I Heart Paris Read online

  But he’s bloody well going to, I added to myself.

  At the end of the set, I waited patiently by the bar while Alex unplugged a million cables and put things back in boxes. I’d offered to help once, but when I’d shorted an amp within three minutes, it was suggested that I take on a more supervisory role. Away from the stage and the very expensive instruments. This time at least, I was glad about that. While he was occupied, and Virginie was in the ladies, I followed Solène outside. Swapping from wine to rum might not be a terribly good idea given the amount of work I had to do the following day, but it did make me much braver than usual.

  ‘Hi, Solène?’ I waited for her to finish lighting up a cigarette before she spoke.

  ‘Oui?’ she replied, looking at me blankly for a moment. ‘Oh, Alex’s friend! I am very sorry. I forget your name.’

  ‘It’s Angela,’ I said, not sure how I was planning on managing this conversation. ‘Solène, did you used to go out with Alex?’

  ‘Go out with?’ She blew out a long line of smoke. It might have been a disgusting habit, but it was sexy. Bitch.

  ‘Sorry, did you date Alex?’ I asked again, starting to feel incredibly awkward. I noticed the other girls from her band heading out through the door towards us.

  Solène nodded. ‘He did not tell you this? Yes.’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ I said, a little surprised to have my suspicions confirmed so readily.

  ‘I am not surprised.’ She laughed and offered me a cigarette. For some reason, I took it. ‘He is dating so many girls, why would he mention me?’

  The other girls surrounded Solène and laughed along. Not really knowing what else to do, I laughed too. Wasn’t it hilarious that my boyfriend had shagged so many beautiful women, he didn’t see fit to mention to me that one of them was the lead singer of a French rock band who made the Victoria’s Secret models look like a bunch of dumpy porkers.

  ‘It was a very long time ago.’ She lit my cigarette and carried on talking. ‘Many years, we were very young, I was living in New York and it was just for fun. You should both come tomorrow, we are having a party. It would be good to talk to Alex again.’

  ‘Your band is playing tomorrow?’ I asked, my voice tight with cigarette smoke. Why was I smoking? Why?

  ‘Non.’ Solène shook her head. ‘My boyfriend and I are just having a party. At our apartment, you must come. Here, I write the address.’ She held her cigarette in her lips and scribbled an address on the back of my hand with a marker pen produced by one of her minions. With my free hand, I took another unwelcome drag on my cigarette. Seriously, it was disgusting, how did people do this for fun? I spluttered a little and tried to smile.

  ‘You give me your number,’ she commanded, holding out a pristine white hand. Her nails were super short, just like Alex’s. She must play guitar as well as sing, I thought with utter jealousy as I wrote my number out. I couldn’t do either, despite what I might think after five frozen margaritas at Sing Sing karaoke on Avenue A.

  ‘We begin at eight, please come.’ She took a last drag on her cigarette, stamped it out and gave me two elaborate air kisses before turning on her chunky heel and leaving. ‘Au revoir, Angela!’

  ‘Angela?’ Virginie appeared beside me, concern in her bright brown eyes. ‘You were talking to that girl?’

  ‘I was,’ I said, holding my cigarette behind my back. ‘It’s fine, but I think I should find Alex. And I think you should get home. You’ve been amazing today.’

  ‘D’accord.’ She gave me two quick kisses and hugged me tightly. ‘Today was so much fun. I meet you in the hotel at ten tomorrow?’

  ‘Ten.’ I smiled tightly. I did not feel well.

  I watched Virginie skip off down the road towards the Métro and leaned back against the cool wall of the bar. Staring at the half burned-out cigarette, I thought about Alex and Solène. So they’d dated. Did that mean she was La French Bitch? It hadn’t sounded like it had been a serious relationship. Plus she said she was living in New York when they’d dated. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, better the devil you know, after all. Either Alex had dated a super hot French singer ages and ages ago, who now had a new boyfriend and had invited us to her party as a couple, or he’d dated a super hot French singer and at least one other French girl whose level of hotness was a completely unknown quantity. Hmm.

  ‘Angela, are you smoking?’

