I Heart Christmas (7 page)
‘What about both Hemsworths?’ he asked.
I paused for a moment.
‘Nope,’ I declared. ‘Not even both Hemsworths and a Gosling.’
‘Shit, that’s serious,’ James clucked. ‘You really should think before you say such things.’
‘I mean it,’ I said and I did. ‘Let’s be honest, I was never very good at dating. I’m perfectly happy to have retired early.’
‘Sounds nice,’ he said, contemplative for a second. ‘But yeah, there comes a time when enough’s enough. But what can a boy do when he’s ready for a change?’
‘Secretly pop over to New York without telling his friends,’ I suggested, ‘and audition for a part in a musical?’
‘Oh Clark, you’re not as green as you are cabbage-looking, are you?’ He smiled and gave my shoulder another squeeze. ‘You can be quite perceptive sometimes.’
I smiled. Upsettingly, it was the nicest thing anyone had said to me all day.
‘So what’s going on?’ I asked, smiling broadly at the bored-looking shop assistant who was in charge of shoving people on and off the ride. I wondered if anyone ever fell off. I wondered if anyone ever jumped off. It would be a hell of a way to go.
‘Nothing really.’ He peered over the edge of our car and tapped out a beat on the side of the carriage. I noticed the stubble on his cheeks, the dark shadows under his eyes. I’d assumed they were evidence of too much travelling and fun times but maybe not. ‘Just feeling a bit shit, a bit lonely. It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone around.’
‘And that’s what you want?’ I covered my mouth so as not to offend him with a mouthful of neon goo. ‘A boyfriend?’
‘I want something,’ James said, looking behind us. Buzz and Woody seemed to understand. ‘I want someone to text stupid things to, not just a picture of my knob and
my place at twelve?
I’m thinking about moving to New York permanently actually. LA feels a bit tired.’
‘Obviously I would love that.’ I decided to ignore the dick pic part of the debate. That was an issue for his agent, not me. ‘You really think the dating prospects are better here than in California?’
‘That’s what I hear,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘And it’s a better place to raise a family for me, I think.’
‘Everyone has gone baby mad.’ I dug my hands deep into the pockets of my coat and tried to remember if I’d taken my Pill that morning. ‘Is there something in the water?’
‘You too?’ James broke into a real smile. ‘That would be amazing. Imagine, our little babies growing up together, going to school together, beating each other up, having incredibly awkward sexual encounters and then crying about it all in therapy twenty years later. Amazing.’
‘Well, as special as that sounds …’ I couldn’t quite return his big grin but I mustered up the ghost of a smile so as not to let him down. ‘It’s not me just yet. Alex, maybe. Jenny, yes. My friend, Erin, just had her second.’
‘You’re not ready?’ he asked.
I fiddled with my engagement ring and shook my head.
‘I just pulled a half-empty, family-sized bag of Sour Patch Kids out of my handbag and that was supposed to be my lunch,’ I said. ‘No, I’m not ready. How am I supposed to take care of a baby? I am a baby.’
‘You know what they say, there’s never a right time,’ he said, taking another handful of sweets and throwing them into his mouth. ‘But I have just crossed you off my surrogate list.’
‘Thank you.’ I scooped up the rest of the sweets into my hand and folded the bag as small as possible to avoid filling the bottom of my satchel with sour sugar. Again. ‘It is appreciated.’
‘You say Jenny’s feeling broody?’ James did not extend the same mouth-covering courtesy to me that I had shown to him. Gross. ‘She seeing someone?’
‘Yes, she is, and sort of, but maybe not by now. She’s being ridiculous. It’s totally out of nowhere.’
‘Hmm.’ My favourite gay leaned forward, elbows on knees, swinging the carriage forward. I just managed not to squee with delight. ‘Biological clocks are pretty intense, Clark, and she’s a couple of years older than you, isn’t she?’
‘I know,’ I said, feeling a tiny bit guilty. ‘I’m not giving her a hard time, or at least I hope I’m not. I just don’t want her to rush into something this massive and then regret it. I don’t know if she really wants a baby or she just doesn’t want to be on her own. I don’t think dating Craig has really been the relationship of her dreams.’
‘Which one is Craig?’ he frowned.
‘The one in Alex’s band that you didn’t have sex with,’ I said. ‘I hope.’
‘I definitely only did the one in the glasses,’ he said, squinting with the effort of remembering. ‘But I think I remember him. He’s hot.’
