I Heart New York (18 page)

The first thing I noticed was that, for a man, he had a lot of stuff. It had taken me months of hint dropping and several advertorials in
GQ
for Mark to even start using Nivea for Men aftershave balm, but Tyler had more products than I did. Shampoo, conditioner, hair mask, gel, mousse, wax, eye cream, scrub, face wash, moisturizer with sunscreen, night cream with retinol. I wasn’t sure whether to be intimidated and impressed, but then I remembered how great he always looked, and settled on accepting. Maybe I should look into some of this stuff. Beyond the creams, gels, lotions and potions were several bottles of painkillers, some off the shelf, some prescription. Anyone can have painkillers, I told myself, I still had tonnes of Cocodamol from when I had my wisdom teeth out. Right at the back, on the top shelf, was a black travel wash bag. With a quick look at the door, I whipped it down. I couldn’t help myself. If he had cute little travel-sized toiletries, I was moving in. But it wasn’t full of men’s toiletries. It was a morning-after kit. For a woman. Deodorant, a new toothbrush, eye make-up remover and Jesus, even Tampax.

I replaced the bag and sat back down on the edge of the bath. So, he really did date around a lot. Reality check. I had absolutely no room for complaint here, I was dating someone else and hadn’t really told him about it, maybe he was dating other girls too, but something about the whole thing just felt off with me. The idea of dating two people and sleeping with two people seemed mutually exclusive. Perhaps if I’d slept with Alex I’d feel differently, one way or another.

I ran my hands under the cold water tap to cool down. There was just one problem with that theory. I hadn’t slept with Alex, and for the longest time, I’d had virtually no sex life at all. But with Tyler, it was like, God, I didn’t even have anything to compare it with. Even when it had been good with Mark it had never, ever left me shaking from head to toe, unable to breathe but unable to stop. As soon as I was with Tyler, the rest of the world just melted away. It was utterly intoxicating, but somewhere inside it didn’t feel real, didn’t feel permanent. I tried to think of what Jenny would tell me, that I was sabotaging my own happiness, trying to find a reason not just to enjoy a fun relationship for what it was.

‘Angela?’ Tyler knocked gently on the bathroom door. ‘You OK?’

‘Yep,’ I looked around for inspiration, finding nothing, ‘I think I got a bit sunburned, I was just cooling down.’

‘I have some lotion in there somewhere,’ he said, peering around the door. ‘Want me to find it out?’

‘Yes, please,’ I nodded. He was so wonderful. So what if he was seeing other girls? When he was with me, he was only with me.

‘Let me see.’ he took a large bottle of aftersun from a cabinet and squeezed some out into his hands. ‘Where’s the sunburn? You don’t look red.’

‘Oh, it’s my back,’ I said, pulling the shoulder of my top down an inch. It wasn’t red because it wasn’t burned, but it was the best lie I had at the time. ‘It’s just really sore. I don’t think the red has come out yet.’

‘I don’t want to get this on your clothes,’ he held up cream-covered hands and nodded at my top. ‘You’d better take that off.’

‘I suppose I had,’ I smiled, trying not to think about what I had found in his cabinet. Not thinking was all the easier as he slid his cool hands onto my warm skin, massaging in the aftersun.

‘Better?’ he asked, rubbing gently up and down my back.

‘Better,’ I said softly, feeling his hands slide all the way down to the waistline of my knickers. His thumbs hooked under the elastic as he pulled them down gently.

‘I was thinking,’ he whispered into my ear, his bare chest sticking to the lotion on my back. ‘If your back is burned, you’d better go on top.’

He was a very, very thoughtful man.

The afternoon turned into the evening and the evening turned into night with nothing to do but each other. After we’d finished with the bathroom floor, we headed back into the bedroom for more lazy fumbling and dozing and eventually, surfaced in the kitchen after christening his new granite work surface. Some hours later, I found myself curled up on his sofa, wearing a vintage Yankees shirt and eating Chinese takeaway. Apparently it was cute that I called it takeaway. I loved that it was cute. Patronizing, but very sweet. If everything I did naturally was cute to him, this was going to be really easy for me.

‘How long have you lived here?’ I asked, looking around at his impeccably designed penthouse. Everything was stainless steel and shiny and new. Apart from where I’d been, obviously.