  ‘Shit.’ The cigarette had burned down to my fingers. That would teach me not to pay attention.

  ‘Angela?’ Alex put his guitar case down on the pavement and took the burned-out, butt from my fingers. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes?’ I said, but even I didn’t believe it.

  ‘Come here.’ He pulled me towards him, his brown plaid shirt all sweaty and hot from the gig. Performing always put him in the mood and to be honest, watching him wasn’t terrible foreplay.

  ‘No, don’t.’ I tried to push him away, but he’d caught me off balance and I fell against his damp chest. ‘I’m disgusting. Again.’

  ‘I don’t mind that you taste like an ashtray,’ he said, holding my wrists tightly. ‘In fact, I kind of like it.’

  ‘But I’m going to be sick,’ I said quickly, the words not quite making it out before I spun around and vommed all over the street.

  ‘And you didn’t want to kiss me because I’d been smoking,’ Alex said, picking up his guitar in one hand and scooping me up with the other. I clamped my hand tightly over my mouth and let him half drag, half carry me across the road and into the hotel lobby. ‘I don’t think anyone saw.’

  I nodded. Wanting to say thank you, wanting to tell him I loved him, wanting to ask him about Solène, but I really, really couldn’t take my hand away from my mouth.

  ‘Wait here a second,’ he said, carefully resting me against one of the chairs in the lobby and running back out through the door. I watched him go with my hand still firmly attached to my mouth. I looked around the lobby. It was awfully well lit. A soft coughing noise turned my attention to the reception desk. A tall, crisp shirt-wearing hotel worker stared at me. His disgust wasn’t even thinly veiled. I took one hand off my mouth and gave him a thin wave. By my reckoning, Alex had about three seconds to get back before I was thrown out or I threw up. Again.

  ‘Madame?’ the man on the desk started.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Alex ran back into the lobby and helped me to my feet. ‘It’s OK, she’s a guest here. She has food poisoning.’

  ‘Yes. Food poisoning from French food. And it’s Mademoiselle,’ I yelled back through my hand. ‘Mademoiselle!’

  ‘You are such a freaking lightweight,’ Alex said, picking me up and tossing me over his shoulder. A really bad idea given that I was about to puke again at any second. ‘I can’t take you anywhere.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I sighed, trying not to be sick on him. I lifted up my head to watch the concierge, night porter and other assorted staff pop their heads out of the door to follow our progress to our room before my eyes began to flutter involuntarily. ‘And it’s not the booze, it’s the fags.’

  ‘You are all class, lady,’ Alex said, somewhere above me. ‘You’re not gonna pass out, are you? Angela? You still with me?’

  ‘Nuh-uh,’ I mumbled, desperately trying to keep my eyes open.

  ‘Because I will be pissed if you don’t at least give me time to return your anti-smoking lecture,’ he said, stopping and rummaging in a pocket for room keys. ‘And it would be better if you didn’t choke on your vomit.’

  Which were the last romantic words I heard before I passed out.

  Asking Alex about his relationship with Solène at four a.m. the next morning while he was holding my hair out of the way so I could vom, might not have been the best idea I’d ever had, but to be fair, I was hardly in the right state of mind to be making my best decisions. Almost as soon as my eyes were open, I had to clamber over Alex and run into the bathroom. Dutifully, he followed, combing my hair out of my face and running cold water on a flannel to cool
me down. I chose to take his loveliness as an admission of guilt for plying me with that cheap sangria in the first place, although I wasn’t nearly as drunk as I should be to get so ill. Stupid jet lag. Stupid cigarettes. Stupid me. Throwing up sober was horrifying. And so it was with my forehead leaning against the cool steel of the radiator, knees tucked under my chin that I asked Alex the big question.

  ‘So, Solène. She was the French girlfriend?’

  Alex looked up from his spot resting against the sink.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, staring straight at me.

  Hmm. ‘And you weren’t going to tell me?’

  ‘Kinda want to know who did tell you,’ he said, unfolding his long legs and standing up. I felt tiny, all crumpled up by the toilet while he stretched in the doorway.

