Gucci picnic blanket. ‘Please, Angie, won’t you just think about it?’
‘Jenny,’ I whispered.
‘Yes?’ she replied.
‘You’re awfully close to the edge of the water.’
‘Oh shit!’
Jenny looked over her shoulder, losing her balance as she twisted. All at once, I grabbed for her hand as she grabbed the fishing pole stuck in the grass at the side of my seat, only for the line to suddenly come to life and pull her flat down on her face. Jenny had a bite. She landed flat on her stomach, her face inches away from the water as I launched myself out of my chair, rugby-tackling her around the waist and anchoring my friend to dry land.
‘Let go of the fishing rod!’ I yelled as whatever was on the other end of the fishing line splashed furiously in the water.
‘Don’t let go of me!’ Jenny screamed, thrashing around as though she was about to dredge up Moby-Dick. ‘It’s pulling me into the river!’
‘It’s not Jaws,’ I shouted back, hoping that was true. I was scared, excited and still very hungry but even I didn’t think I could eat an entire shark. ‘Let go!’
‘Here’s your drin— oh, crap!’
But Jenny did not let go. And the waitress, delivering my fresh cocktail, did not see us sprawled out on the riverbank. I glanced upwards just in time to see the look of shock on her face as she tripped over Jenny’s wildly kicking legs. She was not dressed for speedy reactions, her reflexes severely hampered by her heavy silk kimono and traditional wooden sandals, and before anyone could do anything she went flying. The cocktails went first, sailing over our heads and into the river. With one arm still wrapped around Jenny’s waist, I threw the other up in the air, trying to catch her as she fell, but it was too late, she was already as good as gone. A swoosh of silk, a desperate cry and, finally, a very, very loud splash.
‘Get off me!’ she shrieked as Jenny and I attempted to pull her back onto the island. The river was only about knee-deep but that hadn’t stopped her getting soaking wet from head to toe.
Across the way, Roberto the Rower and the man who had shown us down the dark, dark tunnel jumped into one of the row boats, manically trying to reach the waterlogged waitress.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked as she crawled out of the water. Jenny picked up one side of her sodden kimono and tried to wring it out with a helpful smile. The waitress waved her away, Jenny ducking just in time to avoid a damp slap.
‘No, I’m not all right,’ she yelled. ‘Look at me. What the fuck were you doing on the floor?’
‘What is happening?’ The host from the front door stormed up the path, straightening his tie as he blustered onto the scene, Roberto and his gold trunks bringing up the rear.
‘We really don’t want to make a big deal about this,’ Jenny said, clearing her throat and dusting herself off as she stood up. ‘So we’ll take a round of free drinks and everything’s cool.’
The host fixed her with a steely glare the likes of which I hadn’t seen since my mother caught me sneaking in through the living room window at three a.m. after I lost my keys at Peter Jensen’s seventeenth birthday party.
‘The sanctity of the forest has been disturbed,’ he said calmly as the waitress hurled herself against Roberto’s naked chest. Out of everyone, he didn’t seem too mad about it. ‘You need to leave.’
‘You’re kicking us out?’ I replied, indignant and, more importantly, still starving. ‘You’re serving booze and charging people hundreds of dollars to play hook-a-duck in the arse end of Brooklyn and you didn’t expect anyone to fall in, ever?’
‘Angela Clark, you savage,’ Jenny breathed in my ear before turning to the waitress with a sympathetic smile. ‘We’re really super sorry.’
‘I’m not even a waitress,’ she wailed. ‘I’m an actress, this isn’t what I do. I have six thousand followers on Instagram.’
Jenny looked over her shoulder at me, impressed.
‘Wanna come to Hawaii?’ she asked as the waitress turned out her pocket and dropped a tiny goldfish back into the river.
‘Just get out before I call the cops,’ the host ordered. ‘Roberto, take them out the back.’
‘Your loss, lady.’ Jenny threw her hands up over her head and turned on her gorgeous red patent heel as we were escorted off the premises. ‘For real, I can’t give this trip away.’
‘Come on,’ I muttered, considerably less keen to make eye contact with the other diners than I had been when we arrived. Being marched through the kitchens and kicked out into a dustbin-filled alleyway was not how I’d envisioned my evening ending. ‘Dinosaur BBQ is around the corner. Let’s go and eat some proper food.’
‘OK but you owe me a hundred bucks,’ she said, curtseying at Roberto as he shrugged and then slammed the door in our faces.
‘I do?’
‘You bet me a hundred bucks that one of us would fall in the water by the end of the night,’ Jenny replied, impossibly pleased with herself. ‘And neither of us did.’
‘Hmm.’ I linked my arm through hers as we turned the corner back onto 3rd Avenue. ‘I suppose I do. Look at us, growing as people.’
She grinned and gave my arm a squeeze.
‘If you come to Hawaii, I’ll let you off?’
I couldn’t help but smile. ‘If I pay for dinner will you shut up about Hawaii?’
‘No, you’re totally coming, doll. The sooner you accept it, the better.’
At least she’d been right about one thing, I thought as we walked on, arm in arm towards a plateful of pulled pork. It had certainly been a night I’d never forget.
Light was already beginning to seep in around the curtains when someone decided to lean on their car horn right outside my bedroom window at six a.m. on Thursday morning. I hated to start my days feeling homicidal but this was the price I paid to live in New York; occasionally, people were thoughtless dicks. Presumably there were thoughtless dicks everywhere but the horn honking really seemed much more prevalent here than anywhere else I’d ever been. Whether I liked it or not, I was awake and I knew the intelligent thing to do would be to stay awake. Either Alice or my alarm would go off by seven anyway and the extra hour would be meaningless, I’d feel worse than if I got up now. But I wasn’t intelligent, I was exhausted. As I rolled over onto my side, pulling the duvet up under my chin, Alex curled around me, pressing himself into my back and giving me another bone to deal with.
‘Alex,’ I breathed into my pillow as he ran his hand under the covers, down my arm, my waist, my hip, tiptoeing his calloused fingertips across my leg and tracing circles on my thigh. ‘I’m tired.’
He didn’t say anything. Instead I felt his warm body moving against the curves of my back, his fingers