‘Ah, what, two years?’ he mused, wandering over to the kitchen and rifling through an invisible drawer. ‘Why? You don’t like it?’

‘I love it,’ I replied, willing him not to pull out a bottle opener. ‘Did you design it yourself?’

‘Like I have the time,’ he shook his head and pulled out a bottle opener. ‘It pretty much came this way.’

‘Oh,’ I frowned, resting my chin on the arm of the square sofa. The apartment was gorgeous, totally luxe, but now it felt sort of impersonal. I wondered if every apartment in the block had the same art on the walls.

‘You want to stay over?’ Tyler asked, wandering over from the kitchen with the open bottle of wine. ‘I don’t have to be anywhere in the morning.’

‘It is sort of late,’ I said, waving the wine away. I’d had quite enough for one day. For one week actually. ‘Oh, but I don’t have any stuff.’

The words were out of my mouth before I could take them back. I waited for him to offer me his secret sleep-over stash.

‘Don’t laugh at me,’ he said, settling back onto the sofa and taking custody of his remote control. Didn’t matter to me, I couldn’t work the damn thing. ‘But I have some girl stuff. I’m not sure what though, my mom left it last time she stayed over.’

‘Your mum?’ I smiled at his blushes. ‘Now who’s cute?’

‘She lives in Florida,’ he said, pointing towards a small family picture hidden up high on a shelf. The whole brood. Wow. ‘But since my dad died she comes to visit a lot.’

‘That’s really lovely,’ I said, snuggling down against him. ‘I think it’s great when people are close to their parents.’

‘You close to yours?’ he asked, flicking through the channels.

‘Not massively to be honest, but you know, they’re my parents. I love them. Even my mother.’

‘I guess it’s harder for girls and their moms,’ he leaned his cheek against my head. ‘And I bet you were a total wild child.’

‘Oh my God, so the opposite,’ I laughed at the very thought. ‘In by nine, no boyfriends until I was sixteen, top marks at school. I think my mum was worried I might end up a spinster librarian or something.’

‘Want me to call her and let her know that’s not a problem?’ he asked, settling on a sports channel. If this had been Mark with the football, I would have complained, but then, if Mark had spent all afternoon giving me multiple orgasms, perhaps I would have been more compassionate about the plight of Nottingham Forest.

‘I don’t think she needs all the details,’ I kissed him quickly and hopped up. ‘But I should call Jenny and let her know I’m not coming back.’

I padded back into the bedroom in search of my handbag and found it safely at the end of the bed, underneath my shorts.

‘Hi Jenny,’ I said as the machine picked up. ‘It’s just me, I’m going to stay here tonight so don’t—’

‘Hey, hey!’ Jenny picked up, out of breath. ‘I got it, I’m here.’

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘You’re going to be so proud, I’m staying at Tyler’s. See, I can totally do this multiple dating thing.’

‘Oh. OK.’

‘Did you want me to come home?’ I asked, hoping she wasn’t feeling abandoned. I was still new at this roommate thing.

‘No, no,’ her voice lowered slightly. ‘Jeff is here, I just thought, he might mention to Alex that you weren’t home or something. I didn’t know if he knew that you and Tyler were…’

‘Shit!’ I absolutely hadn’t thought about that at all. ‘I don’t think he does, not really. And I don’t want him to. Please don’t say anything.’

‘Of course I won’t,’ she said more easily. ‘I’ll just tell him you’re at Erin’s or something, that you wanted us to have alone time. Oh, but he did invite us over for dinner tomorrow, to apologize for Friday night.’

‘To apologize for you throwing up all over Alex’s apartment?’ I asked, reflecting on the fact that Jeff knowing Alex could really make things difficult.

‘Yes, Mom,’ Jenny replied. ‘I’ve got to go, the pizza’s here. Alex already told Jeff he could make it, so it’s tomorrow at seven, OK? Try and get your pants on for then. Love you.’

I turned off my phone and resumed my position in the living room.

‘Everything OK?’ Tyler asked, pulling me in close to him.

‘Yep,’ I said, wriggling into place back under his arm. ‘Just tired.’

‘You want to go to bed?’ He stroked my hair absently.

