there last year.’ James pulled out the big guns, a little shy smile with the big blue eyes peering out from behind his hair. ‘I’ll have to come and see you at The Hollywood. See if it’s as swish.’
‘Swish,’ I echoed. Then I actually giggled. ‘So tomorrow at ten.’
‘Tomorrow at ten.’ He kissed me on the cheek as I stumbled backwards out through the door. ‘Bye then.’
As the door closed, my sanity began to trickle back. I needed a cab. I needed to call Jenny. I needed to call Alex. God, that man was good looking.
As the cab travelled along Hollywood Boulevard, taking me further away from James Jacobs geographically, the further away I felt from reality. Surely none of that had just happened. The only thing that was certain was that Jenny did not appreciate my turning in early again.
‘This is the second night in a row you’ve ditched me, Angie,’ she yelled over the row of the bar. ‘Seriously, come on. You’ve already thrown up, you may as well get back on it.’
‘Jenny, I really wish I could,’ I lied through my back teeth. All I wanted was my bed. ‘I have to meet James tomorrow morning and I just need to call Alex and get some sleep.’
‘Call Alex?’
Apparently that was the wrong thing to say.
‘You’re going to go back to the hotel and call Alex instead of coming to meet me?’ Jenny wasn’t amused. ‘You get your ass out here and tell me every single thing that happened with James Jacobs.’
‘She’s blowing you out for a guy?’ I heard Daphne crow over her shoulder. ‘What an asshole.’
‘No, I…Jenny, I just need to sleep,’ I sighed. ‘Seriously. We’ll go out tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ she hiccuped. ‘Until you decide you have to stay in and wait around for a boy to call. Just don’t bother calling me in the day when Mr Movie Star stands you up again. I have plans.’
‘Doing what?’ I asked but she’d already hung up. Jenny was so much fun when she was drunk and grumpy. Why did I have a feeling Daphne was not going to be a good influence?
Back at the hotel, I stripped off my new dress and pulled on the ancient Blondie T-shirt I had ‘borrowed’ from Alex before I left. It must have been washed a thousand times but it still smelt of Alex’s apartment, of home. I dialled his number again.
‘Hello?’
‘Alex? It’s me.’ I had never been so happy to hear his voice.
‘I tried to call you earlier.’
‘I know, I’m sorry.’ OK, so we weren’t starting with ‘I love you, I miss you, I’m going mad without you’. ‘It’s been such a ridiculous day.’
‘Yeah, I’ve been busy too. We were in the studio until—like—three this morning,’ Alex replied through a yawn. ‘Shouldn’t you be interviewing your movie star?’
‘That all got off to a bit of a dodgy start but it’ll be all right, I think. James is really, really nice,’ I said, smiling at the thought of Alex with his black hair all ruffled on the pillow, my head resting against his chest as he fell asleep, his fingers curled around my wrist. ‘You sound sleepy. Are you OK?’
‘I guess I was asleep,’ he yawned again. ‘And just how nice is this James? Should I be worried?’
‘No,’ I slipped into bed and set my alarm for eight a.m. ‘I think you’ll be OK. Especially since I…’
‘Since you?’
‘Since I just babbled like an idiot. I’m sure he thinks I’m the worst interviewer he’s ever met.’ I decided not to share the shoe puking until I got back to New York. It felt more like an ‘in-person’ story. ‘You should go back to bed. I don’t want to be the reason the world has to go without a new Stills album this year.’
‘You’re the reason there’s going to be another album at all,’ Alex said softly. I curled up against the pillows and smiled. No six-foot sex god could compete with that. ‘So, about that phone sex we talked about?’
I was sure what he really meant to say was ‘I love you and I can’t live with you.’ But he didn’t.
‘Goodnight, Alex. Get some sleep.’
‘What are you wearing?’
‘Goodnight, Alex.’ I hung up and flicked off the lights.
Boys.
When James had said he’d send a car, I really wasn’t expecting a limo. And I really wasn’t expecting him to be inside it. Thankfully, I’d managed to prise myself out of bed at a reasonable hour and was fully prepped. Well, made-up and blow-dried. I had tried to come as far away from yesterday’s vomit incident as possible in a cute inky blue Ella Moss jersey dress, evidence of my credit card abuse in Bloomingdale’s. Nothing pukey about this little number. I just couldn’t bend over at all. Fingers crossed the superstar could be distracted enough by legs so as not to notice my lack of stellar interviewing skills…
‘Good morning, Miss Clark,’ James utched across the back seat of the limo, as though there wasn’t enough room in there. Or possibly because he was confused by my size 12 backside. Given most of the girls I’d seen at Chateau Marmont would struggle to tip the scales at 100 pounds, I could understand why he’d be concerned about my girth. ‘You’re looking very refreshed.’
I took that as code for ‘not about to vomit’.
‘Well, thank you very much, Mr Jacobs,’ I replied with a winning smile. For God’s sake, I’d already puked in front of the man, where was the point in being star-struck?
‘Let me introduce my assistant, Blake.’ James gestured towards a very stressed-looking, but very cute blond sitting in the opposite corner of the limo. For shame, I hadn’t even noticed him; I was way too busy checking out James’s huge thighs in his teeny tiny workout shorts. For my interview, of course. ‘We were just running in the hills. Well, I was, Blake was reading Perez Hilton on his BlackBerry.’
‘Shut up,’ Blake held out his hand. ‘Sorry I missed you yesterday?’
‘Oh, really, don’t be. The fewer people involved in yesterday, the better,’ I said, shaking his hand and my head politely. Blake was actually very good looking, exactly how I would describe a Californian All-American Boy: rumpled blond hair, incredibly tanned and athletic looking in his workout gear. If it weren’t for the fact that he was seriously setting off my gadar, I would have been absolutely warming him up for one Miss Jenny Lopez.
Well, if one Miss Jenny Lopez had actually made it home the night before. A quick peek in her room on the way down to meet James presented a still-made-up-from-the-morning-before bed. I looked down into my (suffering slightly from being on the floor of the toilets in The Ivy) Marc Jacobs handbag to see if she’d replied to my text. Nothing yet.
‘Yeah, anyway, I’m basically here to make sure you stick to the approved topics and if at any time I say stop, we stop and the interview is over, OK?’ Blake barked. ‘You did get the list of approved topics?’
Approved topics…I tried not to pull the ‘was that one of the pieces of paper Cici gave me and I’ve left in the hotel?’ face.
‘Absolutely.’
Absolutely certain it was one of the pieces of paper Cici gave me that I’d left in the hotel.
‘Fantastic,’ Blake continued, as though James wasn’t even in the car. I was trying to pay attention but how can anyone listen to instructions when James Jacobs is sitting just a couple of feet away and pulling a very cute