‘He is,’ I acknowledged. ‘But I don’t think he’s particularly thinking about the future right now. He’s a straight, good-looking thirty-two-year-old musician in Brooklyn. That gives him the emotional maturity of a nineteen-year-old anywhere else in the world.’
‘Alex manages monogamy,’ James said, his foot tapping along to ‘Frosty the Snowman’ as he spoke. ‘Maybe you’re just being cynical.’
‘And I fully expect to wake up from my coma and find out Alex was all a dream any day now,’ I replied. ‘He is not the norm here, you know that. Dating is hard. I think that’s a bigger problem for Jenny than the baby thing. I just don’t think she wants to admit it.’
‘It’ll all come out in the wash,’ he said with a yawn. ‘You’ll get the truth out of her eventually. Probably when you’re hammered.’
‘You know me so well,’ I said, wincing at the thought of ever having to drink again. I could not hold my ale like I used to and that was saying something. ‘Why don’t you come over for dinner? I’ll call her, we’ll get her liquored up together?’
‘In Brooklyn?’
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, Clark,’ James replied with a friendly smile. ‘How many times? I Don’t Go There.’
You had to admire a man who had his principles.
‘Are you planning on getting out of bed at all today?’
I opened one eye and squinted up at an unusually perky-looking Alex Reid. Instead of hiding from any sort of natural light, which was how I found him almost every single morning, he was up, dressed and sat on the edge of the bed, holding a steaming cup of coffee. Weird.
‘No?’ I closed my eye and pulled a pillow over my head.
It was Saturday. A quick shuffle of my feet confirmed my body was entirely covered by the duvet and I didn’t need a wee. There was absolutely no good reason I could see as to why I should move at all.
‘It’s just that I kind of need you to get up so we can go check in on your Christmas present.’
I opened both eyes. I moved the pillow. I looked at my husband.
‘Give me fifteen minutes,’ I replied.
A little over an hour later, Alex and I emerged from the deepest, darkest depths of the G train, thirty minutes from home and in the middle of a neighbourhood I barely knew.
‘We’re in Park Slope?’ I asked as he took hold of my hand and squeezed it through my bright knitted mittens. ‘I should not be wearing shorts.’
‘It’s below freezing,’ Alex replied. ‘That’s why you shouldn’t be wearing shorts.’
‘What are we doing?’ I asked, looking left and right at quiet, orderly streets. ‘My Christmas present is in Park Slope?’
‘Your Christmas present is in Park Slope,’ Alex repeated, nodding his head and pointing with the hand that held mine. ‘This way.’
I was full of questions but Park Slope was a library of a neighbourhood, shushing me before I could speak. Alex and I didn’t hang out this south of Williamsburg often. Or ever actually. Brooklyn was a big borough, full of diversity and adventure, but for the most part, there were three different kinds of neighbourhoods. There was the trendy, hipster part where people rode their bikes everywhere and had ironic moustache tattoos on their fingers, there were the incredibly dodgy bits where I was too scared to get off the subway, and then there were the yummy mummy, super-swanky parts with lots of trees, lots of iPads and lots of odd shops that sold things like artisanal mayonnaise or handcrafted hats. And only two things united all three areas – a fierce love of Beyoncé and men with beards. Park Slope was the epitome of the third type of neighbourhood.
Everywhere I looked, there were attractive couples in their gym clothes pushing elaborate prams and drinking from reusable water bottles, well-groomed women walking expensive-looking dogs and coffee shop after coffee shop after coffee shop. I knew that somewhere nearby there was a huge, beautiful park where Alex’s band, Stills, had played at a festival the summer before and I’d been saying I was going to come back and visit for months on end but, like so many things I was ‘going to do’ in New York, I still hadn’t got around to it. But I did remember that Park Slope in the summer had been beautiful, all sunny skies and green trees, and if it was possible, today it was even more picturesque. The streets we strolled down were orderly and clean, punctuated with stately trees and lined by big brownstones, the kind of houses that made me want to put on my best shoes, sit on my stoop and flag down a yellow cab. Inside, I saw warmly lit trees and menorahs, and almost every other door had a beautiful red-ribboned wreath hanging outside. Even though we were half an hour away from Manhattan, this looked like the New York you saw in the movies and it made my heart sing.
‘You really have no idea where we’re going?’ Alex asked, sheepdogging me down another street, away from the coffee shops and past a church and a synagogue and another church. With its own coffee shop. ‘I can’t believe I’ve actually been able to keep a secret from you.’