‘I’m OK,’ I replied, resting my eyes just long enough to fall fast asleep on the sofa, the sounds of the baseball match echoing in my ears.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Adventures of Angela: CPDA–Central Park Display of Affection

As a newcomer to New York, I have no idea what level of indecency is considered, well, decent in your fair city’s fairest park. I’m just back from another great date with Wall Street, a
very
romantic picnic with wine, Godiva truffles and Cheetos (no one said he was perfect) and I’m wondering whether or not to expect a policeman (mmm, hot cop!) to turn up at my door. Obviously there was nothing removed during the outdoor sesh, but what’s worse–the hot and heavy petting or the unbearable levels of smugness we forced those around us to endure. Vom-worthy, really. Pre-New York dating extravaganza, I would have happily put Wall Street’s corkscrew through his temple if I’d seen a couple so terribly pleased with themselves as we were (Cheetos aside) but I really don’t want to kill him just yet. And I don’t want to stop getting touched up in the park either.

Hmm. This is going to be a tricky one.

After arguing with myself over the content of my post for twenty minutes, I just couldn’t do it. And in a radical bid to distract myself, I did something drastic.

‘Hello?’

‘Mum? It’s Angela.’

‘Darling, how are you?’ she asked, sounding fairly relieved, as though she thought it might have been the Avon lady from number fifty-four. ‘Are you coming home?’

‘No, not yet,’ I said, pacing the apartment. ‘I’m fine though, I’m staying with my friend still and I’m working for this magazine. Things are really good.’

‘But you’re coming home soon, dear?’ she asked again. I could just see her frowning in the mirror above the phone, probably fiddling with her hair, looking out of the window into her impeccably kept garden, watching next door’s cat shit all over her flowerbed.

‘I don’t know, Mum,’ I said, eventually coming to a standstill by the window. ‘I’m having a really good time. The writing thing is really exciting, I’m doing an online diary for the magazine’s website.’

‘That’s lovely, I’m very proud.’ The same dismissive tone that she had used for my GCSE, A level and degree results. Grrr. ‘But darling, you know, I would really like you to let me know when you’re coming back. You must have a date for your flight? And the hotel must be costing you a fortune.’

‘Mum, I’ve just told you, I’m staying with a friend. I don’t know when I’m–do you know what? It doesn’t matter. Why was Mark at your house when I called last week?’

‘I just don’t know why you can’t tell me when your flight is,’ she chuntered on. I was starting to regret the phone call all together.

‘I don’t have a flight booked so I don’t know when it will be,’ I repeated, thinking about how different the views were out of our windows. I could see yellow taxi cabs, the Chrysler Building and thousands of New Yorkers hustling and bustling around the city. From my mum’s window, she would be lucky to be able to see her Clio in the drive, the post office, and Mr Tucker from next door, possibly thrilling the neighbourhood by gardening shirtless. He was fifty-two. ‘Why was Mark answering your phone?’

‘He was dropping off some of your things, Angela.’ I could tell she was starting to get just as pissed off with me as I was with her. ‘I know he’s done a terrible thing to you, but I have known him for a lot of years. I can’t just pretend he doesn’t exist.’

‘Yes you can.’ Was she serious? ‘You can very easily pretend he doesn’t exist. He doesn’t as far as our family is concerned.’

‘Just because you have chosen to run away instead of confronting your problems, doesn’t mean I can,’ Mum tutted down the line. ‘I see Mark’s mother every week at Tescos.’

‘I haven’t run away,’ I said. This was not the supportive mother-daughter talk I’d been envisioning. ‘I’m doing something with my life.’

‘And maybe if you had stayed and talked to Mark, you would have realized how terrible he feels about things,’ she carried on, completely ignoring everything I was saying. ‘Maybe you would have been able to sort things out. Not that I’m saying you should, he did cheat on you, I know.’

‘He wants to sort things out?’ I asked. The idea hadn’t even crossed my mind.

‘Well, maybe he would have if you hadn’t run away, I don’t know,’ she said, sounding distracted. ‘But now he’s moved in that Katie girl, I don’t suppose the two of you will ever get back on track. I suppose if you called him…’

‘He’s moved in with–he’s moved her with in?’ I stopped her in the middle of her sentence. ‘Into our house?’

‘Well, you disappeared, dear,’ she seemed to be listening again. ‘What was he supposed to do? Not that I’m making excuses for him. He should never have done what he did, but, he did explain—’

‘Mum, I’ve got to get off, I’m going out,’ I needed to be off the phone right away. ‘I’ll call you when I know more about coming home.’