  ‘You’ll be pleased to know I worked it out all by myself.’ I pulled myself up, using the radiator for leverage and trying not to fall down the toilet. Graceful has never been a word anyone has used to describe me. Rinsing my mouth out with water, mouthwash and then water again, I went in for the kill. ‘And then I spoke to her tonight—’

  ‘You spoke to her?’ He cut me off verbally and physically, suddenly stopping and blocking my exit from the bathroom. ‘Why did you speak to her?’

  ‘Mainly because she was practically dry humping you onstage and, quite clearly, I had too much to drink tonight,’ I half yelled, pushing past him. ‘You don’t have to freak out, she didn’t sound half as bothered about the whole thing as you were anyway. I just wanted to know.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to keep it from you.’ Alex stood still in the doorway. ‘I didn’t know she was going to be here and like I told you, it was for ever ago. There’s nothing to say.’ The low bathroom light silhouetted his slender frame and broad shoulders. Why was even lighting against me?

  ‘Whatever,’ I said, turning to the wall. I was determined not to let my hormones betray me.

  ‘Honestly, Angie, it’s not like there are any feelings there, I just don’t want my ex in my face.’

  I felt the mattress give slightly with his weight and held my breath, waiting for him to touch me. But he didn’t.

  ‘I mean, would you want to hang out with your ex if he was in town?’

  I breathed out. There wasn’t a single thing I could think of in the whole world that would be worse than me, Alex and Mark hanging out together.

  ‘Anyway would I want to spend a single second with her, when I could be with you?’

  Begrudgingly, I rolled over to find that Alex really had assumed this argument was going to go his way. He was completely naked.

  ‘Are you hot or something?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘Pretty sure it was my suitcase that got blown up, not yours.’

  ‘Shut up,’ he said, sliding his body over mine.

  ‘Alex, I just threw up.’

  ‘And now you’re all minty and sweaty.’

  ‘Sweaty?’

  ‘Good sweaty.’

  I highly doubted that. I knew what good sweaty was. Good sweaty was how he smelled after playing football in the park with his friends while I read on the grass, how he smelled when he came straight offstage from doing a show at the Music Hall and dragged me the three blocks to his apartment. Good sweaty was not me right at that moment. But I was oh so close to not caring.

  I raised my arms above my head, helping him slip my T-shirt up and over, leaving us with nothing except sticky skin on sticky skin. Alex’s kisses were always insistent, but tonight they felt deeper than ever, I knew he thought he had something to prove. It felt as if he was trying to tell me something important that there wasn’t a word for. His hands moved over my body while we kissed, sending my senses into overdrive, I just couldn’t keep up. And I didn’t want to even try. After a while his kisses followed his hands, down my neck, my arms, my stomach, marking every inch of me.

  I grabbed a handful of his thick, black hair and tried to pull him back up towards me, but he pulled away, disentangling my fingers and kissing them and running his tongue in between each finger, teasing, before getting back to the job at hand. My stomach jumped with every touch until I really couldn’t bear it a second longer. I reached out for his hair again and found my hand resting against his cheek. I opened my eyes to see his long fringe swaying in front of his bright eyes, his pupils wide and dark.

  ‘You OK?’ he whispered, his head resting briefly against mine, his hair in my eyes, our mouths almost touching, but not quite. Between the, butterflies in my stomach, short, irregular breaths and the electric feeling on my lips, I really wasn’t.

  ‘I want you,’ I managed to stutter in between ragged gasps. He smiled and combed a sweaty strand of hair out of my eyes.

  It was always amazing with Alex, but I was ashamed to realize I’d got too used to tearing our clothes off and going at it like savages. We hardly ever indulged in each other like this. It was almost too good and I didn’t know how long I could last. He didn’t say anything, just held himself above me for another moment, the buzzing in my lips building until I couldn’t hold it any more and pushed my face up to his, taking him in, tasting the sweet saltiness as sweat ran down our faces and into our kisses. My hands tangled themselves in his damp hair, before my nails scratched all the way down the length of his strong back, his lean, muscled arms, and slipped around to press against the hair on his broad chest that turned into the narrow black trail running down his tight stomach. My legs instinctively rode up and wrapped themselves around his narrow hips. Before I could lose my mind completely, he broke the frenzy and pulled away. It took a moment before I realized I was panting, my mouth open, my face scratched from his early-morning stubble.

