‘It’s nothing, just… it’s private.’
Harry leapt forward and I turned to run but he caught me around my waist, pulling me back against him. He snatched the letter from my hand and held it up high so I couldn’t reach.
‘Harry, no.’ I leapt up to get it but failed.
‘Now let’s see what little sordid secret you’re keeping from me.’
He started skim reading out loud. ‘Aw, he wants you to be Bella’s godmother, that’s sweet. And he says he loves you, that’s nice, he says hi to me, Chelsea sucks…’
‘HARRY, PLEASE!’ I screamed with such desperation that Harry stopped reading and looked at me.
‘You really don’t want me to read this do you?’
I shook my head frantically. My cheeks were burning and I could feel tears of humiliation pricking my eyes. ‘Please don’t read it, I’m begging you.’
He released me and handed me back the letter without another word. I grabbed it, nearly sagging with relief.
‘Is it something horrible?’
I moved away from him, sitting on the other side of the room, and tried to calm down my heart.
‘No, something that Jack only wanted me to know. Something private for him.’ I couldn’t look at him in case he saw the lies.
I straightened out the crumpled letter on my lap and carried on reading.
Tell Harry you love him, that you’ve always loved him and always will be in love with him. I bet you all the money in the world that he says it right back. There has been no one for you since he came into your life and if he doesn’t feel the same way at least you’ll know, at least you’ll stop wondering and maybe, finally you can move on. Regardless of his feelings, he will always be your best friend, nothing will change that. Tell him now or I will haunt you every night, slamming doors and turning on taps and I’ll invite all my ghostly friends round to haunt you too. Tell him Suze, what have you got to lose?
Love you always
Jack
(Mario Kart World Champion)
I stared at the treacherous words. If he knew Harry would be sitting with me, why would he write that, knowing full well that Harry could read it too? And how the hell did he know? No one knew about my inappropriate crush on my best friend. I had never told anyone, least of all my indiscreet blabbermouth big brother.
I looked up at Harry, who was obviously hurt that I didn’t want to share the letter with him.
‘It’s nothing.’ I repeated.
He wasn’t convinced.
I stood up, folding the letter carefully into my pocket. I walked over to him and hugged him.
‘Thank you for coming over, everything seems easier when you’re with me.’
He reluctantly hugged me back. ‘Except anything that’s private.’
I made up my mind there and then. ‘I’ll tell you one day, I promise. I’m just not ready yet.’
This seemed to mollify him as his hug tightened. ‘Do you want me to stay for a while?’
I nodded.
‘Do you want to play Mario Kart?’
I smiled. ‘How did you guess?’
‘I’ll set it up, go and get some beers,’ he said as he crouched down by the TV.
I went into the kitchen and leaned against the fridge as I re-read the letter again. I heard the Wii spring to life in the other room.
I would tell him – if that’s what Jack wanted, then I would do it. But it was going to take a hell of a lot more than cheap Bulgarian beer to find the courage to do that. I tucked the letter back into my pocket and walked back into the lounge.
Harry passed me a remote and I swapped it for a beer.
‘I’m not going to go easy on you,’ Harry said.
‘I wouldn’t expect you to.’
‘This one’s for Jack.’
‘He’ll like that, especially if you win.’
‘I’m not going to lose.’
I took a swig of beer as I looked at my best friend. ‘We’ll see.’
*
I woke the next morning feeling like my head had exploded. It had been a long night, carrying on to the very early hours of the morning. We had drunk, played multiple games of Mario Kart and then other games that required skill and balance that neither Harry nor I could achieve after several bottles of beer. At some point I had fallen on the sofa, too tired and too drunk to move. I wasn’t really aware of anything after that.
There was a heavy weight on me and I couldn’t move at all. I opened one eye and saw Harry lying on top of me, snoring loudly. I closed my eye against the early morning sunshine that penetrated the room painfully. The feel of his snores vibrating through me was nice, like a cat purring. Harry didn’t snore so it was obviously an adverse effect of the drink. I smiled to myself. Waking up with the man I loved wasn’t a bad start to Valentine’s Day.
I lay with my eyes closed for a moment, wondering if I could go back to sleep. Suddenly my eyes snapped open as I realised where Harry’s hand was. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? I looked down and sure enough his hand was gripping my left breast like his life depended on it. God, even in sleep he was a breast man.
Seeing his hand around my breast like that did things to me, a twist of desire lancing straight through my stomach. Though he would be mortified if he woke and found his hand there. Carefully, I tried to prise one of his fingers from my breast, but he was gripping it quite hard and he was so strong even the muscles in his fingers were not something I could fight against. I tried to push my hand between his hand and my breast but to no avail. As I lay there trying to decide my next course of action, Harry stirred and woke up. He looked down at me and smiled sheepishly, still currently unaware of where his hand was. This could go either of two ways. He could realise where his hand was, realise he liked it there and plant the other hand on my other breast, then it could lead to the places of my deepest, darkest fantasies. Unfortunately for me, it went the other way.
Harry looked down, saw where his hand was and leapt off me with a definite ‘Urgh’. Revulsion hadn’t been high on my list of possible reactions. He glared at me.
‘Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t put my breast in your hand. You were still standing and playing on the Wii when I passed out last night. What you did after is your business.’
‘Sorry, I would never – ’
I stood up. ‘I know you would never. Never, ever, ever – right? Not in a million years.’
I flounced out the room straight into the bathroom, locked the door, quickly undressed and stepped straight into the shower.
When I came out it was quite obvious that we were never going to speak of it ever again.
‘Two hundred and three followers, Suze, that’s huge,’ Harry shouted from the office. I walked in. He didn’t look up from his screen and I could see his cheeks blush as I looked at him. ‘And some magazine called Silver Linings is going to call me on Monday with regards to featuring our blog as some sort of column.’
‘Whoa, that is huge.’
‘I know.’ He grinned up at me, obviously relieved we weren’t going to talk about ‘breastgate’. ‘Look, I better go, I’m supposed to be seeing Samantha