‘All right, darling, speak to you soon,’ and she hung up before I could.

Knowing for a fact that Mark had moved that girl into my house was all too much for my brain to process, but it did put the blog problem into perspective. I sat down in front of the laptop, blocked out the images of the filthy mare wearing my Cath Kidston apron and cooking with my beloved lime green Le Creuset casserole dish and emailed the blog to Mary. Mark who?

Once Jenny had returned from her Sunday spa appointment at Rapture and checked that everything had been exfoliated, waxed and moisturized to her own high and Jeff-ready standards, we headed out to Brooklyn. I was justifiably nervous, not having spoken to Alex about our ‘double date’ and not having spent more than fifteen minutes forcing my hair into some sort of shape, slapping on some of my miraculous MAC mascara and lipgloss. But my (still amazing) Marc Jacobs bag made everything better. I wondered if I could feasibly go out in my pyjamas and still feel like a grown-up if I were carrying this. Jenny practically skipped all the way to the L train, barely a sentence tripping over her tongue that wasn’t directly related to Jeff.

‘So it’s totally on with Alex tonight?’ she asked, holding my hand and skipping lightly as we crossed the road over to the subway.

‘I don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘I was with Tyler this morning, don’t you think it might be a bit tacky to sleep with Alex tonight?’ But just saying the words sent shivers all the way down my spine.

‘I knew this would happen,’ Jenny shook her head, swiping her Metrocard. ‘You weren’t even OK dating two guys, you were never going to be able to sleep with two guys. Not at once.’

‘Christ, it’s not a threesome, Jenny.’ I followed her down the stairs, shaking my head. ‘And you didn’t want to share that information with me? Really, I’m OK seeing them both, I like them both in different ways, but I don’t know. Tyler is so much fun, and Alex is, well, it’s different.’

‘But you like him more than Tyler?’ she asked.

‘It’s different with Alex, harder to explain. I like the way he makes me feel about myself. With Tyler it’s kind of more about how he literally makes me feel,’ I tried to explain without blushing. ‘Did you ever do that experiment at school where you get three white flowers and you put one in an empty vase, one in a vase with water and one in a vase with food colouring?’

‘Yeah,’ Jenny nodded, ‘but I really don’t know what that’s got to do with you getting your kicks with some hot banker.’

‘Shut up,’ I smiled wryly and hopped on the train as the doors slid open. ‘OK, don’t laugh but the flower without any water just wilts and dies, right? And the flower with the water blossoms and it’s just really ordinary but beautiful, then when you add the food colouring it—’

‘It takes the colour into the flower,’ she finished for me. ‘Oh my God, you’re so meta! Doll, your first analogy. I’m so proud of you.’

‘Thanks. I feel validated,’ I said, patting her thigh. ‘I know it’s cheesy, but it’s the best I can come up with. Before I was just suffocating, with Tyler, it’s like classic and romantic, he has a structure to his life that I recognize. But with Alex, it’s fun and exciting and different. I don’t know where it’s going, everything is so new.’

‘New and exciting is good,’ Jenny said, nodding thoughtfully. ‘But when you’re in a delicate emotional state, that’s you doll, or when you just need to go out and have lots of great sex because you’ve only slept with one guy your whole life, again like you, maybe classic and romantic is the best.’

‘Maybe. I just don’t know. And I don’t know how long I can keep seeing them both. It does feel weird, whether it should or not. But seeing Tyler almost takes the pressure off whatever’s happening with Alex. Not that anything bloody has.’

‘Well, how about you give Alex his shot in the bedroom tonight and make your decision tomorrow?’ She grinned as the train slowed down, approaching our stop. ‘God knows, I’m going to need you to get the hell out of Jeff’s, oh, I don’t know, as soon as we get there.’

‘Things are going well then?’ I smiled. ‘I’m really pleased. I’m not going to say anything other than, I’m glad things are working out.’

‘Like I said,’ she said, hopping out of the carriage, ‘it’s fate. Sometimes you have to put all the psychobabble stuff on one side and go with your heart.’

‘Wow!’ I linked arms with her as we strutted up the stairs. ‘I just lost all respect for you.’

‘I know,’ she smiled, happily. ‘Isn’t it amazing?’

