I Heart Hollywood (34 page)

‘Alex Reid, beach bum,’ I shrugged off my cardigan, getting my last few rays of LA sunshine. ‘Who would have thought it?’

I paused on the boardwalk to kick off my sandals while Alex strode on across the beach. Seeing him silhouetted against the sky and the ocean was so surreal, I hardly dared to follow, in case he disappeared like a mirage. Except instead of a palm tree and a sparkling spring, there was a pair of black jeans and an un-ironed Kellogg’s Corn Flakes T-shirt hanging from his wide shoulders and slim hips. He turned and smiled, interrupting my shameless ogling.

‘You checking me out?’ he held his hand over his eyes, the Santa Monica sun too much for his Brooklyn-bred eyesight, even with his Ray-Bans.

‘Maybe?’ I said, stepping into the sand. Good God it was hot. Good God he was hot. So much hotter than James Jacobs. Anyone could spend half their life in the gym and get a two-hundred-dollar haircut. Only Alex could pull off that too-long-on-one-side fringe that hadn’t seen a comb in—well, how long could it be since he’d had it cut? A month? But it was still so soft when I tiptoed across the sand towards him and cautiously brushed it away from his face. ‘You’re going to burn even faster than me. Do you have any sunscreen?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, taking my hand from his face and holding it in his. ‘Don’t tell anyone but I actually tan pretty well. I just don’t see that much sun at home.’

‘I suppose you don’t get many tanned rock stars,’ I said, happy to be talking about nothing. ‘It’s not very hipster, is it? Not very—’

‘Angela, I love you.’

I knew that my mouth was hanging open in a slightly unattractive fashion but I couldn’t move a muscle.

‘Angela?’

I blinked. Nope, he was still there. I wasn’t asleep. Maybe I had sunstroke from not wearing a hat in the car on the way to the beach. Or maybe I was still drunk from, well, the whole week.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes,’ I said finally. ‘What did you say?’

‘Something I should have said before you left but I didn’t want you to freak out and then be too far away to do anything about it. I love you, Angela.’

‘Why?’

‘What?’

‘Why do you love me?’

Well, why not try and ruin this perfect moment? Well done, Angela.

‘Sit down,’ Alex sighed, pulling me down onto the sand beside him. It really was red hot; fine for him in his jeans but more than uncomfortable on the backs of my legs. ‘Of all the responses you could have given me, I wasn’t expecting that. You want me to tell you why I love you?’

‘Yes please,’ I said quietly, not quite able to meet his eyes. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him—well, it was; but more that this scene was so surreal—Alex sitting there next to me in his skinny jeans, his crumpled T-shirt, all pale skin and black hair clashing against the sun and the sand—that it genuinely felt as though I was dreaming.

‘OK, I love you because you have that knee-high stack of books at the side of your bath that are all curling up at the corners because you spend hours in that tub when you should be working. I love you because you put my socks on the radiator if you get up before me, which you always do. I love you because you make me want to do things that I would never have done six months ago.’ He shook his head. ‘I love you because you make me want to come out to LA and tell you I love you.’

‘Oh,’ I pushed my hair behind my ears and tried to smile at the sand, ‘really? Even after all this week’s nonsense?’

‘Any particular bit of nonsense you’re referring to?’ he asked.

I actually wasn’t sure if there was. ‘No?’

‘So no four a.m. phone calls you want to elaborate on?’

Well, that could have been worse. ‘Oh. Yes. There was one of those,’ I nodded, looking away again. ‘That would be the one when I said I love you.’

‘That was the one I was thinking of, yeah,’ Alex replied evenly. ‘Why, what did you think I meant?’

I shrugged, drawing a figure eight in the sand with my finger. ‘Just been such a mad week. I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular.’

‘So you weren’t thinking about you spending the night with that guy James knocked out last night?’ he asked.

I paused my circling, paused my breathing for a moment. ‘Not especially.’

‘You know that trust is really important to me, Angela,’ Alex said, putting his hands over mine. ‘It’s not like we didn’t have this conversation already.’

Oh God, I thought, squeezing my eyes closed tight. Don’t let this be happening again; don’t let him do this again.

