The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley Page B

mainly because I’m so confused. He makes a little “crazy”gesture to his mate as they jog off.
    Of course it wasn’t Ben. As I watch him move away, I can see everything’s wrong—he runs clumsily, his arms loose and awkward.
     There’s never been anything awkward about Ben. I’m left with the same feeling I had when he ran by me. It was like seeing
     a ghost.
    Â 
    The Café Belle Epoque has a kind of festive look to it, glimmering red and gold, light spilling onto the pavement. The tables
     outside are crowded with people chatting and laughing and the windows are steamy with condensation from all the bodies crowded
     around tables inside. Round the corner, where they haven’t turned on the heat-lamps, there’s one guy on his own hunched over
     a laptop; somehow I just know this is him.
    â€œTheo?” I feel like I’m on a Tinder date, if I bothered going on those anymore and it wasn’t all catfishers and arseholes.
    He glances up with a scowl. Dark hair long overdue a cut and the beginnings of a beard. He looks like a pirate who’s decided todress in ordinary clothes: a woolen sweater, frayed at the neckline, under a big jacket.
    â€œTheo?” I ask again. “We texted, about Benjamin Daniels—I’m Jess?”
    He gives a curt nod. I pull out the little metal chair opposite him. It sticks to my hand with cold.
    â€œMind if I smoke?” I think the question’s rhetorical, he’s already pulled out a crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds. Everything
     about him is crumpled.
    â€œSure, I’ll have one thanks.” I can’t afford a smoking habit but I’m feeling jittery enough to need one—even if he didn’t
     actually offer.
    He spends the next thirty seconds struggling to light his cigarette with a crappy lighter, muttering under his breath: “ Fuck’s sake ” and “ Come on, you bastard .” I think I detect a slight accent as he does.
    â€œYou’re from East London?” I ask, thinking that maybe if I ingratiate myself he’ll be more willing to help. “Whereabouts?”
    He raises a dark eyebrow, doesn’t answer. Finally, the lighter works and the cigarettes are lit. He draws on his like an asthmatic
     on an inhaler, then sits back and looks at me. He’s tall, uncomfortable-looking in the little chair: one long leg crossed
     over the other knee at the ankle. He’s kind of attractive, if you like your men rough around the edges. But I’m not sure I
     do—and I’m shocked at myself for even thinking about it, in the circumstances.
    â€œSo,” he says, narrowing his eyes through the smoke. “Ben?” Something about the way he says my brother’s name suggests there’s
     not that much love lost there. Maybe I’ve found the one person immune to my brother’s charm.
    Before I can answer a waiter comes over, looking pissed off at having to take our order, even though it’s his job. Theo, who looks equally pissed off at having to talk to him and speaking Frenchwith a determined English accent, orders a double espresso and something called a Ricard. “Late night, on a deadline,” he tells me, a little defensively.
    Mainly to warm up I ask for a chocolat chaud . Six euros. Let’s assume he’s paying. “I’ll have the other thing too,” I tell the waiter.
    â€œ Un Ricard? ”
    I nod. The waiter slouches off. “I don’t think we served that at the Copacabana,” I say.
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œThis bar I worked in. Until a couple of days ago, actually.”
    He raises a dark eyebrow. “Sounds classy.”
    â€œIt was the absolute worst.” But the day The Pervert decided to show his disgusting little dick to me was the day I’d finally
     had enough. Also the day I decided I’d get the creep back for all the times he’d lingered too long behind me, breath hot and
     wet on the