Authors: Rebecca Chance
‘I’m just so happy,’ he said, gulping. ‘I have everything I ever
wanted in the world. We’re so lucky!’
‘We
are
, darling,’ she said, dabbing at his damp cheeks with
genuine fondness.
‘Oh Vicky, I do love you so,’ he gushed. ‘And darling, you’re
being so sweet to me – I do adore you.’ His expression grew
very serious. ‘I really do think that you’re going to be a corking
mother, darling.’
To her surprise, Victoria felt herself grow a little tearful at this
too. She realised, with even greater surprise, that her hands had
fallen, and were now cradling her still completely flat stomach.
There’s a baby in there, she thought. Goodness! I still can’t quite
believe how happy I am about the whole prospect.
And then she realised why: because now, Victoria Glossop,
editor of
US Style
, queen of the New York media scene – which
was the only scene in New York worth a damn – really did have
it all. She was making a huge success of the job she had coveted
for so long, she had the approval of her boss, an utterly loyal and
supportive husband, and now, a baby on the way, conceived
with what was really a minimal amount of fuss or trouble.
Even though Victoria always wanted to believe that everything she possessed had been achieved through hard work,
talent and tightly-focused ambition, she did have to admit that
Jeremy might be right as well. For the first time in her life,
surveying the empire of power and success that radiated from
this huge bed, high up above Manhattan, the windows beyond
her giving an unparalleled view of Columbus Circle and
Central Park beyond, she conceded his point.
We are lucky, damnit. And it feels bloody wonderful.
s soon as she climbed out of the cab that had brought
them down to the East Village, Coco could hear the
pounding of the bassline from Urge. Her heart soared. She
hadn’t realised how much she needed to go out clubbing until
Xavier had come into the fashion cupboard to sweep her out
into the warm, enticing Manhattan evening. X was absolutely
right, she reflected happily. I needed to let my hair down a bit.
She flashed a huge smile at the bouncer on the door, a big
butch guy in a muscle tank. He looked taken aback at first –
New Yorkers were usually much too cool to smile at bouncers
or doormen – but Coco’s excitement was infectious, and he
grinned back at her as he stamped her hand.
‘Love the frock, honey,’ he said as she passed.
‘I picked it out for her,’ Xavier said smugly. ‘Told you, didn’t
I?’ he added to Coco, his voice rising to compete with the
sound system as they walked through the entrance passage and
into the club itself, opening up before them like a very decadent Pandora’s Box of delights. Urge’s décor, Coco was
delighted to see, was much like the clubs she’d been to in
London: basic, black-painted, not one of those places where so
much money had been thrown into the décor that there was a
huge entrance charge and extortionately priced drinks so the
owners could claw back what they’d spent doing it up.
Coco hadn’t been out dancing once since she’d come to
the city. She’d heard that the Manhattan megaclubs, in
Chelsea and the Meatpacking District, were vile, huge shiny
discos on multiple levels where bankers and stockbrokers
stood around the bar, buying twenty-dollar cocktails for their
bored dates, who were wriggling cautiously on the brightlylit dance floor, worried that they’d slip on their Louboutin
knockoffs. The music was apparently generic, the atmosphere
dull as ditchwater.
But Urge was utterly different from how the megaclubs had
been described. Its black walls were slightly damp already with
condensation, and a gigantic screen at the back was showing
the latest episode of
Project Runway
. Avid watchers clustered
on divans and banquettes, ooh-ing and aah-ing as each new
outfit came down the catwalk. There was a big square central
bar with glitterballs, half-naked barmen – and fully naked men
dancing on top of it, Coco noticed, her eyes growing wide.
Well, okay, not fully naked – they were all in work boots.
‘Coco! Isn’t this
fabulous
!’ Emily ran towards her, already
fairly merry, her blonde mane bouncing on her shoulders in a
way that made several of the gay guys clustered around the bar
turn and look at her appreciatively.
