Wicked Game

Chapter 3

   It had been a week since The Starbucks Incident, as Jemima referred to it as. Not that she had told anyone about it, she just thought about it a few times over the next couple of days. She was unpacking a box of some new bestselling Swedish crime novel and placing them on a shelf, when she heard the doorbell behind her. With about twelve copies in her arms, she couldn't turn around immediately.

"Finally!" she heard a voice, almost shouting, behind her. She spun around, of course dropping half the books, which went all over the place.

And there he was. The Starbucks Guy. Harry. In her little bookshop.

"H... Hi!" she blurted out and actually remembered to smile at him.

"I found you!" he said, looking ridiculously happy. Jemima didn't think anyone had seemed so happy to find her ever before. Except maybe for the time when her mum had lost her in a mall and had been looking for her for hours, when she had just crawled into a little reading tent in a bookshop, when she was about six.

She must have looked confused, because he continued:

"I've been looking for you all week. You disappeared before we could exchange numbers or anything and I didn't know anything about you other than your first name and that you worked in a bookshop in Notting Hill. So I've been coming here about four days this week, after my shifts, to every single bookshop around, looking for you. But you were never in, like, in none of them and I didn't want to seem like a creep and ask for a Jemima in every single one, so... I've just been coming back, hoping to run into you."

Jemima was stunned, the only thing she could get out was: "What did you do that for?"

Harry pretended to have been offended. "Hey! I thought we decided we were friends. And you didn't come around the coffee shop again, so I had to get hold of you some other way. And like I said, this was the only way I knew how. Nice work, Friend."

Jemima blushed. Even though the Starbucks where he worked wasn't really around where she usually went, she had thought about going back there, several times a day, in the past week. But then she had stopped herself, when she remembered that he had probably just been joking about them becoming friends. Apparently he had very much not done so. "Sorry," she said, quietly. "I thought you were just joking."

Harry looked a little taken aback, but recovered instantly. "I never joke about being friends. Especially not with someone who has just gone through major surgery."

At that, Jemima couldn't help but loosen up and laugh. She really did like this guy and wanted to be his friend, and for some reason she couldn't really understand, he wanted to be her friend to.

"So...", he continued. "I had to find you, not only because I feel we could possibly become great friends, but also because I wanted to invite you to something."

Jemima felt herself become nervous again. As proven, he was a lot cooler than her and no, she didn't like parties. She said a little quick prayer in her head, to some unknown forces that could possibly decide what was going to happen next, that it was NOT going to be a party.

For the first time since he'd walked through the door, Harry actually looked nervous. "You know, that band I was talking about. The one that I now sing in. We have booked our first gig, in a small pub in Camden. I was wondering if you want to come. I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to or if you have something else. And we're probably going to be shit, so I'm sorry about that. If you do decide to come, I mean. We just need to invite lots of people that we know, so the place won't be completely empty and I only kind of know you, so..."

"I'll come", Jemima cut him off. Although it had been quite cute that he had become so nervous, since he seemed so confident the rest of the time. It was nice to see that he was actually human and had at least one insecurity. "Just tell me when and where and I'll be there."