The first thing I would have liked to have known, before I agreed to dinner at Jeff’s, was that he was a terrible cook. Which he was. The second thing that would have been helpful to know, was that, in Jenny and Jeff world, ‘dinner’ was apparently a euphemistic term for practising oral sex skills on each other’s forks and fingers. I tried not to watch while I nibbled a polite amount of the spaghetti and mush that had been presented to us the second we walked through the door. We had only been in the apartment for approximately fifteen minutes and already, it was quite clear that Alex and I were in the way. Alex openly stared, occasionally nudging me with his knee. I couldn’t even look at him. Apart from the awkward hello and half-kiss we’d shared before being rushed to our seats, we hadn’t really spoken. Jenny and Jeff’s red-light show was making the atmosphere so tense, I didn’t know where to put myself. I felt like a maiden aunt at an orgy.

‘So, how was your weekend?’ Alex asked me and Jenny, breaking the strained silence and twirling limp spaghetti around his fork. I noticed no one’s plates matched. The apartment was super swank on a Tyler scale, but it seemed as if it was just possible that Jeff hadn’t been too worried about his housekeeping recently. I figured he had something else on his mind. And possibly other parts of his anatomy.

Jenny response to Alex was a low moan as Jeff’s hand vanished under the table, so I took it upon myself to answer-slash-try to distract Alex from the incredibly inappropriate behaviour on the opposite side of the table.

‘It was OK, I wrote.’ It wasn’t a lie, I had written. ‘What did you get up to?’

‘I wrote too,’ he nodded, looking dead ahead. ‘It was good actually, I think I got some good stuff out.’

I smiled and nodded politely, trying to think of something to say that wasn’t ‘For Christ’s sake, get your hands back on the table, it’s unsanitary’ but our hosts beat me to it, dropping their cutlery and more or less giving up any pretense of eating, before moving on to the main course, each other. I could have killed Jenny.

‘So, Jeff,’ Alex started. So brave, to try to attract his attention. ‘Your food tastes like complete shit. What is it supposed to be again?’

‘Pasta,’ Jeff said, distracted by Jenny, massaging his shoulders. I couldn’t think what strenuous activity he might have undertaken that would necessitate a massage, it certainly wasn’t the cooking. ‘It’s just pasta.’

‘It’s delightful.’ Jenny tried some sort of erotic manoeuvre with a forkful of soggy pasta, but it did not come off well. Unlike the pasta, which dropped directly into her lap.

‘OK, then,’ Alex gave me a sideways smile, ‘nice. This totally makes up for your girlfriend throwing up all over my place.’

‘I want to know what’s for dessert,’ Jenny asked, actually getting out of her seat and putting herself in Jeff’s lap. Jesus, she was shameless.

‘I have ice cream,’ Jeff breathed heavily. ‘I got your favourite.’

‘I don’t really feel much in the mood for ice cream,’ Alex said, pushing his chair back and standing to leave. ‘But I do have some excellent day-old-pizza that’s crying out to be eaten. Angela, can I interest you in a slice of pepperoni?’

‘Yes. Yes, you can,’ I said, following him away from the table. ‘Thanks Jeff, Jenny.’

‘You’re going?’ Jenny started to make some noises about staying for coffee, but whatever Jeff whispered in her ear sent them off into squeals of delight and a short sharp ‘bye’.

‘Jesus, what was that all about?’ Alex laughed, slamming his apartment door behind him. ‘Does your friend like an audience or something?’

‘I want to say “no”, but the best I can give you is, I really hope not,’ I said, hovering by the sofa. There didn’t seem to be any puke stains on there, so I sat down cautiously.

‘Beer?’ He opened his huge fridge, balancing a pizza box and a six-pack on one arm.

‘Thanks.’ I took the bottle and sat in silence, not sure about what my next move was supposed to be. His apartment was the opposite of Tyler’s, every inch of it breathed him. There were CDs lying around on every available surface, notebooks littered the coffee table, and I was never more than three feet away from a chewed-on pen or pencil.

‘I don’t know, I guess it’s cool that they’re so in to each other.’ He settled down and opened the pizza box. No really, it was at least one-day-old pepperoni pizza. ‘I just figured when Jeff invited me round for dinner, it would actually be dinner.’

‘Me too,’ I nodded, accepting the pizza against my better judgment. It was actually really good. ‘If nothing else, it reassured me of my hostess skills in case I ever have to repay the favour. Compared to Jeff, I’m a shit-hot cook.’