Sammie heard someone banging heavily on the door.
“Go away!” she called.
“Sammie? We have to talk” Bens voice floated through the door.
“You are the last person I want to talk to” she called back, hugging a pillow tightly.
“Are you crying? Let me in!”
“Get LOST!”
“NO! Sammie, I wanna make it up to you, what I did this afternoon”
“Just so you feel good about mucking me about tomorrow?”
“NO! Look, you can’t ignore me for the rest of the week, you have to think about the show”
“Screw the show. Feelings mean more to me than petty ratings”
Ben smiled at this last comment, and it made him more determined to make up.
“Okay, forget the show. Forget the cameras. But I’m NOT going to ignore you for the rest of the week, I wanna sort it out, and I’m going to make sure we go to bed tonight at the very least understanding each other.”
“Yeah, good luck with that. Bye”
Ben checked his watch and sighed.
“Sammie? I have to do something. I’ll be back later”
He ran off down the hall. Sammie crept to the door, and listened as his footsteps faded down the corridor. She leant against the door and slumped down, tears still streaking across her cheeks. She started to wonder if she was over reacting, after all, Ben had only been playing. Maybe he didn’t need to take it so far then, but maybe now she was dragging the situation further than she needed to. She stood up and climbed into the shower. After a long shower, she spent ages choosing clothes from her suitcase, applying her make up, and fixing her hair. Ben or no Ben, she was going to enjoy herself this trip, and if they made up, it was a bonus. She picked up her handbag and walked out of the hotel room. Feeling hungry, she decided to eat in the hotel restaurant first.
As she approached the dining area, she realised something was different. Everything was quiet, and the lights had been dimmed. She approached the maitre d’.
“Yes madam?”
“Hello. Can we still eat in the restaurant tonight or is it closed?”
“It’s closed to almost everyone, but you can go in miss Sammie” He opened the door and she walked inside. She was about to ask how he knew her name when she felt something at her feet. Red rose petals were scattered. She looked back at the maitre d’, lost for words.
“Perhaps you’ll find something better if you follow those petals” he said knowingly. She turned back and realised that there were more rose petals trailing off. She walked slowly through the line of petals, enjoying the feeling of them around her toes, which poked out of her sandal shoes. At one point she closed her eyes to enhance the feeling around her feet. The petals led all over the restaurant, and finally led to a small, secluded table at the very back of the restaurant, where Ben stood in a tuxedo, holding a single rose, and staring out of the window, which apart from thousands of candles, gave the only light around. Ben turned when he heard her approach, and smiled hopefully, then went down on one knee, holding out the rose.
“Sammie, sweetheart, please forgive me for being a total jerk, and please let me make it up to you tonight”
Sammie mouthed, speechless. Ben laid the rose on a plate, then held out a chair for her to sit on. As soon as she was sitting, he pushed in the chair gently, then sat down opposite her.
Looking around the table, Sammie noticed a silver bucket full of ice, a large bottle of champagne wedged in. The rose lay beside a large bowl of soup, and there was a huge basket of bread on the table, surrounded by candles. She finally looked at Ben, who was looking back at her with a mixture of eagerness and anxiety.
“So, what do you think?” he asked quietly, not breaking eye contact, “I mean, I did everything right, didn’t I? Oh, as you answer, start on the soup or else it’ll get too cold”
“Um, this is really hard to take in. What are you up to?”
Ben had broken eye contact to start eating, and had just stuffed half a roll in his mouth as she spoke. He looked up, chewed and finally swallowed.
“Well, I wanna apologise, and make it up to you, and then I’m going to try to get you to at least begin to understand me, then you’re going to make me understand you, we’ll start getting on properly and then we can enjoy ourselves and actually have the cameras around us. I told the crew that they can’t film us until we get on the right track. You should really start eating you know, it’s really nice”
Sammie looked down quickly at the food and back at Ben, who was eating once again.
“So which bit are you at?”
“Well, I’m not getting far, you haven’t said ‘I forgive you Ben’, but I am learning a little more about you”
“What exactly are you learning?”
“How you react to things. Sort of shows how you think. Are you learning anything about me?”
“You change your mind more than I change my underwear, and” she glanced around again “you’re full of surprises”
Ben stopped eating and made eye contact with her again. He was quiet for a few minutes, just watching her eyes.
“Okay, I might be full of surprises, but I most definitely do not change my mind once I decide something”
“You change your mind about me all the time!”
“No I don’t!”
“Yes you do!”
“I don’t!”
“What about on the plane? You go to kiss me, I try to kiss you back and you want nothing to do with me”
Ben remembered and his eyes widened.
“No, that wasn’t-I just-I couldn’t-okay, you obviously needed me to do this tonight, no wonder we’re getting nowhere”
“Are you blaming me?” Sammie asked, scandalised.
“No, just-look” Ben handed her his mobile, “go through the names, I’ll explain after”
Sammie pressed a few buttons.
Adrienne.
Amanda.
Beth.
Carla.
Cass.
Charlotte.
Christian.
Claire.
Dana.
Debbie.
Del.
Edith.
Faye.
Fran.

