About a Girl (29 page)

‘What did you just call me?’ Kekipi tossed the mic down on the stage and was across the bar in a heartbeat. Before six-foot-something Owen could react in any way, the five-foot-five estate manager had him bent backwards over the bar with a fistful of T-shirt in one hand and a fistful of punches in the other.

‘Actually, that’s my bad.’ I flapped around, trying to insert myself in between the two men before any fisticuffs were actually thrown. ‘I said it first. I may have got it from my nana. I am sorry.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, doll, it’s adorable.’ Kekipi released his grip on Owen and let him crumple to the floor. He slipped his arm through mine and, with the entire bar watching in complete silence, minus the Andrew Lloyd Webber soundtrack, we moseyed on out of the bar. ‘How does the word McDonald’s make you feel right now? I’m fricking starving.’

‘I did a sick.’ I tried to whisper but didn’t seem to have a lot of control over my volume. ‘But that sounds very nice.’

‘Fucking fag and his hag,’ I heard Owen mutter from the floor as we walked away. Pressing my hands down on Kekipi’s shoulders to calm him, I held up one finger, turned back into the bar, and delivered one very firm, very direct kick straight to Owen’s balls. The entire bar winced in unison.

‘That’s from the hag. Think yourself lucky the fag isn’t going to knock you out,’ I said before scrabbling to pull my hair over one shoulder and returning to an admiring look from Kekipi. ‘So, you were saying something about McDonald’s?’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I was halfway through my second McChicken Sandwich, curled up in the back of a big black limo and cruising along the starlit coastline, when Kekipi stopped slurping down his strawberry milkshake, carefully folded the empty cardboard box that had held his deep-fried banana pie, and threw it directly into my face.

‘Vanessa Kittler?’ he shouted.

‘Yes?’

‘You have to be one of my favourite guests ever to visit the estate,’ Kekipi announced with some ceremony. ‘You’ve been here for no time, you’ve already banged a hot guy, thrown up out of a moving vehicle and kicked another hot guy in the balls. You are a superstar. I’m totally going to add you on Facebook.’

‘Oh, I’m not on Facebook,’ I said, lying so smoothly, even I believed me. ‘I hate that stuff.’

‘Total superstar,’ he said with absolute certainty. ‘I wish I had your appetite for life.’

‘I wish you had my appetite for fried food,’ I grumbled, still gorging on the sandwich. ‘I’m going to be seventeen stone heavier when I get home. I just threw up – why am I eating this?’

But if eating a McDonald’s when you were drunk was wrong, I didn’t want to be right.

‘It’s not like I’ve had a bad life,’ Kekipi mused, ignoring me and staring out of the darkened glass. ‘I love my job, I love my home, I love singing karaoke until people shout at me. But, you know, I kind of wish I’d done more. I wish I had as much confidence in myself as you have.’

‘Me?’ I stopped eating and looked around the back seat of the car. There had to be someone else he was talking to, surely.

‘Absolutely.’ He looked as though whatever he was getting at was obvious. ‘You jet around the world taking photographs in glamorous locations, a handsome lover here, a handsome lover there, heartbreak at home and love on the horizon. You’re fun, you’re smart, and when you actually make an effort, you’re very cute. Add in a feisty kick to the nuts and you’ve got one hell of a woman. You could be the Grace to my Will. Hell, if we got you some new shoes, you could be the Carrie to my Stanford.’

‘That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,’ I replied with a sniff. And it more or less was. Shame it was all a load of bollocks. ‘But really, three hundred and sixty days out of the year, I’m just your normal, boring girl, standing in the kitchen eating Dairylea Triangles in front of the fridge because she can’t be arsed to decide what to make for dinner.’

‘I don’t know what a Dairylea Triangle is,’ he said, one hand held out in front of him as he spoke. ‘And I don’t care to. I do have one question, though.’

Imagine a world without Dairylea …

‘Which is?’

‘Aside from him being a rapey, homophobic asshole, how come you didn’t make out with the hot guy in the bar?’

‘That’s not reason enough?’ I asked.

‘If someone that cute was hitting on me, we wouldn’t have had an involved enough conversation for any of that to get in the way,’ he shrugged. ‘I saw you talking to him for a while. How come you didn’t just pounce like the sex panther I know you are.’

‘Firstly, I’m more of a sex sloth,’ I explained. ‘And secondly, I actually don’t know. There was just something bothering me. Bar hook-ups have never really been the thing that floats my boat.’

‘Because you’re a smitten kitten for the boy back home?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. I thought of Charlie and felt a little bit sick.

