, Angela Clark, get your ass out of bed, take this, drink this and put this the hell on before I lose my shit.’
She really had been paying attention to her roommate.
‘Fine, I’m up.’ I slouched beside the bed, looking down at my pink princess dress. It was in a bad way. Like me. ‘But I’m not taking anything. You do whatever you want, but really, I ate pot brownies when I was in the second year of uni and spent an entire night trying to make scrambled eggs before I had to call my mum to tell her I could feel all of my fillings. So I’m fine.’
‘It’s just a caffeine pill.’ Sadie thrust a little brown pill into my hand, followed by a can of sugar-free Red Bull. The breakfast of champions. At one a.m. ‘Jenny would kill me if I tried to roofie you.’
‘I would kill you if you tried to roofie me,’ I replied, reluctantly taking the pill. ‘And I am concerned by the fact you even threw it out there as an option.’
I hadn’t dabbled in caffeine supplements since the third year of university. It wasn’t quite as shambolic an experience as my dalliance with heavier narcotics, but at one point, Louisa did find me sitting outside the corner shop at six a.m., shaking and insisting I needed them to open because I had to have a strawberry Pop-Tart or I would die. Pharmaceuticals were not my friend. And yet, ever the victim of peer pressure, I took it anyway.
‘Halfway there,’ Sadie congratulated me, handing over something black and slippery. It felt like a
dead seal. Sexy. ‘Put this on.’
‘Can’t I just put my jeans on?’ I asked. ‘I mean, I already did the most stupid thing you asked. Surely I don’t have to do stripper-at-a-funeral fancy dress as well?’
‘That’s my dress,’ she replied in a level voice, while James dissolved into a wild cackle. ‘It’s Vince and it’s amazing.’
I held the leather tea towel out in front of me. ‘I don’t think it’s going to fit.’ It really did feel like I was stating the obvious.
‘It’s got a lot of give in it.’ Sadie wasn’t going to give in. ‘Just try it.’
Comforted by the fact that they were going to have to cut me out of this when it got stuck under my armpits, I shucked off the knackered pink Tibi and yanked the Vince over my head.
‘It fits!’ Sadie said, clapping her approval. ‘See? It’s just like Spanx.’
‘I can’t breathe!’ Gasping for breath, I looked down, only for my own boobs to nearly poke my eyes out. ‘Oh, hello.’
‘That’s obscene.’ James shook his head. ‘I love it.’
‘Hi, stereotypical gay man.’ I tried to hold my hand out to him, but the dress was too restrictive to allow for courtesy. The cap sleeves cut off my circulation, ensuring an evening of penguin flapping and no sitting down. ‘Nice to meet you. I’m going to be your hag for the night.’
‘Shut up and put some make-up on,’ he said, grabbing my Red Bull and knocking it back. ‘You look like shit.’
Since my make-up collection was AWOL, along with my borrowed handbag and Sadie’s shoes, I borrowed a judicious amount of eyeliner from Jenny’s stash and let Sadie spray so much Elnett into my hair even Dolly Parton might have thought it was a bit much. It took less than five minutes to transform me from a shop-soiled Betty Draper into a poor man’s Angelina Jolie. Quite the result.
The makeshift wedding reception hadn’t stopped for the want of a bride or groom. It was chaos in the lounge, my beautiful snow-white room covered in bodies bumping and grinding and God knows what else. My poor sofa.
‘Do you have any idea where Jenny and Jeff went?’ I shouted at Sadie over the music. ‘I’m worried about her.’
‘We were all at the Venetian,’ she said, trying to remember. ‘Then me and Ben kind of, uh, hung out on our own for a while and then she was gone. I have no idea where.’
‘And where’s Ben?’
‘Remember how I was telling you I pick the wrong guys?’ she replied. ‘He’s one of the wrong guys. He went, I don’t know, somewhere. Hopefully far away.’
‘Well, I can’t stay here.’ I tapped my foot in time to what was passing for music. ‘Where can we go?’ The Red Bull Pro Plus cocktail was kicking up a fuss in my belly and a nervous spasm in my arm. This wasn’t good.
‘Let’s go on an adventure,’ Sadie clapped. ‘I’ll get my passport.’
‘Can we leave now, please?’ I asked James. ‘I cannot wake up in Paris. I don’t think I’m allowed back there.’
‘Oh, Angela.’ He swept me up in a terrible Dirty Dancinglift and held me high off the floor, ignoring my yelps. ‘There’s no way they can send you back to the UK. New York needs you.’
‘And I need the toilet,’ I squealed, holding onto his wrists for dear life. ‘So I’d put me down before there’s an accident.’
And he did.
If only men would do as they were told without the threat of being peed on.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The first thought that ran through my head was how badly I wanted a strawberry Pop-Tart.
The second, third and fourth all came to me more or less at the same time. Where am I? What am I wearing? Why does my mouth taste like I’ve been eating dirty cat litter and who is that in bed next to me? Not recognizing your bedmate immediately was something I had only experienced once before, and it wasn’t my favourite way to induce a stroke but it was one of the most effective. And this wasn’t my hotel room. It was the opposite of my hotel room. Dark, dank, mirrored ceilings and pleather everything else. I rubbed the bed sheets between my thumb and forefinger. They were absolutely not machine-washable. Vom. More worryingly, my dress had been replaced with a green velvet tunic. And, unless I was very much mistaken, I was wearing a hat. It would appear I was dressed as an elf. What kind of weirdo had a Christmas elf fetish? I mean, aside from me?
