Lindsey Kelk 5-Book 'I Heart...' Collection (32 page)

‘But—’ Louisa tried to interrupt, but I wasn’t ready to stop.

‘And in the last three weeks, I feel like I’ve actually been living. Making good decisions, doing good things. If I came back now, what would happen?’

‘You’d be with people who love you and care about you,’ Louisa said. Her voice certainly didn’t sound like that of someone who loved and cared about me. I took a deep breath before I said anything else. Before I could, I heard the call waiting beeping quietly on the line.

‘I have to go, Louisa,’ I said, shielding my eyes and looking back up towards the apartment. I could see Jenny pressed up against the window, looking for me, her phone in her hand. ‘I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but can you tell Mum I’m OK, and I’ll call on Monday?’

‘Angela, for God’s sake,’ Louisa sounded incredibly cross, ‘you’re living in a dream world. Wake up and come home’

‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, shrugging. ‘But I’ll know by Monday. Love you, Louisa, I’m glad you’re OK.’

Before she could start trying to talk me home again I hung up. Jenny had already rung off, and when I looked up at the window, she had vanished. I wasn’t ready to go back in there just yet, but I wasn’t ready to belly up and go back to London either. I needed somewhere to think.

For an hour I wandered the streets. Down, across, across, up, back down again. I didn’t even realize I’d arrived at the Empire State Building until I walked straight into the queue of people.

‘Watch where you’re bloody going,’ an unnecessarily fat British man tutted and sighed as I backed away with incoherent apologies. ‘Bloody Americans,’ he nodded to his companion, ‘they’re so bloody rude.’

Finding a tiny space outside a pharmacy on the corner of the street, I stared up at the building, but it didn’t offer any easy answers. Just memories forged from countless hours of TV and movie watching, spliced with scenes from my visit with Alex. Feeling choked by the crowd, I shook off the fug and turned on my ballet pump. Uptown. Up and out. For the first fifteen blocks, I thought I was heading to the park, but as I crossed over Fifth and onto Sixth, a different refuge came to mind. Hopefully one where I could fill my head with something other than the hamster wheel of questions that were tracking over and over.

Although it was still fairly quiet, it was a museum after all, MoMA was busier than it had been the last time I’d been there. I paid my $20 and hopped straight on to the escalator, travelling up to the fifth floor. I was surprised at the number of kids running around. Very cool parents, I thought to myself, although secretly wishing the very cool parents would scoop all of them up and take them across the road to FAO Schwarz. Even though there were dozens of people loitering, not one of them uttered a word to me as I sank down against the wall opposite Christina’s World and stared. I didn’t even cry. I just stared, losing myself in every last blade of grass. I ignored the curious whispers, although I did pull a bit of a face when one tit in a cagoule suggested to his girlfriend that I was a performance artist. Was I wearing a bear suit? I just shut it all out, every word of everyone. The people who were there, the people who weren’t. I shut out all of the advice, requested or otherwise, not one of them had told me anything I wanted to hear, but they were all right. Jenny was right, I was a big fuck-up, Louisa was right, I had run away, and Tyler was right, I really didn’t know what I wanted. But it was time to work it out.

An hour or a whole day could have passed before I eventually pushed myself up off the floor, it really didn’t matter. As I wiped away a few sneaky tears that had slipped out unnoticed and pulled my messy hair back into a ponytail, I spotted someone else having a good stare. There, leaning against the escalator, was Alex. He smiled sadly and raised a hand. I froze for a second, and then waved back, not knowing what else to do. He gave me a cool single nod and came over.

‘Hey,’ he said softly.

‘Hey,’ I replied. My voice sounded strange after being silent for so long. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Jenny called Jeff, Jeff called me, I called you, you didn’t answer,’ he said. ‘It’s a big long chain of people calling people until I figured out you might be here.’

‘Oh,’ I nodded. ‘Wait, Jenny called Jeff?’

‘She didn’t have my number, and I guess she thought you might have come over to mine,’ he explained. I couldn’t even begin to think how awful I must look. ‘She was worried about you.’

‘They broke up,’ I said quietly, thinking about how furious Jenny had been. I wished I could go back and try that conversation again. ‘Jenny and Jeff. She’s so upset.’

‘Him too,’ Alex looked at me. ‘I hope they work it out, but it’s hard when you can’t trust the other person.’

