would be beautiful if it weren’t such a shit-tip. There were takeout boxes everywhere, piles of magazines doubling as coffee tables and half-full, half-empty glasses resting on every surface. We were animals.
The answerphone flashed two messages which I purposely ignored; instead I went to wash my poor feet. The only people on earth who called the landline were my mother, because she was scared Skype was going to steal her soul, and telemarketers, because they had no soul to begin with. I was in the mood for neither.
Feet de-hobbited, I looked around the living room. The place really was a mess. When all I’d had to do in this world was write a blog, there had been hours upon hours to spend horizontal on the sofa, occasionally cleaning and watching the world go by. I’d spent days wandering through the city, dreaming about my next adventure, lost countless weekends on the Lower East Side with Jenny and our friend, Erin, and one too many cocktails. Now, with a few sacred spare hours, I was trying to shake the obligation to do the dishes while Erin sat at home with swollen ankles and Jenny, who had been dumped twice by the love of her life, was going off the rails faster than an underage X Factor contestant. I stared out of the window in the general direction of her apartment, wondering if she’d made it into the office. The Empire State Building winked back at me in the sunlight. It was such a tease.
A loud yawn emanating from the bedroom made me jump. Alex was home. I turned the AC all the way up and turned my back on the dishes. It was hot already, too hot for late spring, and all I wanted to do was hop into bed beside Alex and snuggle up under a blanket, but it was hard to snuggle under a blanket when you were sweating like a horse. Opening the bedroom door slowly and quietly, I smiled at the sight of my comatose boyfriend sprawled flat on his back, right across the bed. His dark hair slipped off his forehead as he stirred and his pale skin looked practically translucent from his self-enforced seclusion. The T-shirt he had passed out in had twisted up around his body, and his legs were caught up in our crisp white sheets. It was adorable. And hot. The good kind of hot.
Part of me really didn’t want to wake him. He looked so peaceful, and it was nice just to take two minutes out to stare at him without making him feel uncomfortable or making me feel like a pervert. Unfortunately, I was a clumsy cow who could only take off a pencil skirt by twisting the fastening round to the front, and sometimes, when that pencil skirt is stuck to your skin, twisting it round to the front is harder than you’d think. After wrestling with the hook and eye for too many seconds, I yanked it as hard as I could and triumphantly knocked myself right into the nightstand. My lotions and potions scattered and rolled around the room, crashing and clattering as they went. I froze, clutching the table and waiting for my pot of Crème de la Mer, a Christmas gift from Erin, to come to a silent standstill by the wardrobe.
‘Morning, Angela,’ Alex muttered without moving.
This was the problem with wearing lady clothes, as I had discovered. Taking them on and off again was hazardous to my health.
The bed was cool and the sheets were soft as I crawled in beside Alex. For a skinny boy, he was a great cuddle buddy. Broad shoulders and strong arms opened up and wrapped me up inside them as I sank into the bed.
‘Hey.’ He pressed his lips against my hair and yawned again. ‘You’re in bed.’
‘I took the afternoon off,’ I replied, pressing backwards against him, shivering with a happy. ‘Thought it might be nice to see your face.’
‘My face likes your face,’ he whispered. ‘Wait, it’s the afternoon?’
Bless his sleepy, confused heart.
‘You didn’t come to bed until five a.m.,’ I pointed out. ‘So I suppose technically it’s still the middle of the night to you.’
‘You had a meeting today,’ he murmured, reaching for my hand and entwining his fingers through mine. ‘How’d it go?’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ I admitted. One of the terms of our engagement was full disclosure at all times, which I had a feeling Alex was starting to regret. ‘Delia says it will be OK, though. How’s the record going?’
Alex fumbled for an iPod resting on the nightstand on his side of the bed and pressed it into my hand. ‘Done.’
I rolled over quickly and kissed him square on the lips. ‘That’s amazing!’ I said, kissing him again. Because I could. ‘You’re really all finished?’
‘You know I wouldn’t let you listen to it if I wasn’t,’ he replied. ‘I’m done.’
‘Well done you.’ I pushed my far-too-long-and-desperately-in-need-of-a-trim hair out of my eyes to get a better look at him. So pretty. ‘I’ve missed you. What happens now?’
‘Now I sleep,’ he said, planting a kiss on the tip of my nose. ‘For a really long time.’
‘Sounds fair.’ I helped myself to one more kiss. Delicious. ‘And what happens after that?’
I really hoped he wasn’t going to say touring, because I was very concerned I would be forced to tie him to the bed and never let him leave. No one brought out my inner crazy like that man.
‘I was thinking …’ His bright green eyes flickered open and the lazy smile I’d heard in his words found its way to his lips. I was such a smitten kitten. ‘I might marry my girl.’
I pressed my forehead against his, completely incapable of keeping the biggest, brightest smile ever from my face. ‘Well, that sounds nice,’ I said. ‘Do you have any sort of plan for that?’
Alex kicked the covers away to wrap his bare legs around mine and drew me closer. ‘I have been putting a lot of thought into the honeymoon,’ he said, rolling over until his warm body covered mine. This was the kind of hot and sweaty I was perfectly OK with. ‘There’s some stuff I kinda need to test out.’
It had been so long since we had used our bed for anything other than sleeping, snacking and the occasional True Blood marathon that I felt a mild panic come over me. I couldn’t actually remember the last time we’d both been conscious and coital. I was so nervous, it was like the first time all over again. I was holding my breath and second-guessing my touches, but as I gave myself over to the melting feeling in my chest and the tingling in my lips, I forgot that it was daylight outside, I forgot that my underwear didn’t match, and suddenly, without even trying, it was like the first time all over again.
Amazing.
CHAPTER TWO
I was half awake and completely naked when I heard my phone buzzing in my bag from the living room a couple of hours later. Alex had slipped back into unconsciousness − I chose to believe that my supreme sexual prowess had knocked him out − and so, nosy old mare that I am, I rolled out of bed and into my pants, grabbed my phone and crawled into the kitchen to avoid flashing the neighbours.
Naturally the phone stopped ringing as soon as it was in my sweaty paws, but straightaway I saw a terrifying number of messages and missed calls from Louisa, my oldest, dearest friend in the UK. I swiped my phone screen to open them, refusing to entertain all the horrible thoughts that were running through my head. Of course someone had died while I was at home blowing out work for an afternoon quickie; what else could possibly have happened? Louisa’s texts didn’t really give me a lot of information, just repeated the demand that I call her as soon as I could, and that only worried me more. Louisa and I Skyped once a week as well as texted as often as her baby schedule
