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to attention beneath my nightshirt,
straining to be close to her. Blood rushed to the surface and
flushed my skin with heat.
    ‘Hey, Vic, it’s
okay. He’s gone now.’ She spoke to me the same way she spoke to
children in the surgery. I imagined her standing over me in her
pale-yellow uniform, bright hair pulled off her face in a high
ponytail.
    It’s true what
they say about nurses.
    ‘I’m fine.’
    ‘Then why are
you shaking? Come here.’ She curled her limbs around me again,
tucking her head beneath my chin and rubbing my arms with brisk
strokes.
    ‘I’m not
cold.’
    Lara ignored
me. ‘You always react badly to booze. Remember Majorca?’
    I did, and the
memory was the last one I needed at that moment: Lara’s scantily
clad body, writhing to music, dripping with sweat. The rising
warmth in my belly. The first understanding that my feelings for my
best friend were evolving into something more. Something
unexpected. Something needy and visceral.
    I remembered
our drunken kiss on the heaving dance floor and the playful press
of her hands on my hips and ribs as we teased the Spanish men with
their shameless stares.
    My body hummed
with a pulsing need and a trickle of wetness slid down the inside
of my thighs. I wrenched free of Lara with more force than
necessary. Her arms slid away. My back left the mattress and I
clawed at the empty air, too late to save myself from falling off
the side of the bed, taking the sheet with me. It pooled on my face
and blocked the light as my hip and shoulder slammed into the
floor, my feet still resting on the mattress.
    Lara’s voice
shook with laughter. ‘Are you okay?’
    I closed my
eyes beneath the sheet, glad of something to hide behind. ‘I’m
fine.’
    ‘I bet you
drank more than I did.’
    The sheet
tickled as it left my face. Lara had crawled up to the edge of the
bed and she held it bunched up in front of her, pressed between her
spread knees as she knelt to stare at me. Her expression held a
mixture of amusement and concern. And one last thing that I
couldn’t place; whatever it was, it made me uncomfortable.
    I looked away
from her face, but that was worse.
    I saw the
gleaming nimbus of moonshine around her body. Light playing over
the curves of her hips and thighs in a way that made my fingers
jealous. An angel, beautiful and desirable, naked breasts a mere
inch from my upturned face.
    Clambering to
my feet felt harder than it should have been, and I fussed with the
hem of my nightshirt.
    ‘Are you really
going to leave your bra on?’
    I frowned. The
back of my neck tingled, and I told myself that it was wishful
thinking, nothing more, that put a undercurrent of disappointment
in Lara’s whisper.
    She sighed and
made space by shuffling back across the bed. While she stretched
out on the far side, shaking the sheet over her body once again, I
took my old place on the edge; with that six-inch chasm between
us.
    This time, she
didn’t turn to look at me.
    I pulled the
sheet over my body and tried to think of something to say.
    Silence
stretched between us like a piece of elastic, growing thinner all
the while.
    Lara faced the
ceiling and closed her eyes. Soon, her breathing evened out and the
gentle rise and fall of her chest told me she had fallen
asleep.
    Turning onto my
side, I propped my head in my hand.
    I let my gaze
travel up and down her body, drinking in the sight with a greed
that frightened and excited me.
    Sleep brought
to Lara a peace and beauty for which her waking features had no
space. Not that she was any less beautiful while awake, only that
her bright smile and open-mouthed laughter often left no room to
appreciate the delicate curve of her cheekbones. The full pout of
her lips. The thick sweep of her eyelashes. The arch of her
eyebrows showing off her natural colour which hid beneath all the
red.
    A curl of her
hair lay like a crimson shadow across her cheek. I brushed it
away.
    In the still of
the bedroom, I could hear my heart hammering