I Heart Vegas. Lindsey Kelk

his pants almost raised a smile, but the thought of having to go back to a country that didn’t have Alex in it, pants or no pants – particularly no pants – wiped that smile right off my face.

      ‘There’s a way around this,’ I told myself quietly, opening and closing kitchen cupboard doors. Food. Food would make it better. ‘I just don’t know what it is yet.’

      ‘Don’t know what what is?’ a sleepy voice asked from the other side of the room.

      ‘What’s for dinner,’ I fudged, not really knowing why. ‘What do you fancy?’

      ‘Whatever.’ Alex’s head popped up over the back of the sofa. ‘You wanna go out?’

      I leaned backwards against the kitchen counter. His hair was pushed all over one side of his face and his eyes were still half closed. No one wore jet lag better. In that moment, everything just became very real. What if I couldn’t get a new visa? What if I had to leave in four weeks? All of a sudden, getting down on my hands and knees and begging the boy to marry me didn’t seem so bad. Definitely better than the alternative. A lifetime of looking at that face, hearing that voice, or fifty-plus years of Dairylea Lunchables, paying the TV licence and arguing with the council over how often they came to empty the wheelie bin.

      ‘Whatever you want to do,’ I said, turning back to the cupboards and feigning interest in an outdated packet of tortillas to hide the fact that I was this close to bursting into tears. Oh my God, what was I doing? Why was I risking this? Alex was the most amazing man I had ever met. I loved him, and the thought of spending a single day without him made me want to punch a kitten. And I loved kittens.

      ‘Maybe we should just get a pizza,’ he pondered. ‘I missed pizza. And I missed you. Where have you been hiding all day?’

      ‘Hmm?’ My voice was too thick and unreliable to answer with actual words. This was ridiculous. The more I thought about leaving, the more I wanted to marry Alex. And it had nothing to do with needing a visa and everything to do with the fact that I loved the arse off that man. Except that now there was a visa issue, any discussion of a wedding would be visa-related. If I asked him, even if he asked me, it would be about the visa, regardless of how I felt. There was no way around this. If I had finished reading Catch-22, I would absolutely without doubt know for sure that this was a catch-22 situation. Cock. ‘I was just doing visa stuff.’

      ‘Visa stuff?’

      ‘’S complicated,’ I replied, drifting out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. I ran the cold tap and held my wrists under the water. ‘I, uh, my visa expired so I had to see a lawyer.’

      ‘But you’re getting the new visa, right?’ He sounded slightly concerned. ‘There’s no problem?’

      I took a deep breath in and pushed it out slowly through pursed lips. Crying wasn’t going to help. ‘There are a few different ones I could apply for, but, well, it’s not going to be as easy as I’d hoped it might be.’

      ‘Oh.’ He appeared at the bathroom door. Half naked and half asleep. Just the way I liked him. ‘Anything I can do?’

      Marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me.

      I leaned over to give him a light kiss, then turned back to the sink. There was no way I was leaving New York. Just no way.

      ‘What could you do?’ I asked.

      Marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me.

      ‘I don’t know,’ he said, pushing my hair out of my face and giving it a tug. ‘There was this guy on our lighting crew once and he needed, like, letters of recommendation? I could write a letter.’

      ‘Recommending me for what exactly?’

      He raised an eyebrow and gave me a heart-stopping smile.

      ‘Pretty sure that won’t count towards me being an “extraordinary alien”,’ I replied. ‘As far as I know.’

      ‘I think you’re extraordinary.’ Alex took my hand out from under the cold tap. I’d been so preoccupied with looking at his face, I’d forgotten it was there. ‘That’s got to count for something.’

      Only if you marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me.

      ‘Counts for everything with me,’ I replied. ‘Not so much with the INS.’

      ‘Those sons of bitches.’

      For a moment everything froze. Alex looked at me with his big green eyes, suddenly serious. I stared back with my baby blues, hoping they weren’t bloodshot or panda-like. He held my hand tightly and cleared his throat. I held my breath. Oh. My. God.

      ‘Angela,’ he started slowly. ‘I don’t want you to leave. You know that, don’t you?’

      ‘I do now,’ I squeezed his hand. ‘And you know I don’t want to leave.’

      ‘I do now,’ he said. ‘I want you here. With me.’

      I nodded, a giant lump in my throat stopping any words from actually escaping. Probably my subconscious trying to stop me cocking this up. Clever subconscious.

      ‘I love you.’

      ‘Mm-hmm.’

      ‘This is it for me. You and me, this is it. Everything’s going to be OK, right? With the visa?’

      This was it. This was my chance to show him the letter, to tell him I only had four weeks to find a way to stay. Simple as that. Except it wasn’t. My blood pressure soared and then crashed. It was too much pressure. It wasn’t fair. Basically, I was still too scared that he’d run for the hills. Brilliant.

      ‘Mmm-hmm.’

      ‘It’ll all be fine.’ He let go of my hand and pulled me into a hug. ‘You’ll find a way.’

      I breathed out, gasping for air. He broke the hug and kissed me on the forehead.

      ‘Now, let me find some pants and we’ll go eat. Sound good?’

      ‘Sounds bloody brilliant,’ I replied. ‘Pants. Dinner. Done.’

      He gave me a self-satisfied smile and sauntered off towards the bedroom.

      Bloody hell.

      ‘And so we had to drag his ass out of there before her dad took his head off with a sword.’ Alex shook his head and inhaled another taco. ‘Seriously, the guy had a sword. After that, Graham didn’t let him out of his sight the whole trip. He was like, grounded for a month.’

      ‘Oh, Craig.’ I stirred my drink with my fourth straw. I’d already dropped two and snapped one. It was safe to say I was distracted. ‘He really shouldn’t be allowed out on his own, ever.’

      ‘Yeah, we should have known better than to take him to Japan. The groupies were insane.’ Alex expertly inhaled half a taco in one mouthful.

      ‘Wow.’

      ‘And since Graham is gay, I had to deal with all of them,’ he went on. ‘So many groupies. Seriously. I thought it was gonna kill me.’

      ‘Yeah?’ I stared out of the window of La Esquina, watching Williamsburg walk by, trying to commit it all to memory.

      ‘Yeah, sometimes there were a hundred a night.’

      ‘Wow.’

      ‘You’re just not listening, are you?’

      ‘What? With the what?’ It was possible that my inability to string a sentence together was going to damage my plan to get a visa based on my talent as a writer.

      ‘I thought I was the one who was supposed to be out of it,’ Alex said, looking towards my plate and giving me a hopeful look. ‘You gonna eat that?’

      I pushed it towards him and leaned back in my chair. Jet lag made him into a complete pig. It was ridiculously cute. But no matter how happy