‘What?’ She sat back, mouth dangling open with glee. ‘Mr Maycaught you in your fancy new underwear? Oh, now this is perfect! Did he manage not to drool?’
‘Once he saw I’d lit a campfire he was quite scary, actually. All health and safety and forestry regulations.’
‘Nice to hear he’s not a total softie.’
Under her onslaught of questions, I described how he’d shown me a safe place to pitch up, and left me to it.
‘So you kept to the mandate?’
‘Mmhmm,’ I replied, plucking at a loose thread on a cushion in the kind of noncommittal way that automatically got Steph’s antennae twitching.
‘No kiss goodnight?’
‘No!’
‘Hand-holding?’
‘Nope.’
‘What about flirting?’
‘I told you he was on call! He was literally being paid to come and move my tent.’
‘You’re right. Stupid question. You wouldn’t have noticed even if he was.’
I summed up the following morning as quickly as possible, skimming over Sam’s breakfast invitation and enquiry about hanging out. But the whole time, I was back in the moonlit forest, the firepit now glowing embers, silver streaks shimmering off Sam’s hair and the angles of his face. I’d made a silly joke about nothing much but Sam had flung his head back, teeth glinting as he guffawed, sending a flush of pleasure through me.
As our amusement faded away, it had been replaced with a weighted silence. I glanced up, expecting Sam’s grin to dispel the charged atmosphere, but instead my eyes met his, and stayed there, held by the intensity in his gaze.
Woah.
He was less than a blanket away. Even with Nesbit curled up between us, it wouldn’t take much to lean in until our mouths met. It felt as though there was no room inside my ribcage to breathe, my heart was so inflamed with desire and intimacy, blending together into what might have been the tiny beginnings of love.
His eyes dropped to my lips and he swallowed so hard I could almost hear it through the stillness of the night.
As if drawn in by an invisible magnetic force, my body swayed a tentative inch towards him. Sam moved closer in unspoken reply.
Oh my goodness!The thoughts whined about my brain like a mosquito.Are you really going to do this, Ollie? If you lean another millimetre forwards then this MAN, who you are meant to be staying away from, given that he’s a MAN, and you’re on a NO-MAN MANDATE, is going to kiss you.
SHUT UP!I argued back,trying and failing to come up with a split-second counterargument.Just… shut up!
He’s not interested in a relationship, remember?the thought mosquito continued to drone.He thinks you’re some chilled out, grown-up woman who can handle a casual kiss and not turn it into something awkward that will ruin everything, making you regret it forever.
While this was racing through my head, Sam must have seen the conflict flit across my face because he paused, very deliberately, and then slowly sat back up, twisting around to face the trees in front of us, resting his wrists on bent knees. After another potent silence, he swallowed again, coughed, ran his hands through his hair and assumed his usual easy-breezy, affable expression.
If it was meant to dispel the tension, it didn’t work. Sam mumbled something about how it was late and he’d better be getting back, and he left me to burrow down into my sleeping bag and wonder what on earth just happened, and whether I was a fool to so fervently hope that it might happen again.
‘Hello, Earth to Ollie?’ Steph said, unnecessarily loudly, her eyebrows furrowed in suspicion.
‘Sorry. Sleeping on the ground has left me shattered.’
‘Hmmm.’
I hadn’t fooled her for a second. But my best friend was patient; she’d form her own conclusions, confident that the evidence would prove them right soon enough.
I, on the other hand, had no clue what to think.
* * *