‘You work it, girl,’ one said approvingly. ‘Love a bitch who
knows how to do the hair run.’
‘Look at all the hot guys!’ Emily exclaimed. ‘God, it’s like
paradise
in here.’
‘Emily, you know this is a gay bar, right?’ Coco yelled back.
‘That one up there’s definitely giving me the eye.’ Emily
gestured to a gyrating naked dancer, black and muscle-bound,
who winked back at her and pumped his hips in her direction.
‘Look at his cock! It’s absolutely huge!’
There was no denying that the dancer’s cock was, indeed,
enormous.
‘I’ll get you a drink,’ Emily said. ‘The barman’s being lovely,
he’s barely charging me anything.’ Wiggling her fingers flirtatiously at the go-go dancer, her slash-neck top falling off one
shoulder, her mini-skirt hiked up even further than it was
supposed to go, Emily headed for the bar, swaying in her heels.
‘At least here she can’t get into too much trouble,’ Coco
said close to Xavier’s ear.
‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ Xavier said back. ‘Quite a few
straight guys hang out here, including more than a couple of
the dancers. They get great tips from gay guys, plus lots of
admiration,
plus
they get to pick out the prettiest fruit flies and
take them home.’
‘Fruit flies?’ Coco echoed, confused.
J-Lo’s latest single came on, and a cluster of guys by the bar
whooped and threw their hands up as Emily’s favourite dancer
widened his stance and popped his firm, round buttocks, his
thighs rippling, his quads defined, his calves bulging as he
bounced his bottom right down to the bar and up again.
‘Shake it, girl!’ screamed one, leaning forward to shove a
twenty-dollar note in one of his boots. ‘Work it out!’
‘Here, you gotta meet the queen of the fruit flies.’ Xavier
grabbed Coco’s hand and pulled her over to one of the
banquettes, where a stunning slim blonde was holding court,
surrounded by a bevy of handsome gay men. ‘Jamie, this is
Coco. She works on
Style
with Emily, and she wants to know
what a fruit fli is.’
‘Dulling,’ drawled Jamie, looking Coco up and down. ‘
Love
your sequins. Here, Travis, make some room for X’s friend.’
The guy called Travis, shirtless and ripped, his eyes a stunning bright blue, his chest perfectly smooth under his linen
waistcoat, flashed Coco a smile and obediently squished up to
the man beside him, a tall, dark Latino in a Top Gun
jumpsuit.
‘Ow! You squash me, you big queen,’ the Latino complained,
pouting his full lips theatrically.
‘Oh, Marco, you love it, you dirty boy.’ Travis bumped his
hips into the Latino’s playfully as Coco sat down dutifully,
next to Jamie.
‘Okay,’ Jamie started, tilting her head close to Coco’s, her
hair a smooth straight blonde fall, her make-up perfect, her
dark eyes glinting. ‘Here’s the rundown. A fruit fli – with an i
– is a girl who loves her gay boys, but she’s
more
than a hag,
okay? I’ve seen so many damn hags who think their gays are
their boyfriends, you know – the ones who get jealous and
throw hissy fits when their best gays start making out with
some hot boy at the gay club?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘So. Fucking.
Tragic. So I invented the whole fruit fli thing. Because the guys
are fruits, and we buzz around ’em, but we don’t want to fuck
’em. We’ve got our own guys to fuck.’
‘You
do
want to fuck us,’ Travis squealed coquettishly. ‘You
know you do! Look at this!’ He threw his arms wide, showing
off his perfect physique.
Jamie ignored him with magnificent aplomb. ‘Make sense?’
she asked Coco.
‘Totally,’ Coco nodded. She had been watching Jamie as
she explained, hypnotised; now she said, ‘Do you mind my
saying something? You have the prettiest teeth I’ve ever seen
in my life.’
