Page 7 of Friends with Benefits

She turns in my arms, her back pressed to the kitchen counter. ‘I’m finding myself,’ she says, laughing as she bites the end of a piece of bacon.

‘Seemed like I was finding you last night.’

She pushes my chest and sets about making us bacon ‘butties’ in her words. A buttie is just a bread roll. I don’t get why she calls it that. It’s a Jess-ism, I guess. ‘You don’t need to find me. You know me.’

‘Very true.’

‘I’m going to a tai chi class later. You want to come?’

‘Absolutely not. Thanks, though.’ I take a buttie from the plate in front of her and head into the living room. ‘Can I turn off the monkeys?’

‘Yeah, I’m sufficiently cleansed for the day, I think.’

She comes into the room and nestles into one corner of the sofa, opposite me. ‘Formula One okay?’ I ask, fishing the TV remote from behind the sofa cushion.

‘Mm.’ She nods, chomping down on her food. ‘For sure.’

I flick on the flat-screen and we spend the next hour watching Hamilton thrash everyone else on the course.

The other great thing about our arrangement is that there’s no awkward next day. There’s never a question of whether one of us wants more. She’s emotionally scarred and I’m too sensible to be burned by a woman again. End of.

3

JAKE

Ah, Mondays. The reason God made Friday night, Saturday and Sunday; he felt so bad about creating Monday.

I set my takeout coffee cup down on my desk and boot up the inevitable: a full inbox. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate my job. In fact, I love working for one of the world’s largest hedge funds. It just takes me a while to get going on a Monday morning, that’s all.

Before taking a seat, I hang my suit jacket on the hook in my office, dump my gym stuff in a drawer, and look out over St James’s Park. Have I mentioned that my office has a killer view? Well, I do. And because I am in the office before the London stock markets open for trading, I get to watch people waking themselves up with a morning run, a dog walk, a coffee and stroll.

It may have been a last-minute choice to change from the New York office of Gold Rock Investments to London, but I am glad I made the decision. London is like New York in so many ways. Tall buildings, busy lives. But it seems brighter somehow. Less claustrophobic. And I think it’s funny watching the kind of Brits you find in the Chelsea and Kensington Borough… the kind I work for… walking with a pole so far up their ‘arse’, they look like toy soldiers.

The best thing about London, though, is that I haven’t been betrayed here. Sure, I miss my folks out on Staten Island. I miss my brother and friends. But here, I’m not reminded every day of the girl I loved and lost.

‘Here he is: my best trader.’ Marcus Benedetti, also known as my boss, comes into my office. ‘For you.’ He sets a white envelope on my desk. ‘Great month, last month.’

As he heads back out of my office, he asks me if I had a good weekend, his words coming from along our eighth-floor corridor. I don’t bother answering.

Instead, I sit at my desk, pulling up the NASDAQ exchange on one of my three screens, the FTSE on another, and my inbox on the third. I see the headline of an email that names me as the highest earner for the fund last month. Some months you win, some months you lose. I’ve been lucky that my bets on commodities and other alternative investments have been paying off lately.

Kind of pleased with myself, I pick up the envelope Marcus left and lean back in my chair. I have five minutes until the FTSE opens. I slide out the letter and open it. My eyes immediately bulge as I gawp at the number of zeros printed on the check. I’ve had bonuses before but this… this is N.I.C.E.

Dragging a hand back through my dark hair, I exhale. Who’d have thought I’d be making this kind of money three years into my career? Little more than three years ago, I was tending a college bar. Now, this…

At seven fifty-nine, I interlace my fingers and stretch my arms out in front of me as I prepare for the exchange to open.

By lunchtime, I have tracked my highest risk investments, put client money into energy markets I expect will prove highly lucrative, and I’m ready for a break.

There’s a sushi bar on the ground floor of the building and there’s a large sashimi salad with extra wasabi that has my name all over it. I pull on my suit jacket – black because Jess tells me my tanned skin and dark hair mean I can pull it off – and adjust my shirt collar. We don’t wear ties in the office. We aren’t as pompous as lawyers and accountants.

Given it’s close to 2p.m., there isn’t a huge line. That’s why I’ve trained my body to crave food at this time. I pay for my salad – does it count as a salad if it’s full of fish and rice? – and make for the self-serve counter to pick up chopsticks and a napkin. Except I can’t pick up chopsticks and a napkin because Natasha is standing between me and my cutlery, leaning back against the counter, the glint of ‘let’s go to bed’ in her eyes.

I can confirm that Natasha looks good in, and out, of clothes. But she’s as loose as a slipknot. I only ever broke my rule and went back for seconds because she’s very good at yoga, and all that implies.

And yes, I do go for seconds with Jess too. But let me get one thing straight. Don’t think I make an exception to my rule for Jess because she’s the one or something. Jess and I have an arrangement. We’ve had an arrangement since a drunken night on the sofa two months ago, when we were both feeling horny but wanted to have sex with no strings, and with someone who could understand what we each want.

Back to Natasha, and the fact she has put the tip of her index finger into her mouth as she wraps her hand around her lower waist, drawing my attention to her hips beneath her skintight pencil skirt. ‘I haven’t seen you down here for a while, Jake.’

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