‘I would really appreciate you telling me what happened instead of me having to piece it together from what I heard last night. I’m guessing whatever I dream up will actually be way worse than what actually happened.’

‘I didn’t know you were there,’ I said. ‘You heard all of it?’

‘I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?’

‘OK,’ I started, trying to run through the story in my head before it all came spilling out. Was there any way for me to tell him the whole story without him getting up and walking away at the end of it? Probably not. ‘Right, short version? I thought I’d lost my job, I thought I’d lost you, James was refusing to sort everything out and so I got totally wasted at the hotel bar. Joe helped me get back down to my room, he kissed me and I passed out. The next thing I knew, I woke up, he was there, I freaked out and that was that. And I only really found out what happened last night. Which was nothing. Nothing at all. It was just so stupid. I was just so stupid.’

‘So you weren’t going to tell me?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t know what there was to tell.’ I looked up but Alex was leaning back on his elbows, staring out at the sea. His nose was bright pink. ‘OK, no I wasn’t going to tell you.’

‘Even when you thought you’d slept with him?’

Was there even a right answer? ‘I think I would have told you when we got home. But when it turned out nothing had happened, no, I don’t think I would have said anything.’

He didn’t move, didn’t speak.

‘I couldn’t see the point in making things worse than they were. Nothing happened; I didn’t think it made sense to hurt you for no reason.’

After what felt like for ever, he breathed out and nodded. ‘Makes sense.’

‘And the rest of it is all sorted, right?’ After being almost scared to make eye contact with him all morning, now all I wanted was for him to look at me. ‘All the stupid photo internet stuff.’

‘Did you know James was gay when you were in his hotel room that night?’ he asked.

What happened to ‘you don’t have to explain anything to me’?, I thought, puffing out my cheeks in concentration. ‘No, but there was nothing going on,’ I said. That wasn’t a lie. Nothing actually went on.

‘I don’t want to come off as paranoid, but it seemed kind of strange that you would call me at four in the morning and tell me you love me hours before the pictures of you and James came out.’ He turned his head to look at me and took off his Ray-Bans. ‘Why do you love me, Angela?’

Arsehole. Turning my question back on myself. ‘Why do I love you?’

‘It’s really easy to say I love you, it’s another altogether to explain why,’ he said. ‘As you know.’

‘Yeah, OK,’ I closed my eyes again. It wasn’t that bloody easy, was it, or I would have told him weeks ago and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Why was this so tricky? I was for ever telling other people why I loved him.

‘I love you because you always have a T-shirt under your pillow for me, even if you don’t know I’m coming to stay. I love you because you know I want sugar in my tea in the morning but not at night and because you always pretend you forgot I wanted a skinny hot chocolate in Starbucks because you know I really prefer full fat but don’t like to order it in case the girl behind the counter thinks I’m fat.’

Alex started to smile. So I carried on.

‘I love you because when I get out of the subway and I see you in the coffee shop by your place or I’m coming back home and you’re in the deli buying me Lucky Charms, I actually get butterflies in my stomach. Every time. Or when I’m knocking on your door, just before you answer, I can feel them bubbling up inside me. And when I wake up, I look for you, even if you’re not there. It’s like my brain just thinks you should always be there, like waking up with you is my default setting.’ I copied his pose and leaned back on my elbows. Damn, the sand was still hot. ‘Is that OK? Did I pass?’

He leaned over and kissed me gently on the lips, his skin warm against mine. For the longest moment, no one said anything.

‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t a test for you,’ he said, pulling away slightly. ‘It was a test for me. I didn’t mean to make you feel shitty, I never wanted to be one of those asshole boyfriends who doesn’t trust his girlfriend but, there’s no excuse, I guess I’m not totally over what happened with my ex. But you’re not my ex. I know that. I promise I’ll never ever question you, ever. I was totally being that asshole.’

‘Is that it?’

‘That’s not enough?’

‘I mean, you’re not going to say you love me but you can’t be with me?’ I pressed my forehead against his, wondering why I couldn’t just shut my mouth.

‘I was just going to stop at I love you,’ he said, pushing me back into the sand and kissing me again.

‘I can work with that,’ I said, rolling on top of him. The sand was still awfully hot.

