Read One Plus One: A Novel for Free Online

leaned over, extracted a cigarette from the packet on the bedside table, and lit it.
    He had lain there for a bit, thinking. “Do you own any stocks and shares?”
    She rolled off him and lay back against her pillow. “Don’t suggest I bet on the stock market, Ed. I haven’t got enough left to gamble with it.”
    It was out before he really knew what he was saying. “It’s not a gamble.”
    “What isn’t?”
    “We’ve got a thing coming out. In a couple of weeks. It’s going to be a game changer.”
    “A thing?”
    “I can’t really tell you too much. But we’ve been working on it for a while. It’s going to push our stock way up. Our business guys are all over it.”
    She was silent beside him.
    “I mean, I know we haven’t talked a lot about work, but this is going to make a serious amount of money.”
    She didn’t sound convinced. “You’re asking me to bet my last few pounds on something I don’t even know the name of?”
    “You don’t need to know the name of it. You just need to buy some shares in my company.” He shifted onto his side. “Look, you raise a few thousand pounds, and I guarantee you’ll have enough to pay off your ex-boyfriend within two weeks. And then you’ll be free! And you can do whatever you want! Go traveling the world!”
    There was a long silence.
    “Is this how you make money, Ed Nicholls? You take women to bed and then get them to buy thousands of pounds’ worth of your shares?”
    “No, it’s—”
    She turned over and he saw she was joking. She traced the side of his face. “You’re so sweet to me. And it’s a lovely thought. But I don’t have thousands of pounds lying around just now.”
    The words came out of his mouth even before he knew what he was saying. “I’ll lend it to you. If it makes you money, you pay me back. If it doesn’t, then it’s my own fault for giving you dud advice.”
    She started laughing and stopped when she realized he wasn’t joking.
    “You’d do that for me?”
    Ed shrugged. “Honestly? Five grand doesn’t really make a big difference to me right now.”
And I’d pay ten times that if it meant you would leave.
    Her eyes widened. “Whoa. That is the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
    “Oh . . . I doubt that.”
    Before she left the next morning he wrote her a check. She had been tying her hair up in a clip, making faces at herself in his hall mirror. She smelled vaguely of apples. “Leave the name blank,” she said, when she realized what he was doing. “I’ll get my brother to do it for me. He’s good at all this stocks and shares stuff. What am I buying again?”
    “Seriously?”
    “I can’t help it. I can’t think straight when I’m near you.” She slid her hand down his boxers. “I’ll pay you back as soon as possible. I promise.”
    “Whatever. Just . . . just don’t say anything to anyone about it, yes?”
    His faux cheer bounced off the apartment walls, smothering the warning voice in his head.
    —
    Ed answered almost all of her e-mails afterward. He said it was good to have spent time with someone who understood how weird it was just to have got out of a serious relationship, how important it was to spend time by yourself. Her replies were short, noncommittal. Oddly, she said nothing specific about the product launch or that the stock had gone through the roof. She should have made more than £100,000. Perhaps she had lost the check. Perhaps she was backpacking in Guadeloupe. Every time he thought about what he had told her, his stomach lurched. So he tried not to think about it.
    He changed his mobile-phone number, telling himself it was an accident that he forgot to let her know. Eventually her e-mails trailed off. Two months passed. He and Ronan went out and moaned about the Suits; Ed listened to him as he weighed the pros and cons of the not-for-profit soup girl and felt like he’d learned a valuable lesson. Or dodged a bullet. He wasn’t sure which.
    And then, two weeks