Champagne Kisses by Amanda Brunker Read Free Book Online Page A

a fabulous friend?’
    ‘BUILDER BOY: Sure, bring a couple of girlies. The Piper Seneca seats 6.’
    At that the two of us jumped off our chairs, spilling a little bubbly over the stone suede sofa, and did our victory dance. Think Joey’s jazz hands crossed with a Jack McFarland tap dance.
    ‘He sooo wants me,’ cooed Parker. ‘I wonder is there a bed on the plane? I’ve always wanted to join the mile-high club.’
    ‘You can have him and his hairy extremities. Now don’t mess it up. I
need
to party in London. I
need
some rich Brit to rescue me from this life of poverty. ’Cause my situation doesn’t look like it’s gonna mend itself.’
    ‘Well, I can do hairy – especially in London. OK, let’s get details. So, builder boy, when is the party and I’ll see if I can make it?’
    ‘BUILDER BOY: I’ll take care of u and ure friends Pink Panther. Just say YES 4 sat :)))’
    ‘Oh, my God. He wants us to go this Saturday. What’ll I wear?’
    ‘Parker, you always wear the same thing. It’s always black. What the hell will I wear?’
    ‘Who cares, gorgeous? I’ve a rich boyfriend.’ Then Parker ran out to his balcony which ran about thirty feet alongside the apartment and broke into a diva-style performance of ‘Money, Money, Money’.
    Obviously, this was not typical behaviour for a man in his early forties, but for my Parker, the words tart and fickle could sum up his personality adequately. The only thing with depth about him was the fact that he liked deep pan pizza. Apart from that, he was as flighty as they come.
    Not a great trait, it has to be said, and one that caused us many arguments when we first became friends, but now that we all know him for the Shallow Hal that he is, we work around it and love him regardless.
    Caught up in the moment, we started on a second bottle of bubbly, sang our way through ‘Cabaret’ and ‘Sweet Charity’ while Parker paraded around the apartment in a pair of silk boxers, a cravat and a vintage Gucci hat he bought on eBay that allegedly was once owned by Madonna.
    It was only as he murdered his favourite Shirley MacLaine number ‘If they could see me now’, that I remembered we hadn’t texted our Builder Boy back. By this stage it was 12.30a.m., which was admittedly quite late on a school night for a person with a regular existence.
    Trying to think sober, we managed to type back, ‘Yes. Sat cd b ure luckkky nite.’ But we never got a reply.
    Resisting the temptation to text again and annoy the poor bloke into retracting his invitation, we occupied our hands with buttered popcorn and nachos, and finished our evening in front of the TV.
    After all, why go into town and risk ruining our happy buzz? Instead we channel-hopped until we found some fairly hard-core American gay porn for Parker, which I sat and watched for ten minutes before I got totally grossed out and crashed in one of his spare rooms.
    I just loved staying over. It felt like a five-star hotel. Slumping in my sumptuous Ciaran Sweeney oasis – Parker just loved his stuff, and had most of his apartment styled in his trademark hand-printed silk velvet – I drifted off to sleep thinking, maybe life’s not so bad after all …
    One o’clock Saturday afternoon I was propping up the Ice Bar @ the Four Seasons Hotel; spray-tanned, plucked, perfumed and preened to within inches of Miss World requirements.
    It’s one of our favourite hangouts as it’s a total gossip factory.
    A haven for the rich, the mega-rich and the wannabe-rich, on any afternoon you could end up working through the cocktail menu with A-listers like Colin Farrell or Michael Flatley.
    Though most of the time the reality is you end up being caught in a corner by some Daddy Sleaze who’s removed his wedding ring, and who pretends to be big in beef. When in reality he works in a camera shop. Trust me, it happens.
    Normally, we’d place ourselves at the middle of the long marble bar so we could rubberneck the two entrances. From our