I Heart Hollywood (29 page)

I paused. ‘Could you get them sent up? Thanks so much.’ Probably best not to get them read out loud. I scrambled to my feet and attempted to make myself presentable. My mother would die if she thought I was opening the door to—well, anyone, looking like this. It was the same logic as cleaning the house from top to toe before she went on holiday in case she had burglars. Hair in a ponytail, teeth very quickly and not at all thoroughly cleaned, followed by mascara and lip balm. I was scouting for an appropriate bottom half to my inappropriately short T-shirt and stripy pink pants ensemble when I heard the knock at the door. Damn, they were fast in this hotel.

‘Come in,’ I called from the wardrobe but, instead of hearing the door click and sweep open, there was another knock. Fine, they would just have to see my pants. Again. Figuring half the hotel had seen me in my underwear already, and what difference did one more bellboy make?, I opened the door.

‘Hi.’

It wasn’t a bellboy.

It was Alex.

‘I know LA is a little more dressed down than New York but, Angela, that’s ridiculous.’ He tucked a pair of tiny white earphones down the front of his T-shirt and shook his head.

I hung onto the door for fear of falling over. It was really him.

‘Can I come in?’ he asked, his long dark fringe dropping into tired-looking eyes. I nodded and moved backwards with the door to make room for him and his rucksack. ‘So you trashed the room already?’

I nodded again, still not letting go of the door. It was really him. Standing in front of me, in my hotel room in his creased-to-death jeans, holey green T-shirt and battered black Cons, looking so ridiculously anti-LA that my mind refused to compute the image of him against the window, against the backdrop of the Hollywood sign.

‘Angela, please say something,’ he said after another minute of silence. ‘Or at least close the door?’

I prised my fingers from the wood and allowed the door to swing itself shut but I couldn’t cross the room. What if I touched him and he disappeared? What if I said the wrong thing and he walked out for ever?

‘OK, one thing at a time.’ Alex set his bag down on the table by my laptop. ‘I have to use the bathroom and then maybe we can talk?’ He walked towards me but I couldn’t read his face as he slipped by into the bathroom. He looked tired, that was for sure, but tired because he’d just got off a plane, tired because he hadn’t been sleeping? And he definitely didn’t look happy.

When the bathroom door opened, I was still frozen to the spot. Alex looked at me, looked down at the pile of bottles Jenny had moved from the floor into the bin and then back up at me. His face was damp and slightly pink from where he’d splashed it with water and a few strands of his long fringe clung to his cheek. I reached out slowly to brush them away but Alex caught my hand and held it to his cheek.

‘Hi,’ he said softly.

‘Hi,’ I replied.

‘Should I go out and come back in again?’

I shook my head slowly. He really was here. I was touching him and everything.

‘I am so sorry for everything I said,’ he bit down on his full bottom lip, ‘on the phone. I just, I don’t know, I freaked out.’

‘That’s OK,’ I mumbled. His hand was so hot.

‘No, it’s not.’ His green eyes were so bloodshot, I could barely stand to look at them. I knew he wasn’t someone that slept a lot at the best of times. ‘I didn’t even start to listen to you. I didn’t even try.’

‘That’s OK,’ I repeated. It really wasn’t but then that was before I shagged the barman.

‘Angela, stop saying it’s OK. It isn’t.’ He pulled me towards him gently. ‘I sat staring at the phone for something like three hours after we spoke. I was so completely wrong to have said what I did.’

‘That’s—I mean, you could have called?’ I said, painfully aware that a) I looked like absolute shit and b) my room stank of booze. ‘Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you answer when I called you?’

‘I thought a grand romantic gesture would be better?’ Alex took my other hand in his to stop me pulling at the hem of my T-shirt. ‘Or, after we talked and I saw the pictures of you online, I threw my phone out the window. Which made calling you kind of tricky.’

‘Right,’ I replied.

‘I know you must still be angry,’ he went on. ‘But can I just explain? Just let me say what I’ve spent the last ten hours practising and then if you still want me to go, I will.’

‘Want you to go?’ I wasn’t sure what parallel universe I’d been pulled into where Alex thought my inability to string a sentence together was because I was angry with him. I was angry—furious in fact—but only with myself.