  ‘I want you too,’ he said quietly. ‘I will always want you. I love you.’

  I stared at him hard, the, butterflies in my stomach turning into fireworks and the tingle from my lips spreading all over every inch of exposed skin. Nodding, I leaned up to kiss him again. It started gently, but it didn’t stay that way. His words echoing in my ears, his mouth hard against mine, hands locked together above my head and our bodies synched. Everything else began to melt and he was the only thing in the world, in existence, until suddenly, there wasn’t a him and a me any more. It was us, just us, and everything else slipped away entirely.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Reception seemed to take an uncommon amount of pleasure in ringing with my wake-up call ten minutes earlier than it was booked for the following morning, and it took me a whole three messy minutes to remember why that might be. Alex was already gone, off for an early morning radio show thing with the band, but that didn’t make heaving myself out of bed any easier.

  Standing under the shower, waiting to feel human again, I went over everything I had to get sorted out in my head. First things first, I had to talk to Jenny. It was only nine-thirty here, half past twelve there. Probably not the best time to try and catch her for a heart to heart. She hadn’t tried to call or email since Tuesday night and with all the Solène nonsense going on, I just hadn’t really thought about it too much. Which was, admittedly, pretty shitty of me. But I could only deal with one problem at a time, I’d proven that before.

  After I’d spoken to Jenny, I needed to sort out this article. I’d convinced myself so completely that I was utterly capable of completing this assignment, the idea of that not being the case was a bit of a shock. Yesterday had been fun and I’d got the names of a couple of cool shops, well, I thought they were cool, but they weren’t exactly super secret hipster vintage treasure troves. As sick and wrong as it was, I was really hoping that Cici would come through for me. Virginie was a teeny tiny Parisian angel, but Belle hadn’t exactly helped me out by hooking me up with their least fashion inclined employee. I rang reception to see if there had been any calls, faxes or emails for me from Cici, but there was nothing. And she wasn’t answering her cell. I was buggered.

  Once all the research for the article was done and dusted (wishful thinking never hurt anyone) I needed to sort out the Alex s
ituation. Given last night’s activities, I was pretty certain things were at the very least OK, but I had completely forgotten to mention the fact that I’d told Solène we’d go to her party. And I had a not-so-funny feeling that he wasn’t really going to be up for it.

  And even worse, I knew it was tragic to admit it even to myself, but being without all my pretty things was still really playing on my mind. I’d forget for a moment and then a vision of my gorgeous gold Louboutins would shoot up and across my mind and it would be like a slap. And they would literally shoot up. In my fantasies, the airport security people had actually gone through the case and blown up each item of beauty individually. Sob. It had taken me a year to get comfortable with myself, with my new life, and it felt as if someone was testing me, taking it away bit by bit. Starting with my accessories. What a bitch.

  I waited for Virginie in reception for fifteen minutes before I started to get worried. I’d parked myself in as dark a corner as I could find, dark sunglasses, black T-shirt, black jeans, hair in a ponytail, and had to wonder if I had been too successful in my plan to remain completely anonymous. It was the staff on reception that I wanted to hide from, not Virginie. Another ten minutes later, my phone trilled quietly inside my one-and-only Marc Jacobs bag.

  ‘Angela, I am so sorry,’ Virginie blustered down the line, not even waiting for me to say hello. ‘I come to your hotel now. I had to go to the Belle office and collect the fax from Cici.’

  ‘She sent a fax to the office?’ I asked, confused, but relieved. Who would have believed it? Cici had come through, she just wasn’t going to make it easy, obviously. How was I supposed to know she’d sent the fax to the office?

  ‘Oui, I have it with me now. We will get coffee and read together?’ Virginie asked.

  ‘Coffee sounds amazing. How long will it take you to get here?’ I was now dying for coffee. Possibly actually dying, my head throbbed and my mouth tasted like paint stripper. Not that I’d ever tasted paint stripper, but I felt I was making an educated guess.