Lindsey Kelk 5-Book 'I Heart...' Collection (115 page)

‘Don’t tempt fate,’ I warned. ‘Nothing is official, is it?’

‘Hmm.’ Jenny checked her manicure. ‘There’s every chance I might veto an engagement anyhow.’

She didn’t look like she was joking. I raised an eyebrow.

‘What does he think he’s doing at my ex’s bachelor party?’ she said, starting on a semi-rant. ‘What happened to Team Lopez? You’re my best friend, he’s your boyfriend. Doesn’t he realize his loyalty is automatically with me? He’s being an asshole.’

‘Ahh.’ Gotcha. ‘Yeah, apparently he just really loves Vegas. And I suppose he and Jeff are kind of friends?’

I shrank back from whatever form her rage would take. They were kind of friends. Admittedly they weren’t giving each other makeovers and having sleep overs every weekend, but they went for a drink occasionally.

‘Friends my ass,’ Jenny said quietly, calmly. ‘If I see him out there, he’d better be careful. That’s all I’m saying.’

And it was all that needed to be said.

‘Where is she?’

Jenny was well into her second Starbucks and starting to curse Erin White’s name. ‘If she makes me miss this flight, I will kick her tiny ass.’

‘She’d have called you if there was a problem, wouldn’t she?’ I looked at my watch again. We only had twenty minutes until boarding and I had no idea where in LaGuardia we needed to get to make the flight. Plus I was wearing heels; there would be no running in heels. In an attempt to avoid checking my suitcase, I’d packed as light as possible, but that meant I was hobbling around the airport in six-inch tassled Giuseppe shoeboots that Jenny insisted were ‘totally Vegas’ when she’d brought them home from the sample cupboard. At the time I’d agreed: they were totally Vegas. But they were not totally running around an airport in Queens. I looked like a tit. A tit with tassles on. So yes, totally Vegas.

‘Hey!’

Across the airport, we saw a tiny blonde hurtling towards us. I couldn’t help but notice she was not in any way, shape or form packed for a trip. Hmm.

‘Jenny! Angie!’ Erin raced over, her cheeks red, her perfectly coiffed blonde bob fluffy from the cold. ‘Why the fuck aren’t you answering your phones?’

‘We’re answering if someone’s calling.’ Jenny scrabbled in her handbag to pull out her phone and wave it in Erin’s face. ‘See? No missed calls.’

‘It’s turned off, genius,’ she said, tapping at the blank glass. ‘Oh my God, I thought you were both dead.’

‘Oh, yeah …’ Jenny had the decency to blush and handed me my phone. I took it back and apologized effusively.

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Erin waved away our words and beamed. ‘I only came to tell you I’m not coming.’

‘Huh?’ Jenny was genuinely flummoxed. ‘Shut your face, White, and get on the plane. We’ll buy you new shit when we get there.’

‘I can’t.’ She pulled what looked like a slim white pen from her pocket and held it out to Jenny. ‘I’m pregnant.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Jenny immediately dropped the pregnancy test on the floor. ‘Did you pee on that? You gave me something you’ve peed on?’

Erin stared her down.

‘I mean, congratulations!’

We wrapped the tiny lady up in a big hug and bounced around for a moment. As much as the shoeboots would allow. Erin was older than Jenny and me, and we both knew she’d been trying to get pregnant for a while. This was big news. It was also my first stateside friend to get on the baby wagon. Scary. I could happily convince myself Louisa was doing nothing more than waiting for Amazon to deliver a Tiny Tears doll because she was a whole ocean away, but Erin? I saw her all the time. I would see her getting fat. I would see her in those amazing-looking jeans with the big elasticated pouch. This one would be real. A real baby. Eeep. I hoped she wouldn’t give it to me or Jenny to hold; one of us would definitely break it.

‘Yeah, I just did the test this morning.’ Was it possible that she was glowing already? ‘I’d been kinda sick for a few days, but I just put it down to a bug or something. Then, I don’t know – I just decided to do a test before I left this morning, and there it was. Positive. We’re having a baby.’

‘And we’re going to be awesome at it,’ Jenny said, giving her one last squeeze.

‘I did mean me and Thomas, but sure, why not?’ Erin smiled. ‘It just sucks that I can’t come with you guys. I don’t want to be an asshole, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to deal with the partying and everything. I’m exhausted already.’

‘We completely understand,’ I answered on both our behalves before Jenny could argue. ‘Go home, rest, paint a room yellow.’

‘You guys are the best.’ Erin, my most composed and sophisticated friend bounced from foot to foot, pressing both hands against her stomach. ‘I can’t even tell you. I won’t be that mom, I won’t, I swear. I just … I’m so happy.’