‘OK, the last time we spoke I was a complete asshole but that was only because I was so insanely jealous. I knew that you would never…you know. I did know that. You’re not my ex or—well—me.’ He tried to draw me across the room but I couldn’t be moved. ‘But my head was kinda messed up. I guess I didn’t want you to go to LA.’

‘You could have said that before I left.’ Finally I started to get the feeling back in my feet and allowed myself to be pulled along the carpet. ‘You could have come with me.’

‘I didn’t think I should. And everything’s been happening so quickly again, I thought maybe some time apart would be a good thing. But hey, I have been wrong before.’

‘True,’ I whispered.

Alex was backing slowly towards the bed. The bed that was still messed up from whatever happened the night before with Joe.

‘And I guess that’s why I wasn’t answering my phone.’ He slid his hands up my arms, resting them on my shoulders. ‘I wanted to prove that I wasn’t missing you. That I wouldn’t fall apart again without you. Tragic, huh?’

‘Tragic.’

‘Turns out I was wrong, so I guess you’re stuck with me now. If you still want me?’

‘Of course I do,’ I said, a tiny little tear sneaking out of the corner of my eye. ‘But there’s still stuff we have to talk about, I have to explain. It’s not as easy as—’

‘It’s as easy as we make it.’ Still with both my hands in his, Alex pulled me sharply towards him and I crashed into his chest. He smelled like sleep and the deodorant that sat on his bathroom windowsill. ‘You don’t have to explain a thing. You said nothing happened with that guy and I should have just believed you. There should never have been a question for you to answer. I am so sorry. But I’m here and I want to make it right. Tell me what to do.’

I had never felt like more of a shit in my entire life. Here he was, this beautiful boy that had flown thousands of miles to apologize for believing photographs that thousands of other people all around the world, including my bloody mother, were taking as gospel. He was here to tell me that he didn’t believe them, that he was the one in the wrong, and now he was trying to pull me into a bed that had until very, very recently contained a very naked barman and a very stupid me.

‘Angela, are you OK?’ He held my tear-streaked face in his hands. ‘I know things aren’t going to be OK right away. I don’t expect you to forgive me now. I just want to know that you might be able to later.’

‘I-I can’t believe you came,’ I stuttered. ‘I can’t believe you’re here.’

‘There was nowhere else I could be.’ He pressed his forehead to mine, my tears running against his cheeks. ‘So these are happy tears that I’m here, not sad tears because you hate me?’

‘I don’t hate you. You should hate me,’ I faltered. I had to tell him. It was one thing to keep it to myself when I thought things were over, it was another to lie flat out when the man had flown all the way across the country to see me. ‘I’m so sorry, Alex.’

‘Stop talking.’ His lips found my cheeks and kissed away the tear tracks. ‘You always talk too much.’ Without thinking, I tilted my face upwards and kissed him back, his lips salty from my crying and dry from his flight. I wasn’t sure how something that made me melt so completely could make me feel sick to my very stomach at the same time.

Alex drew me down on top of him on the bed. I awkwardly straddled his lap, my shins against the edge of the bed frame. His lips softened as they turned to my throat, to the ribbed neckline of my T-shirt. I let him pull me closer and push me backwards against the pillows as I tried to concentrate on his half-closed eyes, his shortness of breath; but every time I tried to let go, I could feel Joe in the bed with us.

‘Alex, I can’t,’ I choked, reaching out for his hand before he could go too far. ‘I’m sorry, I need to sort some stuff out and we need to talk.’

He brushed his hair out of his eyes and sighed softly. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have.’ He pushed up and sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. ‘You want me to go?’

‘God, no.’ I sat up too quickly and threw my arms around him. What if he left and never came back? ‘I just can’t do this. Yet. But will you stay with me?’

‘I’ll never leave again unless you ask.’ He leant in and kissed me again, deep and warm. ‘Do you have stuff to do today?’

I went through the list in my head: call James, sort out the interview, find Jenny, gag Joe, sew a scarlet A to the front of all my clothes. Nothing that couldn’t wait. ‘Not right now. Can we just lie here for a while?’

Alex nodded and kissed the tip of my nose before kicking off his Converses and crawling across the bed. Silently, I lay back against him, pressing myself against his chest, curling my legs through his. I clutched the arm he draped across me tightly and listened to his steady breathing, felt his breath on the back of my neck as it slowed down. He was asleep inside minutes but I just couldn’t close my eyes without seeing Joe’s naked back in front of me.

