But now wasn’t the time to worry about that, I told myself as I lowered my arse onto the couch, trying to fan my dark blonde hair out around my head and position myself so as to avoid any and all exposure of cellulite. Which was basically impossible. The clock on the DVD player flashed nine p.m. Alex’s flight was due into JFK at seven-twenty. He would be walking through the door any second. I yawned and tried not to fall off the sofa. It had been a long hard day of procrastination. Any second now he’d be home. Any second …
‘Dude, hit lights?’
Keys jangled in the door. I rubbed my eyes, leaving big black smudges on my fists. Keys? Burglars? Burglars with keys? I noticed the champagne bobbing around in a bucket full of water. What time was it? And why was I semi-naked?
‘Where do you want this?’ The voice again, this time definitely inside the front door. With very little time to make a decision, I decided to stay on the couch and hide. I really wasn’t dressed for vigilantism. Batman hardly ever wore heels, after all.
‘Uh, just drop it anywhere. Angela?’
Angela? That was me! And that voice belonged to Alex! It wasn’t burglars, it was …
‘Woah, dude!’
The living-room lights flickered into life, revealing me on the couch in all my sultry glory. If looking like a very confused, cut-price hooker with messed up eye make-up and a little bit of drool on her pillow was in fact sultry. Judging by the expressions on Alex, Graham and Craig’s faces, it wasn’t. Of course he’d come home with his band mates. And a four-way with my boyfriend, his gay drummer and super slutty guitarist, who I was almost certain must have at least one STD at any given time, really wasn’t in my plans for the evening.
‘Oh, Angela.’ Graham, gay as the wind, turned away immediately. Craig, straight as a die, grinned from ear to ear. ‘Nice rack.’
‘Craig!’ I couldn’t even look at the giggling guitarist. ‘If you want to keep your balls, just stop bloody laughing.’
I pushed myself up, performing a very clumsy fan dance using the sofa cushions before tripping over my own shoes and landing in a graceless pile at the foot of the Christmas tree.
‘Alex?’ I called, face in the floor.
‘Angela?’ he replied. I could tell he was trying not to laugh. Twat.
‘Could you turn the lights out, please?’
‘Absolutely.’
The living-room lights dimmed, and somewhere inside my shame I heard him herding the others out of the apartment. Much to Craig’s dismay. A healthy combination of humiliation and the throbbing pain in my knee kept me face down on the hardwood floor while I waited for the click of the lock. At least my Christmas tree smelled nice. That was something.
‘Hey.’
I opened my eyes to see a pair of knackered Converse by my side, followed by a pair of bright green eyes covered by a floppy black fringe that was considerably longer than the last time I had seen it.
‘Hi.’
‘Nice outfit.’
‘Thanks.’
‘The flight was delayed,’ he explained. ‘I thought you’d be asleep.’
‘Well, I was …’
Lying side by side on the cold floor wasn’t quite how I’d envisaged this welcome working out. Well, sometimes it was, but mostly I’d hoped we’d make it to the bedroom. Or at least stick to the sofa. Alex reached out a hand and wiped away some of my smudged mascara.
‘I missed you,’ he said.
‘I missed you too.’ I really was going to need to ice my knee. ‘Probably should have stuck with the beer-and-pizza welcome-back, shouldn’t I?’
Alex hopped up and reached down to grab my hand. Wobbling to my feet, I let him wrap my arms around his neck before draping his own around my waist, hands resting on my hips. Staring up at him, I couldn’t quite catch my breath. Even after dating him for more than a year, even after living with him for the last few months, it never failed to delight me just how bloody hot Alex Reid actually was. His hair was messy, his bright eyes a little bloodshot from his long flight, but he was still so beautiful. High cheekbones, full lips, pale skin. I wanted to lick him. Sometimes in public. But I didn’t. Mostly. And he was mine.
He leaned forward and rested those lips gently against mine and I felt a shiver all over my body that had nothing to do with standing around in my pants. Well, maybe it was tangentially related, but it didn’t have anything to do with being cold.
‘Now, you know I love pizza,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘But it can wait until tomorrow. I really, really missed you.’
Wrapping me up in another kiss, we staggered towards the bedroom door, Alex shedding clothing as we went, me trying not to let my knee give out. So the evening hadn’t gone quite according to plan, but as long as I was getting the result I was after, who was I to complain?
A few hours later, I was rudely awoken by a throbbing pain in my left kneecap. I bent my leg slowly, wincing through the pain but too tired to get up and take painkillers. When I wasn’t in agony, this was my favourite way to be: not quite awake, not quite asleep, watching Alex dream away on his pillow. It was like watching an extremely attractive puppy take a nap. He stirred in his sleep, turning towards me, hair post-coitally mussed up, and his foot brushed against my bare leg while he made tiny sleeping noises. I’d got so used to having the bed to myself, the thrill of waking to find Alex beside me wouldn’t let me go back to sleep. Instead, I lay and looked at him, fighting the urge to wake him up just so I could see him smile.
These few months had been amazing. At first, the idea of moving in with him terrified me. I’d lived with someone before and that had not gone well, but touch wood, I’d been here for a while now and we were still in a good place: Alex was still putting the toilet seat down and I was still shaving my legs every day. Domestic bliss. I snuggled up against him and sighed happily when he draped a hand over my hip, his warm legs curling up under mine, his bare chest pressed against my back. This was how it was supposed to be. This was how it would be. For ever.
Alex Reid was a heavy sleeper at the best of times, but adding jet lag into the mix? He was going to be out for at least twelve hours. Which gave me almost enough time to clean the apartment. Obviously, my charms had kept him distracted the night before, but in the cold (below freezing, in fact) light of day, I saw my hovel through new eyes. It was amazing what sort of a sty you were prepared to live in when it was just you. When Alex did finally surface, I wanted him to be happy about coming home, not trip up over the pair of tights I’d taken off on the sofa three nights before during a mega Harry Potter movie marathon that ended when I passed out on the sofa at two a.m., too tired to crawl to bed.
I managed to clean the bathroom, sweep the living room and scrub the kitchen before I accepted I was going to have to brave the frigid outdoors. My constant need to have the heating on full blast all of the time meant that leaving bin bags full of rubbish in the apartment was not a possibility. The word ‘fester’ had been bandied about once before, and there was very little a bottle of Febreze could do when you had four-day-old sushi going manky in the corner.
Wrapping Alex’s giant Brooklyn Industries parka over my shorts, T-shirt and ancient cardigan Uggs, I shuffled out of the door and down the hallway with two giant bin bags, trying not to breathe in as I went. Fucking hell it was chilly. I cracked open the front door, chucked the rubbish as close as I could to the kerb without hitting the great big man walking his teeny dog and slammed it shut on the frosty clouds that had been my huffs and puffs.