Free Jemima J. by Jane Green

they asked themselves. “With a face like that,” said the brunette, “who cares.”
    They sit there watching Ben, who is completely unaware of their presence, of their giggles as they try and decide what he does for a living. “Way too handsome for a real estate agent,” they decide, “maybe an investment banker?”
    The brunette, who is killing time by working in a shop until she finds a husband to sweep her off her feet and carry her into the sunset on his white horse, calls over one of the waiters, whom naturally she knows, because every evening she is in this bar with her friends.
    “Do you know that guy?” she whispers, pointing to Ben.
    The waiter shrugs. “Never seen him before.”
    “Look,” she says. “Do me a favor. Will you take him over another bottle of beer, I’ll pay for it, and tell him I’m buying him a drink.”
    The waiter smiles. The brunette’s girlfriends laugh at her audacity, but with looks like hers, she can afford to be audacious.
    The girls watch in silence as the waiter takes a bottle of beer over to Ben on a tray. The waiter bends down in front of Ben p. 58 and murmurs something, pointing at the brunette, before walking away while Ben, bless him, blushes.
    He stares at the bottle, too embarrassed to look around the room, to look at the brunette, and the brunette, much like the dowdy woman in Waterstone’s, melts.
    “Oh my God,” she whispers to her girlfriends. “Did you see that? He blushed! I think I’m in love!”
    Ben’s face cools down and he looks at the brunette, amazement in his eyes, for she is truly gorgeous, and he smiles and raises the bottle to her, a silent toast.
    “Guys,” she says to her girlfriends as she stands up, “I’m going in there.”
    “Good luck,” they say, unable to take their eyes off Ben. “Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.”
    She walks, no, sashays over to where Ben’s sitting. “Do you mind if I join you?”
    “Um, no,” says Ben, thinking this doesn’t happen in real life, surely? Surely this only happens in the movies. “Please sit down. Thank you for the drink.”
    “I bet it’s not the first time a woman’s bought you a drink.”
    She’s wrong. It is. “Um, actually, yes. It is.”
    “Oh.” She shrugs her shoulders and laughs. “Oh well, there’s a first time for everything. I’m Sam,” she says, extending her hand, using the handshake as an excuse to get closer to him.
    “I’m Ben,” he says, shaking her hand.
    “My favorite name,” she laughs, and Ben laughs back.
     
    Jemima Jones finished her cappuccino a long time ago, but she stays in her little café for a while, reading, except she is not comfortable, squeezed into this tiny hard chair, and after a while she thinks she would be far more comfortable at home, lying on her bed.
    She pays, walks out of the café, and starts down the hill, feeling ridiculously happy for no reason at all. She goes past the bar and looks in at the beautiful people, thinking that one day she will be slim enough to join them.
    p. 59 And then she sees them. Ben and Sam, sitting on the sofa at the back, and she freezes, her mouth open in a gasp of shock. Ben and Sam are getting on as famously as two people who have nothing in common other than a mutual attraction can get on. Sam is flirting outrageously, and Ben is enjoying having a gorgeous woman flirt with him. Already he knows that he will not be going out with her, because already she has proved to be indescribably stupid, but Jesus does he fancy her.
    He realizes he may have to take her out a couple of times before getting her into bed, but he is sure it will be worth it, and so they sit, closer and closer, touching one another more and more, Sam resting her hand on his arm as she talks to him, Ben leaning in towards her to hear more clearly. It is only a matter of time.
     
    How can your moods change so suddenly? I mean, I was feeling so good, so happy, so optimistic, and now I’m rooted to the spot, trying hard to