They were truly beautiful. Coming from England, Coco was
used to being impressed by American dentistry, but Jamie’s teeth
were like a string of perfect pearls, with a sheen to them as if they
had all been individually polished and buffed to perfection.
The boys hooted.
‘Girlfriend!’ The Latino leaned forward. ‘Check out mine.’
He flashed Coco a huge white even smile. ‘Jamie does PR for
the best dentist in the city – the bitch got me into those invisible braces for two years. Hurt like hell, but look at them now.’
‘They’re lovely,’ Coco said sincerely, as Emily came up and
thrust a tall frosted glass into her hand, mint leaves clustered
at the bottom, a straw sticking out of the top.
‘I got you a mojito,’ Emily carolled. ‘Yummy yummy.
Cheers!’ She clinked her own mojito with Coco’s, then looked
at the group of guys clustered around Jamie, their queen.
‘Ooh,’ she added naïvely. ‘Everyone’s so hot here.’
‘I love you already,’ Travis said. ‘Who are you, honey?’
Coco looked down at her drink, aware of how many calories
there were, how much sugar, in a mojito.
I should really get
myself a VLT instead. Especially after Jacob telling me that I need
to lose more weight off my hips . . .
And then she looked around her at the gorgeous people,
the laughing happy faces with their perfect teeth, the TV
viewers beyond cheering as the
Project Runway
credits rolled,
and she thought, Fuck it! I deserve a night off from everything – from dieting, from being careful, from trying to be
perfect all the time.
She took a long, delicious drag at the straw, an instant rum
and sugar high flooding through her bloodstream.
‘Oh God,’ she sighed almost orgasmically. ‘This is delicious.’
The music, which had been kept lower while the TV show
was on, now soared to a deafening pitch, its beat pumping like
a tribal drum. The alcohol, the music, the laughter, the whoops
as clubbers flooded back onto the dancefloor, all combined to
make Coco feel incredibly, exhilaratingly . . . young.
She had barely been out in the last few months, she realised. Between the long hours the fashion cupboard demanded,
her determination to do any job she was given better than
anyone had done it before, the exercise programme that sent
her to Pilates or the gym after work, the diet that made her
wary of drinking in bars, she had been living almost like a
hermit.
Fuck
it! she thought again, drinking more of her mojito. I’m
only twenty-four, I’m single in Manhattan, I’m wearing a fabulous sequinned dress, I’ve got a lovely gay friend to dance with,
and I’m going to drink mojitos and dance till I can’t stand up
any more.
Finishing the mojito with a last, heroic slurp, she wiped her
mouth, grabbed Xavier’s hand and dragged him onto the
dancefloor. He followed her more than willingly, laughing at
her enthusiasm, shaking his hips as she gyrated round him, the
other guys on the dancefloor giving them room to move. High
above them, around the bar, the near-naked go-go boys popped
their bottoms out, their arms folded behind their heads to
make their impressive biceps bulge even more. As Coco looked
over, one of them squatted down right in front of an eager guy,
the dancer’s thighs swelling, the definition of his quads sculptural: the guy tilted his head back, his expression ecstatic as the
dancer rubbed his private parts over his face. The guy’s group
of friends whooped and hollered, yelling,‘That’s right! Teabag
him, the dirty slut!’ stuffing more and more notes into the
dancer’s boots to keep him going. His thigh muscles strained
impressively, veins popping out with the effort of keeping
himself in the deep squat, pumping his hips back and forth.
Oh God, I really hope Emily doesn’t get that done to her!
Coco thought, spotting Emily, who was standing below her
chosen dancer, imitating his dance moves to the best of her
ability, flicking her hair, wriggling her body at him in a blatant
come-on that he seemed to be enjoying immensely: he turned
round, shaking his firm, plump buttocks at her, the colour of
rich, dark plums, and Emily, giggling like a hyena, went up on
tiptoes to slap his cheeks, back and forth in rhythm to the
pound of the baseline.
