your room.’
‘Oh, I sort of meant, maybe not tonight.’ I was so red, I was practically glowing. ‘To be honest, I’ve had a headache all day. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. If you’re not well …’ he trailed off, looking around the room, tapping his fingers on the table.
‘Do you want to do something later in the week?’ I blurted out. God, what was wrong with me? I was going to end up married to him out of politeness if I wasn’t careful. ‘I could cook dinner, Friday night?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ he nodded, still not looking at me. ‘Sounds great.’
We headed out on to the street in an awkward silence, luckily flagging a cab down right away. I tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing there at all.
‘Great restaurant,’ I tried. Tragic.
‘Yeah, it’s always good.’
‘Great.’
‘Yeah.’
Clearly this wasn’t going to be made easy. I tried placing my hand on his knee and giving him a sweet smile, but he just covered it with his own without looking at me. I stared out of my window, racking my brain for something to say that wouldn’t end in me asking him up for a coffee. Before I’d had time to muster up another pathetic attempt at conversation, we were cornering onto Lexington Avenue and pulling up outside my flat.
‘Friday, then?’ I asked, as he let me out. Pissed off he might be, but Tyler was always the gentleman.
‘Yeah,’ he said, softening slightly for a goodnight kiss. ‘You take care of yourself. No headaches allowed on the weekends.’
I smiled and waved him off, before opening my bag, taking out my phone and calling Alex. It felt slightly shitty waving one man off and then calling another, but I couldn’t help it.
‘Hi, Alex?’ I tried to sound casual when he picked up on the third ring. ‘It’s Angela.’
‘Hey,’ he yawned. Yawning at ten p.m.? Not very rock and roll. ‘Sorry I missed your calls, I’ve been in the studio the whole time since you left. I’m so fucking tired.’
‘The studio?’ I asked. Another fabulous question from the world’s greatest conversationalist.
‘Yeah, I wanted to demo some of those new songs,’ he said. ‘I just completely lost track of time, and, well, what day it was. Where are you?’
‘I’ve just been at dinner with a friend,’ I said, leaning against the wall. The evening was still pleasantly warm, but Alex’s sleepy voice was giving me goose bumps. ‘So, what about tomorrow?’
‘Yeah, I’m not doing anything.’ I could hear music on low in the background. It sounded like Alex singing. ‘I could give you the tour of Williamsburg if you’re free?’ he suggested.
‘Sounds good.’ I smiled to a passing stranger who looked at me oddly. ‘Where should I meet you?’
‘Uh, at the Bedford Avenue station? About eleven?’ he yawned again. He really was too cute.
‘I’ll see you there.’ I yawned a little myself. It was even contagious on the phone. ‘Hope you sleep well.’
‘I will, I’ll be saving my energy for tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Sleep tight.’
I smiled as I hung up, date with Tyler forgotten, date with Alex buzzing around my mind.
It was still so early, I’d beaten Jenny home from work. I grabbed my laptop and lay on the sofa, thinking about what to write. If I stored a blog entry now, I could just email it from Alex’s without interrupting our day tomorrow. I quickly bashed out the details of my date with Tyler and made some vague references to my day out in Brooklyn with Alex, Balthazar or Brooklyn? before logging off and dozing on the sofa. Mary had said her readers would go crazy for a Wall Street type, so after all, I was just giving the people what they wanted.
The thirty-minute journey to Brooklyn felt like an eternity. What if Alex hadn’t rushed to call because it wasn’t as incredible for him as it had been for me? After all, he wasn’t the one who had tripled the number of people he had ever slept with inside the last fortnight. Just before the train stopped, I pulled my compact out of my handbag, quickly swiped at my shiny nose with powder and ran my fingers through my hair. Thank God it was supposed to look messy.
I skipped up the steps of the subway station, pulling Jenny’s sunglasses down off my head and over my eyes, searching for Alex. Despite the oddly high numbers of hipster types littering the streets at a time they really ought to be at work, I spotted him almost immediately. He was leaning against a lamppost, arms folded, bobbing his head gently to whatever was on his iPod. His black hair shone almost blue in the sun, and his daily uniform of jeans and T-shirt clung to him like a second skin. I lifted up my sunglasses and watched him, bleached out by the sun for a moment. The whole scene was almost too perfect to disturb.
‘Hey,’ Alex shaded his eyes with his hands, when I finally burst the bubble and went over. ‘I didn’t see you sneaking up on me.’
‘Well, that’s the point in sneaking up on you,’ I smiled, kissing him hello. Hopefully, there would be lots more kissing. ‘You OK?’
‘Yeah, a little tired, but really good,’ he took my hand and we started down the street, passing cute little boutiques, dark vintage clothes emporiums and poky record shop after poky record shop after poky record shop. ‘You want to get something to eat?’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ I said. For the first time in the last couple of days, nothing felt complicated. I was in the sunshine, I was holding hands with a beautiful boy and I was happy. Yay!
We ducked into a tiny diner for coffee and bagels while Alex gave me a brief history lesson on his neighbourhood. Williamsburg had been home to hundreds of artists and musicians, he told me, generally all kinds of creative types that had been driven out of Manhattan due to the crazy spiralling rents. It had been his home for almost ten years, and he loved it. He loved going to bars where he knew everyone, he loved feeling like he had a neighbourhood, and he loved that in less than fifteen minutes, he could lose himself in the city. Unfortunately, he hated the fact that property prices were starting to go crazy around him, that the musicians and artists were being replaced by rich hipsters with nothing to do but buy up real estate and make it harder for people to live there. And most of all, he hated that a lot of his friends had started moving away again, either further into Brooklyn or back to Manhattan.
As the sun slipped over the Manhattan skyline, we stopped in a dark little bar back on Bedford Avenue. The walls were lined with tankards and beer mugs, the dim lighting was only boosted by a TV screen showing sport, and someone, somewhere was cooking chips. It felt scarily like a real pub.
‘Beer?’ Alex asked as I slid into a chair. Wandering around, blissfully happy, was exhausting. Sitting in a chair, staring at Alex’s rear bent over the bar in his sexy low-slung jeans, was much easier. He returned with two pints, actual pints, while I tried to pretend I hadn’t been totally ogling him. ‘So, you like it here?’
‘I