The list of girls’ names went on, with the occasional guys name appearing. Sammie looked at him, baffled.
“Those are the names of girls I have flirted with. I just cleared it out two weeks ago, so there isn’t as many as there could be.” Ben started explaining. “I’ll flirt with them and take their number”
“And then what?”
“Then find another girl to flirt with, and forget the girl before. They can’t chase me about it because I never give my number in return” He reached into his pocket and handed her a slip of paper. “They usually don’t feel special enough to me for me to give them my number. I don’t want to hear off them again, they mean nothing to me. They mean so little I’d probably sleep with them on the first date, if I let it get that far”
Sammie opened the slip of paper. It read:

Ben home
020 6392 8856
Ben mobile
07737 562290

She looked back at him slowly. He was watching her again.
“Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
“Same reason I actually gave you my phone number”
“Do you want my number back?”
“Okay, but I won’t store you under your name” He took his mobile back and tapped the buttons, before handing it back for Sammie to type in her number. She saw he had stored her as ‘my girl’, and looked at him again. He was still watching her, more anxiously than before.
“We’ll see” she said, nodding towards the mobile, and Ben smiled, then poured them both champagne as some waiters came over to remove their soup and put the next course down.
“Sammie?” Ben asked after a while.
“Yes?”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You know how I work in the whole ‘love’ thing, what about you?”
“I don’t”
“What do you mean, ‘I don’t’?” Ben asked as he refilled her glass.
“I don’t date”
“Yes you do”
“I don’t”
“What do you call this?”
“A date” she omitted, smiling.
“Oh, Ben, you’re so RIGHT”
“Oh, Ben, you’re so pushing it”
Ben smiled angelically.
“So why is this your first date in years?”
“’Coz there aren’t that many decent guys to go out with where I’m from”
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh” Ben said, as though Sammie had told him something more.
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh what?”
“Some loser broke your heart and now you think every guy’s the same as him”
“How’d you know that?”
“Lucy went out with a jerk for a few months, he hurt her and it’s only now she’ll even think of a guy as cute, which was a relief ‘coz she had a crush on Mark and it made it disappear. She only got a new boyfriend a couple of weeks ago” He refilled her champagne glass again, which she was emptying rather quickly.
“How long was she single for?”
“Two years. Her new guy is better. I met them both, and David is definitely an improvement on Luke”
“Well, her elder brother’s approval must add to his popularity with her”
Ben nodded.
“So you’ve not met any guys better than this loser?”
“Tom? Everyone’s better than Tom”
“Well, now I feel really good about myself” Ben said cheekily, winking.
“Sorry, but he gave me a lot of doubt. Even if you are so much better than him-which you are-I’m going to doubt you”
There was a long pause.
“We’re a right pair, aren’t we?”
Sammie nodded, giggling. The champagne was having a slight affect on her.
“Wanna finish up here and go somewhere else?”
Sammie nodded again. Ben got up, gave her a small kiss on the cheek and went to talk to the maitre d’. He came back after a few minutes.
“Shall we?” he asked, giving her his arm. They walked out arm in arm, giggling and talking.