‘I’ve been busy,’ I explained, looking up at the street signs and trying to work out what he was talking about. ‘Is it food?’
‘No, it’s not food,’ he sighed. ‘It’s better than food.’
‘Seriously, I got dressed before midday on a Saturday and you’re not even going to feed me?’ What was better than food? ‘Was that Anne Hathaway? She lives here.’
‘You got half dressed,’ he reminded me. His eyes were shining so brightly I couldn’t help but smile. ‘These are the things I worry about when I’m away on tour. And no, I don’t think it was Anne Hathaway.’
‘It might have been.’ I was trying not to be too grumpy but Alex (and anyone who had ever spent more than half a day with me) was well aware that I was difficult when I was hungry. ‘You don’t know.’
‘Yeah, I do know because it was a fourteen-year-old boy.’ He squeezed my hand and stopped short in the middle of the street. ‘We’re here.’
But we weren’t anywhere. We were stood in the middle of 9th Street, right between 8th and 9th Avenues, looking at nothing with no one in sight.
‘Alex?’ The front door to the brownstone in front of us opened and a tall, glossy woman with too much too blonde hair appeared, smiling at my husband.
‘Hey, Karen,’ Alex replied cheerfully, heading up the steps and pulling me along behind him. He pushed me in front of him to shake the woman’s outstretched hand. ‘This is Angela.’
‘Mrs Reid, so nice to meet you at last.’ Karen was older than me – I guessed at least somewhere in her mid-forties, although it was so hard to tell with well-heeled New York women. Either there was some Botox at play or it was a very impressive fake smile she was shining right at me. ‘Alex has told me so much about you.’
‘Um, it’s Angela, please.’ Flummoxed as I was, I’d be buggered if I was going to be called impolite. By a complete stranger. Who appeared to have some sort of close relationship with my husband that I knew nothing about. ‘And it’s Clark. Not Mrs Reid. I didn’t change my name. When we got married. Because of work and … you know.’
Karen’s eyes flitted over to Alex with mild concern. Apparently she did not know.
‘Right,’ she smiled again, although this time more like I was a puppy with three legs, and beckoned us inside. Alex gave me a gentle shove through the front door and a slap on the arse. It did not make up for how incredibly confused I was. ‘Shall we go inside?’
A thousand scenarios were running through my head but none of them seemed quite right. She was an artist and Alex was going to have our portrait painted. She was a chef and Alex had bought me (sorely needed and often referenced) cooking lessons. She was a very unfortunate prostitute and Alex thought it was time to spice things up in the bedroom. Oh God, that was it. She was some sort of sex teacher. We had drunkenly made a ‘no three-way’ sex vow before the wedding but what if my recent sexy bedtime ensemble of a promotional Smirnoff Ice
T-shirt and topknot weren’t doing it for him? Things had been a bit quiet in the bedroom of late but I was so tired from long hours at the office and Alex was up all night working on new songs. How had I let things get so bad? I should have been
Fifty Shades of Grey
ing the shit out of him every night, I should have—
‘You have to tell me what’s going on in your head right now,’ Alex whispered, ‘because your face is a fucking picture.’
‘Alex, tell me what’s going on right now,’ I replied, having adequately scared myself shitless.
‘So, you’ll be apartment one. The basement and backyard are all yours. Two and three are up the staircase and they have the rooftop.’ Karen gestured absently up a dark, wooden staircase to my right and then unlocked the door on my left. ‘Shall I give the two of you the grand tour or do you want to do the honours yourself?’
‘I’m going to take it from here, if that’s OK,’ Alex said, giving Karen a half-nod and holding his hand out to take the keys from her. ‘We’ll see you outside?’
‘Of course,’ she said, beaming back at the pair of us. ‘Congratulations. It’s a beautiful home. Perfect for a new family.’
‘Thanks.’ Alex waited for Karen to leave and then locked the door behind her. Leaning against it, he smiled awkwardly out from underneath his floppy fringe, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his leather jacket. ‘So, yeah. Merry Christmas.’
Karen was not a sex teacher. She was not going to teach me the art of sensual massage. This was not a well-concealed brothel. This was … well, I still wasn’t sure. I looked up at the tall white tin ceiling. I looked over my shoulder at the huge empty room with its enormous bay windows, elegant fireplace and shiny hardwood floor. I looked back at Alex. He looked completely out of place and so incredibly happy.