Chapter Eighteen

‘Jenny, it’s me,’ I mumbled into my mobile. ‘Pick up if you’re there?’

Nothing. And I was trapped in a pitch-black apartment with none of the lights working. No matter how many times I flicked the light switch by my bed on and off. My mum would have been very proud.

‘Shit,’ I sighed. ‘Well, if you get this, can you call me back and tell me where the fuse box is? Seriously, what were you thinking, moving to LA?’

I pressed the red button to cancel the call and waved the light from my phone around the room, wandering out into the hallway. Surely it would be somewhere around here? I’d been living in the apartment on my own for a week and so far I’d had to call a plumber in when I dropped my Tiffany necklace down the plughole in the kitchen, call an exterminator in when I mistook one of Jenny’s old clip-in hair extensions for a mouse, and call some random stranger in off the street when a massive spider decided it wanted to share the shower. I was determined to conquer this crisis on my own.

Stupid Alex and his stupid three a.m. phone call. I squinted up above the doorframe, was that big white thing a fuse box? But as much as I appreciated his semi-drunken declaration of love at all hours of the night, if he hadn’t called this time, I wouldn’t have woken up, then I wouldn’t have had to go for a wee and found out the electricity was off. Which would have meant I wouldn’t have worked myself up into a panic that there was a blackout, which would have meant I wouldn’t have called him back and he wouldn’t have worried me even more by saying it was just my electric that was out. Living on my own was not working out well.

I bit down on my bottom lip and pressed my hand to my forehead, not knowing quite what to do. I glanced around, looking for inspiration, and found it sparkling through the window. The city skyline lit up the living room, the Chrysler building outlined in white light down the street. I felt my way across the room, successfully only stubbing my big toe twice.

Leaning against the windowsill, I stared out onto the still busy street below and I breathed out, slightly calmer. How could Jenny leave this? How could year-round sunshine and a convertible compete with New York City? Even now, in the middle of the night, the streets were alive with people. Could Jenny pop on her Uggs right now and be eating chow mein within five minutes? Not likely. Well, it was possible but I was pretty certain she’d have to at least get in that convertible and drive ten miles to find it. I watched a stream of yellow cabs and police cruisers rolling past, couples holding hands and running across the street, trying to beat the light; a general assortment of characters wandering around, ridiculously early on a Tuesday morning, not freaking out because they couldn’t reset their electricity.

‘Come on, Angela,’ I said to myself, ‘this is stupid.’ For a second, I considered just going back to bed and worrying about it in the morning, but I knew it would keep me awake. I was going to beat this. I padded back through the living room, bashing my knee as I went.

On closer, tiptoe, inspection, the white thing over the door did look an awful lot like a fuse box. Only one of the switches was down and, from my feeble recollection, that meant a fuse had tripped. Of course, I didn’t have a stepladder. Or a step. Or anything that could feasibly be used to climb on to reach. I looked at the phone in my hand—I could call Alex? He could probably reach but that would feel a tiny bit like admitting defeat. And I had to be in the office at nine. If he came over now, half cut, there was no way I’d be getting to sleep anytime soon. Which wasn’t a horrible thought, I smiled to myself, but no, I had to do this. I refused to be such a rubbish girl. Unless being a rubbish girl might be just the thing…I dashed back into the bedroom, looking for my highest heels. Two minutes later, I’d accessorized my hot pink Victoria’s Secret pyjama top and American Apparel hot pink boy shorts with my gold Christian Louboutin stilettoes. Very sexy.

I grabbed a can of hairspray from the side of the sink on my way back into the hall and reached up as high as I could, bashing at the cover of the fuse box until it flipped down.

‘Come on,’ I puffed, extraordinarily pleased with myself. I pushed up onto my toes, trying to flip the tripped switch without spraying myself in the eyes with Elnett. Every part of me strained. If I could do this, I could do anything. I could sort out all the bills I had to transfer into my name. I could work out what the 401k thing was on my wage slip from
The Look
. I could work out what the equivalent to Night Nurse was in the chemist—how many variations on a cold medicine did one city need?

On my seventh little leap, I bashed the lid of the can against the switch, clattering backwards into the door.

‘Angela?’ yelled a voice on the other side.