‘Whee! Give it to him, girlie!’ someone yelled hysterically,
and the barman waggled his finger at Emily, reproving her.
‘No touching the meat,’ he said, but even he couldn’t help
laughing as Emily put her finger in her mouth and cocked her
head sideways, pantomiming apology.
‘Awfully sorry,’ she said in her high, posh voice, and at least
ten gay men echoed back, ‘Awfully sorry!’ in an appreciative
echo.
Xavier shouted something to Coco, but she couldn’t hear it;
she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him closer,
dragging his head down so that his lips touched her ear, his
thick dark glossy hair falling in her face.
‘I said, girl gone wild,’ Xavier repeated, his breath warm on
her skin, and though Coco knew that he meant Emily, she felt
herself surge in recognition.
‘Me too,’ she yelled back, knowing that her eyes were bright,
her cheeks pink, her hair starting to come loose. ‘I’m going
wild too!’
Xavier’s smile was dazzling. ‘Hey, it suits you,’ he said.
‘About time you went crazy. Want another mojito?’
Coco nodded vehemently. She had had nothing to eat since
lunchtime, and even that had only been a spinach salad with
feta cheese, no dressing, the Dupleix canteen’s menu option
for skinny minnies. The first mojito had taken away any hunger
pangs, distracted her completely from her growling stomach;
after the second, drunk with Xavier at the bar, his arm companionably round her shoulder, giggling with him as they watched
Emily now dancing with Travis, who was happily groping her
boobs, Coco was on top of the world.
And then a Britney remix came on, and Coco squealed like
a six year old. Dashing back to the dancefloor, she promptly
tripped over her feet as she caught her toe on the metal edging
that separated the carpeting from the wood of the dance area.
The mojitos had gone right to her head; she would have
tumbled flat on her face if an arm hadn’t caught her, wrapping
around her waist, dragging her to her feet again. Howling with
laughter, drunk enough by now to think everything funny, she
looked down at the arm round her waist: creamy matte, lean
with muscle.
‘You really aren’t hairy at all,’ she observed, and put her
hand out to stroke Xavier’s forearm. It was surprisingly strong,
corded like rope, his muscles standing out from the effort of
catching and supporting her, and her head span as she made
contact with his smooth skin, closed her hand around his arm.
Involuntarily she felt a rush of excitement build in her; it had
been a long time since she’d had sex, and though she’d
suppressed those impulses, redirected them into work, throwing all her energy into building her career, sex was something
that you couldn’t repress forever.
Not only that, she thought suddenly, feeling such a flood of
lust run through her that she shivered from head to toe. It’s
like pushing a ball underwater – you can shove it down, under
the surface, and you can even hold it there for a while. But
when you finally can’t keep it underwater any more, it shoots
up to the surface like a torpedo. It bursts right out and flies
into the air, and splashes you in the face . . .
Coco was drunk enough to start to giggle at this thought, at
the sexual innuendo of being splashed in the face, and her
whole body vibrated against Xavier’s, which was still pressed
against her back, holding her steady, tall and warm and strong.
She leaned back into him; she couldn’t help it. For a moment,
she pretended that he was straight, that he fancied her, that
she was going to have sex with him tonight. The encounter
with Jacob earlier that day had worked her up to a pitch of
excitement and frustration that came rushing back now, and
she felt her eyes closing, a soft moan coming from her lips,
barely audible even to her with the roar of the music and the
bustle of the club.
Oh God, she thought, realising that she was unsteady on
her feet, that her thighs were clenching tightly together, her
body hot and fizzing with sudden desire.
I should really go
home now. I’m all worked up and I’m in a gay club, practically
grinding against a gay guy who’s probably totally and utterly
embarrassed at me grabbing onto his arm and shoving my bum
back into his crotch.
And then her entire body stiffened in shock as she realised
what she was feeling back there. Her brain, fuzzy and happy
and slowed down by strong drink, had finally caught up to
what her body knew already.