‘It’s all anyone seems to be doing, working stuff out. Gets tiring after a while.’

‘It does, but what else are you supposed to do?’ Alex put one hand gently on my shoulder. ‘You want to talk?’

‘Not in here though,’ I said, letting him guide me towards the escalators and outside.

‘So, what’s going on?’ he asked after watching me scratch at a small mark on my jeans for three solid minutes.

‘I’ve been offered a job back in London,’ I said, looking up at him. Seemed like as good a place to start as any. ‘I had a huge row with Jenny and then I called home and had a huge row with my friend there and now, just when I thought I had some idea of what I wanted, I’m sort of back to square one.’

‘Wow, I only saw you yesterday, right?’ he asked. ‘So what do you want to do?’

‘What would you do if you were me?’ I asked, head tipped to one side, trying to read him. He was playing everything pretty close to his chest. ‘If you could go back to your friends and family, have no visa worries and a great job, or you could stay here, where you’re not quite sure of anything.’

‘I can’t make that decision for you,’ Alex said, taking my hands and holding them lightly. ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘It would if I asked you to.’ I gave him a half-smile, but he didn’t return it.

‘It wouldn’t be fair because I don’t know what you should do,’ he said, squeezing my hand. ‘You know how I feel, but I won’t ask you to stay for me. Besides, it’s not just me, is it? What about this other guy?’

Tell me this isn’t happening, I thought, watching Alex turn away.

‘There is no other guy,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s just you.’

‘I read your blog, Ange, and I just kinda know. Please don’t lie,’ Alex shook his head and slackened his grip on my hands. ‘And Jenny said you’d had this huge row with him? I don’t know Angela, I really like you, but I only just got my head back together, I can’t be in another relationship where I can’t trust the other person. Where I don’t know what’s going to happen.’

‘How can you ever know what’s going to happen?’ I asked, pulling his hands back. ‘But I can honestly tell you there is no other guy. Whatever Jenny might have said, she was so mad at me. Honestly, there was only ever another guy in the tiniest way. And it wasn’t a huge row, I was telling him I didn’t want to see him again. I want to see you. Just you. What did she tell you?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Would you have told me that you had been seeing someone else if I hadn’t fronted you on it?’ he asked. He was smiling now, but it was so, so sad I couldn’t bear it. ‘If I hadn’t had to read about it on your blog?’

‘Oh, God, I wish I’d never even started that thing,’ I groaned. ‘Please, Alex, honestly, it’s just you. I met him before I met you and I just, I was only seeing him because, well, I don’t even know why. The bloody blog, Jenny, Erin … none of it matters. It’s just you. Really and honestly and completely.’

‘OK then,’ he said. His voice was so thick I couldn’t even look at him. ‘What would you do if there was no me, no Jenny, no “other guy”, and you still had the same choice to make entirely on your own? Because that’s what it’s going to have to come down to.’

‘I’m not sure, but I don’t want to be on my own, Alex.’

‘You’re not,’ he said, cupping my cheek with one hand, as the tears starting to track down my face. ‘You’re so not. Do you think Jenny would have put herself through calling Jeff if she didn’t care about you?’

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘But I don’t mean Jenny, do I?’

‘That’s just going to have to have some time,’ he said, after a moment’s pause. ‘I need a little bit more time, and I think you do too. Whatever we might have, I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be sitting crying about it after only three weeks.’

‘Don’t,’ I stumbled over my words, noticing Jenny loitering. She was still wearing Jeff’s T-shirt, but she had managed to find some jeans before coming out. Thank God. ‘Don’t make it out to be bad.’

‘It’s not bad,’ Alex smiled. ‘It’s good. Really good, you know? Maybe it’s just not right. Not the right time.’

‘Do you think I should go home?’ I asked, willing him not to answer.

‘Maybe,’ he nodded, wiping my tears away with his thumb and leaning in to kiss me. His tears left new slippery tracks down my cheeks. ‘I think you should do what you want to do, what you really want to do. Look, I’m going to go, but I’ll call you. Or you call me when you’ve talked to Jenny?’

I nodded, not wanting to let go of his hand. He wasn’t going to call me. I watched him walk across the courtyard, following him down the street until he was gone.