‘Or because you’re a smitten kitten for Mr Miller?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. I thought of Nick and felt very sick.

‘Interesting.’ Kekipi took a sip from the biggest Diet Coke I had ever seen and wriggled his eyebrows. ‘Very interesting.’

‘Stupid,’ I groaned and munched on the last bit of my sandwich. ‘Very stupid.’

Somewhere between my second fried chicken sandwich and an existential crisis, I passed out in the back of the limo and didn’t stir until the door I was leaning against opened abruptly and I tumbled out onto the soft, fresh grass.

‘I’m awake,’ I yelped as Kekipi hauled me to my feet. ‘But I think I might die. What time is it?’

‘You won’t die,’ he promised, even though he didn’t sound entirely sure. ‘And it’s not even two a.m. You really are a lightweight.’

‘I love you too,’ I smiled and pawed his face. My hands were sticky. He did not smile back. ‘I like it when you sing and everyone else hates you.’

‘That’s almost fifty percent compliment,’ he replied. ‘Oh. Well, look at this.’

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking at, given that I was far too busy trying to put one foot in front of the other until I was in my bed. Really, I was more tired than drunk, but neither was a great look on me.

‘And what have you two been up to?’

With a very loud sigh, I rolled my head off Kekipi’s shoulder, opened my eyes and groaned. Nick. He was sitting on the white wooden chair in front of my door, battered paperback book in hand, still in the same clothes I’d seen him wearing earlier that evening. When he was getting into a boat with Paige.

‘Oh, God,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘Piss off.’

‘Mr Miller.’ Kekipi resumed his calm, reassuring, professional tone and nodded genially at Nick while sticking an elbow in my ribs. ‘Could you possibly help me with the door? Ms Kittler is a little fatigued this evening.’

‘So I see,’ he replied. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his face, but that annoying, bemused tone was back in his voice. ‘Rough day, Vanessa?’

‘I’ve already kicked one bloke in the bollocks tonight. Give me a reason to make it two. Please.’

‘You know what, Kekipi, I can take it from here.’ Against my will, I felt Nick manhandle me out of Kekipi’s arms and scoop me up like a rag doll. Which would have been hot if I weren’t super pissed off, covered in Kekipi’s milkshake and about seven minutes away from throwing up again. The second my feet lost contact with the floor, my stomach lost contact with every single thing that was inside it. ‘I’ll make sure Ms Kittler gets to bed.’

‘Of course,’ he replied courteously. ‘Good night, Ms Kittler. I’ll bring coffee with your wake-up call.’

‘Bring drugs.’ I felt my entire body roll with nausea as Nick tossed me over his shoulder. ‘Hard drugs.’

‘I’ve been waiting out here for hours,’ he said, pushing through my door and stalking straight into the bedroom. ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone?’

‘You didn’t call my phone?’ I said carefully as I observed his bottom from this interesting new angle. And tried not to throw up on it. ‘I had it with me all night.’

‘I called you three times and left a message.’ He set me down on the bed and pushed my hair back off my face. ‘What is all this shit in your hair?’

‘McFlurry.’ I flapped my hands at him to push him away. Ahhh, bed. Sweet, wonderful bed. ‘You did not call me.’

‘Vanessa, I did call you.’ Nick looked stern. ‘Your voicemail sounds weird.’

Oh dear. Oh dear me.

‘How did you get my number?’ I asked, already knowing the answer. Oh dear-dear-dear-dear-dear.

‘From the call sheet,’ he said, pulling off my shoes and rubbing my feet gently. It was annoyingly lovely.

Nick was right – he had called Vanessa. But he hadn’t called me. And now her dead BlackBerry, sitting on her nightstand back in London, was full of voicemails from a man in Hawaii trying to have sex with her. Or me. I couldn’t help but think even she would be a bit confused by that. It’s not like she was a stranger to the booty call, but a man in Hawaii she’d never met before? That was really pushing the envelope, even for Vanessa.

‘Oh.’ It was very hard to think fast enough to cover my tracks. Or think at all. ‘That phone is not here.’

‘It’s an old number?’ Nick asked, coming up with an obvious solution that I couldn’t quite manage. ‘An old phone?’

‘Yes.’ I patted his leg and smiled. Clever boy. ‘Old number. Night-night.’

And with that I rolled face first into my pillows and closed my eyes.

‘Don’t you think you should probably, I don’t know, wash that mess out of your hair before you go to sleep? Or have a shower?’ he suggested, pinching my toes. ‘You’ll never get it out in the morning.’