What had I done?

Once I was certain I wasn’t about to wake up from my dream-slash-nightmare and find my bed had been completely empty for the last twenty-four hours and not taken on a revolving-door policy when it came to hot boys, I crawled out of Alex’s grip and pulled on some long overdue jeans. I padded as quietly as I could into the bathroom and stared at my phone. Whom should I speak to first? What should I say to any of them? Better to just make that call than to sit on the toilet staring at a mobile phone, surely that wasn’t overly hygienic.

‘I’ve been wondering when you’d call.’ James didn’t sound as happy as I was hoping he would be. ‘Left it a bit late, haven’t you?’

‘Well, you won’t believe this but there’s this rumour going round my office that you’re gay.’ I stretched my toes out to rest on the heated towel rail. Ooh, damn it, too hot. ‘Isn’t that shocking?’

‘Very funny,’ he echoed. Apparently the bathroom wasn’t the best place to have a mobile phone conversation. ‘So when are you coming over to do this? I’d really like to get it over with.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ I heard Blake call down the line. ‘I’m so glad you’re excited about this.’

‘Shut up,’ James countered, but I could hear a smile in his voice. ‘Seriously though, there is—according to your terrifying editor—some urgency in the matter.’

‘I know,’ I said, pressing my toes against the cold tiled floor. ‘She has been quite insistent on the urgency. The only thing is, Alex just turned up here and I sort of can’t leave him right now.’ What I failed to add was ‘because I’m terrified that if I leave him alone in this hotel room for even a moment, he’ll find some shred of evidence that I shagged the barman last night.’

‘He showed up, did he? To apologize?’

‘Mm-hm.’

‘Any diamonds accessorizing that apology?’

‘No.’ I couldn’t imagine how I could feel worse than I did right then, but possibly diamonds would have pushed me over the edge. Of the roof. ‘Things are a bit complicated. I have to submit my copy by tomorrow lunchtime so if I came to you about nine, would that be OK? That gives us a couple of hours to talk and then I’ve got another couple to sort it all out.’

‘Are you that good a writer or just that desperate for a seeing-to that you can’t leave your man?’ James asked. ‘And I expect an honest answer, given that I’m about to out myself for you.’

‘Oh, so you’re doing this for her now?’ Blake again.

‘Do I have to bring him on the interview?’ James asked. ‘He’s been bloody intolerable since I agreed to all of this. There’s still time to change my mind, isn’t there?’

‘No there isn’t,’ I said quickly. ‘So we’ll do it at your hotel?’

‘Fine, it’s where all the best scandal goes down.’ I heard a scuffling in the background and then giggling. ‘Sorry, Blake’s freaking out that I’m actually organizing something myself. Piss off; you’re supposed to be organizing the photo shoot, not listening in on my conversation. Have to say, Miss Clark, I’m a bit gutted you’re not going to be in the pics.’

‘I’ve been in quite enough pictures with you,’ I replied. ‘See you tomorrow at nine, then?’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘And Angela, I am really sorry for all the hassle. Hopefully it’s all going to work out for the best. For both of us.’

I tried to smile as I ended the call, happy for James and Blake that they were together, but I was still pissed about the fact that if those photos of James and me had never leaked, I would probably never have ended up in bed with Joe in the first place. I paused between phone calls to wash and moisturize, my skin had got so dried out here. Smoothing on an inch-think layer of Beauty Flash Balm, I stared back at myself in the mirror.

I didn’t look any different for having had a skanky one-night stand, so why did I feel so different? Same blue eyes, same light brown hair, same ‘not bad really but would definitely get veneers if I ever got mega-rich’ teeth. If only I could remember what had happened, maybe I could stop imagining the worst. Unless it had been the worst and my brain was trying to protect what little self-esteem I had left. And the worst thing was, as much as I could complain about James and the photos, about Joe taking advantage, there really was no one to blame for all this but myself. I was going to sort it out myself. With a little help from Jenny.

I dialled her mobile and got her answer phone. The first time that girl answered her phone herself, the world would end. ‘Hi Jenny, it’s me. So I don’t know where you are but I really need to talk to you. Alex just turned up—he’s here in my room and I don’t know what to do. I’m totally freaking out about the whole…situation. Help? Please?’