‘Oh God.’ I made the right shapes with my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Someone had flicked my mute switch in the night. I hoped that was all they had flicked. My head was swimming with images of the night but not fuzzy with a hangover, more like a movie on high-speed rewind so I couldn’t quite follow the plot. ‘I’ve been Hangovered.’
‘Morning, lover.’ The body beside me stirred, and I was almost certain it wasn’t Bradley Cooper.
Just as I was about to start screaming, my brain kicked in all at once. I had not been drugged. I had willingly taken caffeine pills. Even though I knew how they kicked my arse. Even after I’d seen what they did to Jessie on Saved by the Bell. I sat up and rested my head on my knees as the events of the night before came streaming back. The dancing. The phone calls. Oh dear God, the phone calls. What I wouldn’t give to be hungover, curled around the toilet and having a little cry.
‘I’d take your arm off for a bacon sandwich.’ James stretched a red-velvet-clad arm in front of me. ‘A proper, honest to God bacon sandwich. Loads of brown sauce.’
The swell of relief that came from knowing the man in bed beside me was gayer than a Kylie concert crashed over me so hard, I collapsed back onto the bed.
‘And a tea. I need some tea. Do you think they’ve got room service here?’ He sat up and looked around at our skeezy surroundings. ‘Hmm. Maybe not, maybe not?’
I pressed my forearm over my eyes and let the rest of the jigsaw pieces merrily slot themselves into place.
‘Why couldn’t I have just got super-drunk and passed out?’ I asked. ‘Why did I have to take caffeine pills and remember everything?’
‘Maybe you could fill me in?’ James suggested. ‘I’m sure I didn’t leave my room dressed as Father Christmas last night.’
‘No, you did not.’ I pressed my fingers to my temples and willed my memory to stop rewinding. ‘And you didn’t get it at the Wynn, either.’
‘We went to the Wynn?’
‘But you wouldn’t let me go in because you said I needed to give Alex his space,’ I nodded. ‘So we went next door instead.’
‘What was next door?’
‘Santa’s grotto.’
‘Really?’
‘Santa’s grotto strip club.’ Catholic churches should install mirrors on the ceiling; they were wonderful for making sure you were suffering an adequate amount of shame.
‘Ahh. Would that be where we got these terribly flattering outfits?’
‘Happily, no.’ It was an odd day when your biggest source of relief was that you hadn’t swapped clothes with a stripper. ‘There was a drugstore next to that. I do think it was my idea, though. Sorry.’
‘You should wear green more often,’ James commented, rolling up the sleeves of his Father Christmas suit, a large, cheap beard tangled up around his neck. ‘Suits you.’
‘It actually does.’ The mirror on the ceiling was also very useful for checking out my outfit without getting out of bed.
‘I can’t believe we went to a strip club,’ he groaned. ‘I mean, there’s nothing there for either of us. It’s just sad.’
‘Well, I think I did mention it at the time, but you insisted it was a Vegas rite of passage. After that, all I remember was my caffeine crash, and you said you had somewhere we could stay.’ I looked around the room once more and tried not to cry. ‘Good work.’
‘I don’t remember any of that.’ He looked relieved. I was jealous. ‘It’s weird, though. I feel like I’ve hardly slept.’
‘What time is it?’ The bottoms of my feet were sore and filthy. Truly, I was disgusting. ‘We’re going home today.’
‘It’s actually only nine.’ J
ames checked the time on his phone. ‘The last call was made on my phone at three. So we must have checked in about then?’
‘Shouldn’t worry. I’m guessing they let the room by the hour.’ I tried my hardest to avoid the judgemental mirror, but since every surface in the room that wasn’t wipe-down-ready was reflective, it was more or less impossible. I looked like an extra from Kiss Saves Christmas. Except less feminine. ‘That last call – it wasn’t to Alex, by any chance?’
‘As an early Christmas present, I’m going to lie to you.’ James threw me a handy wet-wipe from the intimacy kit he’d just popped. Ew, ew, ew, ew.
‘Can I check my email on your phone?’ Glutton for punishment.
‘It’s physically possible, yes, but I don’t know if you have the manual dexterity.’ I was pretty confident I would be OK with it. There were no large bodies of water within these four walls. ‘Where is yours again?’
‘Water-damaged,’ I replied, tapping my username and password onto the screen while James went off for a wee. ‘What’s the bathroom like?’
He was quiet for a moment. ‘If you can hold it, hold it.’
‘Gotcha,’ I murmured to myself. I’d been hoping Alex might have sent something, even if it was a torrent of abuse, but nope, not even a lolcat. But there was another email from my UK editor, only this time from a personal email address. Oh.
Angela, can you give me a quick call? Best to try my mobile, whenever’s good.
Double oh.
I considered the boundary-crossing issue of using the phone of someone I hadn’t seen in a year to make an international mobile-to-mobile phone call for approximately seven seconds before curiosity got the better of me. I wasn’t a cat; I’d be fine.
‘Hi, Sara?’ It took me a couple of goes at the international dialling codes from a mobile, but I got there in the end. ‘It’s Angela. Clark.’
‘Oh! Hi! What a lovely surprise!’
Sara and I didn’t speak often, but when we did, she didn’t usually sound like she was being bugged by the FBI.