One Plus One: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

software glitches, the meetings with a media tycoon who had flown them to Texas in his private jet and sworn at them when they refused his buyout offer.
    He told her of the day they’d gone public, when he had sat on the edge of his bath watching the share price go up and up on his phone and begun to shake as he grasped just how much his whole life was about to change.
    “You’re that wealthy?”
    “I do okay.” He was aware that he was this close to sounding like a dick. “Well . . . I was doing better until I got divorced, obviously . . . I do okay. You know, I’m not really interested in the money.” He shrugged. “I just like doing what I do. I like the company. I like having ideas and translating them into things that actually work for people.”
    “But you sold it?”
    “It was getting too big, and I was told that if we did, the guys in suits could handle all the financial stuff. I was never interested in that side of things. I just own a lot of shares.” He stared at her. “You have really nice hair.” He had no idea why on earth he said this.
    She’d kissed him in the taxi. Deanna Lewis had slowly turned his face to hers with a slim, perfectly manicured hand and kissed him. Even though it was more than twelve years since they were at university—twelve years in which Ed Nicholls had been briefly married to a model/actress/whatever—some little voice in his head keptsaying: Deanna Lewis is kissing me. And she wasn’t just kissing him: she hitched up her skirt and slid a long, slim leg over him—apparently oblivious to the taxi driver—pressed into him, and slid her hands up his shirt until he couldn’t speak or think. And when they got to his flat, his words came out thick and stupid, and he not only didn’t wait for the change but didn’t even check what was in the wad of notes he handed the driver.
    The sex was great. Oh, God, it was good. She had porn moves, for Christ’s sake. With Lara, in the last months, sex had felt like she was granting him some kind of favor—dependent on some set of rules that only she seemed to understand: whether he had paid her enough attention or spent enough time with her or taken her out to dinner or understood how he’d hurt her feelings.
    When Deanna Lewis looked at him naked, her eyes seemed to light up from inside with a kind of hunger. Oh, God. Deanna Lewis.
    She arrived again on Friday night. She had worn these crazy knickers with ribbons at the sides that you could pull undone so that they slid slowly down her thighs like a ripple of water. She rolled a joint afterward, and he didn’t normally smoke but he had felt his head spin pleasurably, had rested his fingers in her silky hair and felt for the first time since Lara left like life was actually pretty good.
    And then she said: “I told my parents about us.”
    He was having trouble focusing. “Your parents?”
    “You don’t mind, do you? It’s just been so good . . . feeling like . . . I belong in something again, you know?”
    Ed found himself staring at a point on the ceiling.
It’s okay
, he told himself.
Lots of people tell their parents stuff. Even after two weeks.
    “I’ve been so depressed. And now I just feel”—she beamed at him—“happy. Like madly happy. Like I wake up and I’m thinking about you. Like everything’s going to be okay.”
    His mouth felt oddly dry. He wasn’t sure if it was the joint. “Depressed?” he said.
    “I’m okay now. I mean, my folks were really good. After the last episode they took me to the doctor and got me on the right meds. They do apparently lower your inhibitions, but I can’t say that anyone’s complained! Ha ha ha ha!”
    He handed her the joint.
    “I just feel things very intensely, you know? My psychiatrist says I’m exceptionally sensitive. Some people bounce through life. I’m just not one of those people. Sometimes I read about an animal dying or a child being murdered somewhere in another country, and I will