With one last flurry of kisses, Erin bounced out of the airport and back into her glossy black town car. As we passed through security at last, I thought about how much things would change. Erin was tiny and perfect and terribly glossy. Soon she’d be massive and messy and terribly stressed. Goodbye Bottega Veneta handbag, hello nappy mat. Louisa was having a baby, Erin was having a baby, Jenny was behaving like an adult. Sort of. The world had officially gone topsy-turvy.

After we had taken our squishy leather seats and I had prepped my seat-back pocket with all the magazines on earth, I slipped on my flight socks, wrapped myself up in my blanket and readied myself for a lovely, lovely nap. The flight from New York to Las Vegas took six hours. That was a decent four-hour kip with an hour either side to read my Las Vegas guidebook and make my list of ultimate Vegas to-dos. I already had quite the list as a starting point: I wanted to see a real-life showgirl show at Crazy Horse, I wanted to ride the rollercoasters at the Stratosphere, I wanted to take photos of myself with every single Elvis impersonator that crossed my path, I wanted to put everything on red 36, I wanted to take photos of myself outside the Little White Wedding Chapel and give my mother a heart attack. It would serve her right for thinking it was appropriate for us to be Facebook friends. There were so many things: everyone had a recommendation for me.

But on the plane, I wanted to rest. Possibly watch Captain America without Alex around to make me skip through those scenes where Chris Evans took his shirt off. This was not meant to be. I managed about seven minutes of reading and listening to my iPod post-take-off when Jenny tapped me on the shoulder.

‘Angela, we are so lucky,’ she declared.

‘And why’s that?’ I asked, suspiciously eyeing the six burly men seated in front of, behind and across from us, and staring at Jenny as though it were feeding time at the zoo.

‘Because Brad here is a world-class poker champion and he’s headed to the De Lujo for a tournament,’ she gestured towards a very large, very smug-looking man who resembled a strongly medicated game-show host. ‘He’s going to teach us how to play poker.’

For every ounce of mania in Jenny’s grin, I mustered up an equivalent lack of enthusiasm. Really? We hadn’t even crossed the state line yet and she was already encouraging attention from men who, as far as I was able to ascertain, loved nothing as much as poker, double denim and Subway sandwiches. There wasn’t a single one of them who wasn’t clutching a foot-long sandwich. A meatball sub at eight a.m.? Ick. If Brad Pitt wanted to reprise his Ocean’s Eleven role and show me the way around a game of five-card stud, I’d consider it. Until then, I was out of any and all card games.

‘I’m all right, thanks,’ I said, popping my earbud back in, only to have it yanked back out.

‘Angela!’ Jenny wasn’t having any of it. ‘Brad and his friends would like to show us a few basics. Isn’t that nice of them?’

I gave Brad and his friends a courtesy smile and an acknowledging, but not encouraging, nod. One of the friends giggled. Good grief.

‘Jenny …’ I was as polite as I possibly could be for someone who had woken up at five a.m. ‘I can’t even play snap without getting confused. Why don’t you take point on the cards, and I’ll look after the slots.’

‘I would totally look after their slots,’ Brad stage-whispered to the giggler.

‘Excuse me?’ I pulled out the second earbud and sat up straight.

‘Angie.’ Jenny placed a calming hand on my arm. ‘Don’t mind the boys. They’re excited. They don’t get out much.’

‘So we’re on for drinks tonight, hot stuff?’ Brad leaned over out of his seat to give Jenny the full force of his drunk-in-the-morning leer. ‘Play some cards? Or some slots?’

‘No.’ Jenny sighed and leaned back in her seat. ‘I’ll look after my own slots.’

Like all good gamblers, Brad knew when he was beaten. He slunk back into his seat, ignoring the jibes and jeers from his friends. Swing and a miss for the big guy.

‘What was that all about?’ I hissed at my seat buddy. ‘Has dating Sigge messed you up? Are you incapable of registering the relative attractiveness of any other man alive? Because Brad is not attractive.’

‘I know. Shut up,’ she sulked, waving down a stewardess. ‘Two margaritas, please.’

‘I don’t want a margarita,’ I told her. ‘It’s eight in the bloody morning.’

‘Who said it was for you?’ Jenny pulled down her tray table. ‘But actually, yeah, you are having one. Better make it three.’

The stewardess gave me a quizzical look but headed back off to the galley, under orders.