‘Angela?’ Jenny was the quietest I’d ever known her. She had smudged mascara all around her eyes and her hair was a complete bird’s nest. She looked exactly how I felt. Probably exactly how I looked, actually. ‘Angie?’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered as she sat down on the step next to me. ‘I shouldn’t have even mentioned Tyler or anything. I know how much you love Jeff.’

‘Shut up!’ Jenny smiled through a new set of tears. ‘If you don’t stop being so goddamned polite we’re never going to work out as roommates. I absolutely needed to hear what you had to say. Jeff can’t forgive me because I can’t forgive myself, that’s hardly your fault. I should never ever have said any of the things I said to you. And I never meant to say anything to Alex about Tyler, it just all came out at once. I told him he was the one. I would totally understand if you couldn’t forgive me.’

‘Don’t, please just don’t even,’ I said, resting my head on her shoulder. ‘But I think you’re the one that’s been too polite. If you’d just given me a verbal thrashing the first time we’d met, I might never have been in this mess.’

‘So you’re coming home?’ Jenny asked, taking my hand and standing up. Her hands were smaller and softer than Alex’s, but they were just as strong.

‘I’ve been offered a job back in London, Jenny,’ I said soberly. ‘I should just take it, Jenny.’

‘Seriously?’ She sat back down. ‘You would just leave?’

‘It’s the sensible thing to do,’ I nodded. ‘It seems like the logical thing. It’s a great job.’

‘You know whatever you want to do, you’re stuck with me now, right?’ Jenny said. ‘You don’t survive two Hurricane Jenny attacks and then get rid of me.’

‘I wouldn’t know what to do without you now,’ I smiled. It was true, I couldn’t imagine her not being in my life. In just three weeks, she was as much a part of me as Louisa.

‘What did Alex say about you leaving?’ she asked.

I tried to smile, to talk, but all I could do was shake my head and let some more tears loose.

Jenny pulled me in close for a tight, long hug. It helped. ‘I don’t think I ate every last crumb of that cheesecake you left in the living room,’ she whispered after a while. ‘Want to go see what’s left?’

I nodded numbly and let her pull me to my feet. Although I managed to stand up, my stomach was still stuck on the step and my heart was so heavy, I thought it might drop out of my chest at any second. Funny how I hadn’t felt this way about Mark, I thought. So this is what it felt like to lose someone.

‘Whatever you decide to do,’ Jenny said, brushing my hair back behind my ears and speaking clearly, as though I might have trouble understanding, ‘it’ll be the right decision, you know that? I didn’t phrase myself too well this morning, but if this confused messy ball of shit is you, then doll, I still think you’re freaking amazing.’

I took her hand and we exited out onto the street. No one stared at us, no one even gave us a second glance. Two weepy girls in last night’s clothes, holding on to each other as if our lives depended on it. If only it was the strangest thing they’d seen on the street that day.

The city was so hot, I started to think New York had frozen the clock until I decided what I was going to do. It was almost nine, and still so light and so unbearably humid, it could have been the middle of the afternoon. But it wasn’t. In the middle of the afternoon I had been sobbing on the steps of MoMA watching Alex walk away from me, and now I was sitting in my windowsill watching Jenny wave up at me on her way to work. It had taken all of my persuasive powers (not something I was renowned for) to convince her I wasn’t going to up and vamoose before she got back, or just throw myself out of the window. At least not without calling her first and giving her a fifteen-minute warning. She’d already skipped out on one shift to come and find me, I didn’t want her to get in any more trouble, but a Ghostbusters/Ghostbusters 2 marathon supplemented with about three pints of Ben & Jerry’s really wouldn’t have gone amiss.

The people below me were literally walking down the street pouring bottles of water over their heads and watching the drops sizzle on the pavement. Even the spire of the Chrysler Building was fuzzed out of focus way up in the heat haze. I was not made for this heat. Or for getting dumped. Or for making many major life-changing decisions in a very short space of time. Next month I was definitely going to try to keep it down to one. Maybe two tops. I really didn’t know what to do. The last few weeks had been amazing, but what was the point in being in New York if it was even harder than being in London?

And how fantastic would it be to go back, to be all super Sex and the City’d up with my fab new wardrobe, my gorgeous handbag and my amazing dream job? I knew in my heart I’d moved on from Mark, I wasn’t afraid of seeing him. Mum and Dad would be, well, they’d like to know where they could find me in case they needed a cat sitter when they went on holiday. And Louisa and I would work everything out. Things would have to be different now. I was different.