more minutes before stepping in.
‘Jenny, stop it, you’ll break a nail,’ I said, pulling her backwards slightly. Men never knew how to deal with aggressive women. Seriously, he just had to look at her heels: any challenge to her balance and she was over.
‘Hey, English, call off your dogs.’ He gave me a smile. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call, but when I woke up and you’d vamoosed, I figured you’d come find me. When you wanted me.’
He paused to smile. I paused to gag.
‘Where’d you get to anyway? You could have called Lopez from the room if you’d wanted to brag.’
‘Oh, ew, Angie, can I get back to kicking his ass now?’ Jenny bristled behind.
‘Jenny,’ I warned, even though I really did want to let her. How much of an arse was he?
‘The reason I vamoosed was … because I was … well, a bit confused. To be honest, I don’t strictly remember what happened.’
‘Honestly?’ Joe looked a little crestfallen. ‘Wow.’
‘So help me God, Joe,’ Jenny started up again. ‘You want to check your ego before I beat the living shit out of you for taking advantage of my best friend when she was out of it.’
I felt myself blush from head to toe. The few remaining people around the pool murmured to each other. What else did they expect but a bit of drama? They were in Hollywood, after all.
‘Calm down, Lopez.’ Joe folded his arms. ‘I didn’t do anything she didn’t want. Right, English?’
‘I don’t remember,’ I said, not knowing where to look.
‘Well, he can’t have been very good, so I’d say that’s a blessing,’ surmised a voice on the other side of the bar. Looking up, I saw Blake and James standing across from us. James had his arms folded, while Blake went for a slightly less concerned hands in pockets combined with a ‘ha, I knew you were a big slag’ expression.
‘I don’t think anyone was talking to you, man.’ Joe turned to face the boys. I really want to say I wasn’t a little bit excited. But I was.
‘Doesn’t sound like anyone particularly wants to talk to you, either,’ James shrugged. ‘And yet here you are. Maybe you should apologize to Angela and then just go away.’
‘Apologize for what?’ Joe walked around the bar. ‘For sealing the deal when you couldn’t?’
‘Please can we just not?’ My voice sounded awfully high to me. ‘James, Blake, let’s just go to dinner and Joe, I don’t remember what happened the other night but whatever it was, I regret it massively and I don’t want to talk about it ever again.’
‘Whatever.’ He looked me up and down. ‘Just don’t come back begging for more when this fag can’t get the job done later on.’
‘Right, that’s it.’
In one swift move, James was in front of Joe, his arm up in his throat, pushing him back until his head cracked against the bar. It didn’t look comfortable.
‘James,’ Blake shouted a short warning. ‘Think.’
James nodded but didn’t take his eyes off Joe. ‘Apologize to Angela and then, if she’s happy, we’ll pretend this never happened. All of this.’
‘I’m not apologizing,’ he coughed. ‘Nothing even happened – she was too wasted.’
‘I was? Then why were your clothes on the …’ I flushed an even deeper shade of red. ‘Why were you still there in the morning?’
James rammed his forearm into his throat again. ‘You might want to think really carefully before you answer.’
‘I thought you might sober up a little?’ Joe croaked. ‘But you just talked about your ex, threw up and went back to sleep. It was too late to go home, I had a shift in the morning.’
‘So we didn’t?’ I could barely breathe.
‘We didn’t,’ Joe replied.
‘But you let her think you did? You are all class.’ James let him go with one last shove. ‘Well, at least we’ll all sleep better tonight. You’re not even nearly good enough for her.’
‘Jesus Christ, you can fucking have her,’ Joe coughed and righted himself. ‘Bitch.’
Which was about the point when James turned around and knocked Joe flat on his back with one almighty punch.
‘I really feel like I’ve missed something here.’
I span around to see Alex staring at the sorry scene.
‘Alex, it’s uh, it’s … this is Joe,’ I pointed at the bloody, groaning pile on the floor. It was impossible to tell from his expression what he’d seen. Or heard.
‘I waited downstairs but no one showed so I came up to find you.’ He hadn’t moved from the entry of the lift. ‘I didn’t realize you were … rumbling?’
‘All right, Alex,’ James said, stepping over Joe, who was sobbing loudly. ‘We had a bit of trouble with this one but we really should get off. Reservations are in about half an hour and we have to get all the way up to the Mondrian. Nice shirt.’
Blake and Jenny followed James into the lift, Blake smirking at me, Jenny holding in nervous giggles, while I stepped awkwardly over Joe and took Alex’s hand.
‘What was that all about?’ he asked, accepting my light kiss on the lips.
‘Uh, I don’t really know,’ I said, pulling him along behind me. ‘I told you they had a bit of a fight on Monday. I think it was the same thing.’
‘Right,’ Alex looked back at Joe while I silently prayed for him to keep sobbing long enough for me to get Alex safely into the next lift. ‘Man, how glad am I that James didn’t decide to kick the crap yesterday?’
‘Very?’ I asked, jabbing at the button.
If it was possible, the evening only got worse after we left the hotel. Luckily the manager set us away from the rest of the diners in the restaurant so at least we couldn’t ruin anyone else’s evening with the massive cloud of awkwardness that hung over us. Knowing my talent for saying the worst possible thing at the worse possible time, I ate in silence, keeping my leg pressed up against Alex, occasionally trying to distract him with a gentle squeeze of the thigh. And, if his responsive back-stroking was anything to go by, it was working.
In between ordering masses of food and many, many bottles of wine, James kept the conversation going for everyone, volleying questions at Alex about the band, about New York and, most dangerous of all, about me. Alex handled the grilling well, smiling, nodding, only occasionally kicking me lightly under the table and trying to divert the conversation to Jenny and Blake, but Jenny was too busy doing her bit by drinking as much of the wine that James kept ordering as possible.
By the time her too-little-too-late duck arrived, she was on her second bottle and veering wildly between overexcitedly discussing her new LA life with Blake and choking up over leaving me behind in New York. And when Blake wasn’t getting Jenny all worked up about the celebrities he could introduce her to, he was asking me increasingly awkward questions, preferably while Alex was listening. By the time the waiter came to ask if we wanted dessert, it was a relief to say no, get the bill and call for a cab. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d felt more tense.
‘Well, have a safe flight back to New York.’ James shook Alex’s hand and pulled him into an acceptable one-armed man hug. ‘Good to meet you, take care of her. I’m guessing that one gets herself into trouble fairly easily.’
‘Yes, she does, and she isn’t going to have me to get her out of it any more.’ Jenny threw herself on me. ‘Seriously, Brooklyn, I’m giving you my number before you go tomorrow and I expect you to call