‘Is everything OK?’ I wrapped the earphones around my iPod and put it away. Clearly my services were needed. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Vegas, baby.’ She played out a feeble drum roll on the table. ‘Can we please agree that we’re going to have an awesome, awesome time?’

‘Can we please agree that we won’t speak to Brad ever again?’

‘Yes, we can,’ Jenny nodded, taking her drinks from the returning stewardess. ‘If you drink this.’

‘I hate drinking on planes,’ I whined, sniffing the marg. Nothing like a tequila-based cocktail before midday. ‘It makes me sick.’

‘Vegas insists you drink this,’ she said, waving it around under my nose. ‘If you don’t drink this, you’ll make Vegas sad. Do you want Vegas to be sad?’

‘Do you want me to be sick?’ I asked.

‘If you puke, I’ll buy you a steak dinner,’ she promised, handing me the glass and clapping with glee.

‘If I puke I won’t want a steak dinner,’ I pointed out, taking a sip. Actually, it wasn’t so bad. There was hardly any tequila in there. I would be fine. And I needed to do something to distract myself from Brad picking his nose across the aisle. Ewww.

‘How’re you feeling?’ an irritatingly fresh-looking Lopez asked as we joined the line for taxis in fabulous, freezing Las Vegas several hours later. So much for a heat wave: the sun was blazing, but it was definitely on the chilly side. My in-flight jeans and jumper combo were not nearly enough.

‘Not brilliant,’ I replied, fumbling for my sunglasses and trying not to hiccup. There really hadn’t been a lot of tequila in my margaritas, but if you drank enough of them, it turned out there was just enough. Mid-air drinking was even worse than midday drinking. And I’d been drinking in mid-air at midday. And now I felt like I was going to die.

‘You’ll be fine.’ She punched me in the arm and flashed the guy behind me a huge smile.

A lot of people say best friends usually share a similar level of attractiveness or earn a comparable salary. I believe the most important thing to have in common with someone for a friendship to work out is a comparable alcohol tolerance. It’s impossible for a monster drinker to be BFF with someone who is on their arse after a sniff of the barmaid’s apron. Usually, Jenny and I went at an even three-martini maximum, but the lack of breakfast combined with drinking at altitude meant I was very much on the back foot. In fact, I felt very much like a back foot. The back foot of a badger.

‘Honestly, honey, you’ll be fine.’ She gave me a side hug, cleverly avoiding the risk of being puked on. ‘It’s going to be the best weekend. Lots of rest. Helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon, hanging out in the spa, a few drinks, a little dancing. Maybe some Christmas shopping? Doesn’t that sound good?’

‘It sounds good.’

It sounded all right. Not as good as an hour in bed in a darkened room with an ice pack on my forehead and a bin on the floor beside me, but still. Pretty good.

‘And, oh! Awesome!’ Jenny scrolled down her iPhone happily. ‘Sadie’s going to come meet us.’

Oh. Awesome.

Vegas had managed to give me a headache before we’d even landed, and now we were going to be joined by the biggest arsehole I’d ever had the pleasure of calling a friend. Well, a Facebook friend. I wasn’t sure of the girl rules on best friend’s roommates, but Sadie seemed to think paying rent to Jenny gave her automatic rights to get involved in anything and everything in her life. And if I was in her general vicinity, that included me. From the look on Jenny’s face, simultaneously managing my throbbing headache and waves of nausea had stripped me of the ability to control my facial expressions.

‘Because we have a spare bed now Erin’s not coming,’ she explained. ‘You’re not mad? Don’t be mad. She emailed to say she was gonna be home for the weekend and it’s so close to Christmas and she’s on her own and I said we were here and she said she’d come out and I said she should stay with us and she said—’

‘Jenny –’ I held up my hand and swallowed back something unpleasant – ‘it’s fine. Can we just get to the hotel?’

She nodded and took my suitcase from me. I nodded back and let her take it before turning around and puking in a bin.

‘I owe you a steak dinner,’ Jenny said quietly.

And then things went from bad to worse.

Whatever I had been hoping for from Vegas, it wasn’t this. I hadn’t been dreaming of a below-standard-issue beige bedroom with a mini flatscreen TV bolted to the wall. And bars on the windows. Admittedly, I’d been spoiled by some beautiful hotel rooms in my time, but this was … this was just awful. So awful.

‘We’ll hardly even be in the room,’ Jenny said confidently, dropping her handbag on the scratchy sheets of the bed. ‘We’re just sleeping in here. It totally doesn’t matter.’

‘That it’s shit?’ I peeped out of the window to get a beautiful view of the room directly opposite. A very fat man was passed out on his very own scratchy sheets. Naked. Beautiful.