‘There’s nothing in my hair,’ I said from within my pillowy sanctuary. ‘Go away.’

‘Looks like booze, but it could be puke, I’m not sure,’ he replied. ‘And I used to have a Mohawk that I set with sugar water, so I know. You will literally never get it out if you don’t wash it now. Come on.’

Once again against my will, Nick picked me up and carried me into the bathroom. I could hear myself making reluctant mewing noises, but I didn’t fight him. Because I couldn’t. Regardless of the E-numbers in my drinks and the obscene calorific value of my Maccy Ds, I had zero energy. He set me down on a the chair in the bathroom and started running the hot tap.

‘Maybe take your make-up off as well,’ Nick said, holding a white wash cloth under the running water. ‘You look as though a very angry toddler has been at your face with a pack of felt tips.’

I looked in the mirror. He was right. I kind of liked it.

‘Yeah, well, I’m not Paige, so blah blah blah.’ I wrinkled my nose and pulled my head backwards every time he tried to rub the warm flannel on my skin. It was too hot but I didn’t have enough control of my vocabulary to tell him that. Or anything else, really.

‘So blah?’ He persevered with the flannel, tenderly wiping away whatever make-up was left underneath my eyes. ‘What are you on about?’

‘You and Paige.’ I wiped my eyes dry with the backs of my sticky hands so I could look at him properly. ‘You went to the waterfall with her.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ he said, rubbing the dirty marks off the back of my paws altogether less tenderly. ‘Seriously, what have you been drinking?’

‘You got in the boat with her ? I saw you,’ I said, grabbing the flannel from him and scrubbing at my face until it was both ice cream-free and red raw. ‘So why are you here?’

‘I did get in the boat with her,’ he agreed. ‘But we didn’t go to the waterfall. She wanted to go to some ridiculous romantic place for dinner, but because I didn’t want to lead her on, I suggested a boat ride.’

‘Oh, because a boat ride around Hawaii isn’t romantic, is it?’ I said, pressing my palms to my cheeks. There was a chance I’d been a bit too enthusiastic with the flannel. It was possible that when I took my hands away, I wouldn’t actually have any skin left.

‘Not when I know she gets seasick,’ he replied, sheepish. ‘We were on a job together once in Croatia and everyone went on this boat thing at the end, but she spent the entire trip with her head over the side. I know it was a dick move, but I didn’t want to piss her off.’

‘You couldn’t just say “Sorry, Paige, not interested” and move on?’ I looked in the mirror over his shoulder. I appeared to be doing a pretty good impression of Macaulay Culkin in
Home Alone
. Sort of ruined my credibility in the conversation. ‘You had to propose a lovely sunset boat trip.’

‘Well, there’s every chance I’m not thinking straight at the moment,’ he snapped. Ooh, testy. ‘What with sitting around like a wanker waiting for this old mental to decide whether he’s going to give me an interview, not knowing whether I’m coming or going when it comes to you, not to mention not even knowing where I’m going to be living next week. I’m sorry if my shit solution to my awkward problem doesn’t work for you.’

‘What do you mean you don’t know whether you’re coming or going when it comes to me?’ I released my left cheek. Nope, not ready. Ow-ow-motherfucking-ow. I must have caught the sun at the waterfall this afternoon. I hoped that was all I’d caught.

‘Let’s not have this conversation right now.’ Nick’s tone shifted immediately. He laid his hands over mine and leaned towards me until our noses were almost touching. ‘Let’s not have any conversation right now.’

I closed my eyes and parted my lips, just ever so slightly. He smelled good. He felt warm. Through the warm, fuzzy rum haze my body reacted and suddenly woke up. Luckily, so did my brain.

‘No,’ I said sharply, pushing him away. Dear God, my face was sore. I tried to stand up but was too confident in my abilities and immediately fell back down onto the chair. ‘No, I am not having sex with you.’

‘Why not?’ Nick was still doing his best to sound playful but I could see he wasn’t sure whether or not I was teasing. ‘Come to bed, Vanessa. I’ve been thinking about you all evening. I think I might actually be going mad.’

‘No,’ I repeated, looking at the floor. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to stick to my guns if I actually looked at him. The shock of the pretty was still too powerful. ‘You don’t just have sex with people. You think you do, but you’re sad and I’m sad and you don’t.’

‘All right, you’re just not making sense now,’ he said. Even his feet were good feet. I looked at my feet. They were not good feet. ‘Let’s just get you into bed and I’ll leave you in peace, OK?’