I don’t find a retort. Instead I sip rum and settle into the couch I bought off Etsy a month ago believing a nondescript human I’d never have to think about would sleep on it. It still blows my mind that in the short time Bhodi’s been my tenant, he’s becomeallI think about.
It should unnerve me, like it’s clearly unnerved Sab. But it’s hard to feel anything but chill as Bhodi mirrors my pose and we settle as close as we had in the fracture clinic’s waiting room.
We drink more rum. I get brave and ask Bhodi more about his job.
“Do you work in A&E?”
“No.” He swipes rum from his lips with his thumb. “I did HEMS calls for a while when I left the Navy, but I don’t enjoy all the blood and guts. I’m better at keeping patients alive once they’ve been put back together.”
“So you work on…?”
“HDU, mainly. It’s attached to the intensive care unit.”
I know that. I nearly died up there. More than once. But rum and Bhodi help me blast past that and focus on him. “You must still have tough days.”
“Lots. But I see some amazing things too. People who walk out smiling when they should’ve died before I met them. That’s the best part of it.”
“Do you wear scrubs or one of those fancy tops?”
“Scrubs. They’regreen.”
His nose crinkles. Combined with his hair that’s dried sticking up, as though I’ve rolled him around on the rug, it’s cute. “You don’t like them?”
“I don’t like anything green. Except that Christmas tree card you showed me the other day. I liked that.”
“Good to know.”
“Why?”
Like they have so many times, our gazes lock. I fall into his and he falls into mine. I want to lean closer. To be there waiting, when he does. But I hold back, so does he, and the moment almost passes.
And maybe it would’ve if he’d been someone else.
If I’d been less transparent to him.
“You know…” Bhodi sets his glass down. “It feels really good to talk about this stuff with someone who understands. Like, it’s starting to dawn on me that I need a friend more than I need some banging sex.”
“What about shit sex? That might be all I’m good for.”
A rum-fuelled laugh spills out of Bhodi. He’s not drunk. Neither am I. But the rum has softened the edges on both of us, and there’s nothing awkward about this. “I know you’re not shit at sex, Tam.”
“How?”
He gives me an unsubtle once-over. “It would be the cruellest trick if you were.”
That’s it. All I’m getting. But it’s okay, I know what he’s saying. Bhodi’s hotter than sin. It defies physics to even contemplate him being a bad fuck. So I contemplate him being a good one—the best—and it gets me in all kinds of trouble with my conscience.
He needs a friend, remember?
I can’t forget it. Iwantit. To be the person he stares at like this and gives up his darkest secrets to. His lightest secrets. All of it. So I give him one of mine. “I think I need a friend too.”
Bhodi smiles, his eyes twinkling in the moonlight slowly cloaking the room as the rainclouds pass. “There’s an obvious solution here. Can’t promise I’ll never flirt with you, though.”
“It’s banter if we’re friends. Totally doesn’t count.”
It should. I want to be Bhodi’s friend, like my fucking soul knows how much I need it. But none of that dulls the current pinging between us. The impact of every charged comment. Every casual touch that leaves a smouldering burn in its wake.
The droll glance Bhodi sends my way tells me he knows this as well as I do, but he doesn’t argue. Heyawns, and it’s catching.
