Page 28 of More Than Just Friends

Nope. I definitely couldn’t tell him that. His head would swell so much it’d squeeze us out of the coach.

‘Cheers,’ he gasped, clutching his chest in mock shock.

‘You look different, that’s all. Good different,’ I added.

‘Thanks.’ Noah smiled and I noticed my stomach flip.

‘We are here,’ Petros announced.

‘Already?’ I said out loud. ‘That was quick.’

Part of me felt terrible. There I was begging poor Adonis to swap seats with me and the journey wasn’t even long.

Then there was Kayleigh. She’d kindly moved for me and it’d all been for nothing.

There weren’t any steep drops and the time had flown by.

When I went back over to Adonis, he was laughing with Kayleigh, which was a relief.

Now we were at Fira, Noah could get back to focusing on Kayleigh instead of worrying about me.

And I could spend some quality time with my lovely match: Adonis.

Yay!

10

NOAH

As I wandered down the cute cobbled streets of Fira, the capital of Santorini, I tried to steer my thoughts away from my earlier conversation with Ali.

As stupid as it sounded, when she sat next to me, I wasn’t prepared. Her sweet vanilla scent hit me immediately and I was instantly transported back to those nights when we’d hang out together, especially that summer before we started uni.

Up until that point, we’d always been together. Through primary school, secondary school and even college. But after that summer we knew that everything would change. I’d go to uni in Manchester, whilst she’d study in London.

Knowing that we were going to spend long periods apart, we’d promised to make the most of that summer and see each other as much as possible.

Sometimes we’d chill at her place; other times she’d come to mine and we’d cook together or grab a pizza and snacks, binge-watch whatever series we were into, then talk for hours about everything and nothing.

I’d pretend to hate watching her romcoms (but would secretly enjoy them) and she’d watch my sci-fi and fantasy shows and mainly just gush about how ‘hot’ whatever buff character appeared on the screen was.

Years later, she did the same with The Witcher and I wasn’t joking when I said she used to be obsessed with Henry Cavill. So when she compared me to him (well, technically she didn’t – she’d compared me to Superman), for a few moments I felt ten feet tall.

But of course then she’d said I looked nothing like him. Ali had tried to soften the blow by saying that I looked good different, but I already knew I wasn’t her type and I was fine with that. It was no big deal. There weren’t many men who could compete with Henry Cavill, so no harm done.

‘Do you mind if I look in here?’ Kayleigh said, snapping me out of my thoughts. ‘I need to get some fridge magnets.’

‘Go for it! I’ll wait out here,’ I said.

That’d give me time to get my head together.

It was bad enough that I’d sat next to my best friend instead of my match on the coach (although to be fair, Kayleigh had insisted). But now there was no excuse for thinking about Ali.

I was in a country I’d wanted to visit for as long as I could remember and I’d been given a great match, so I should be focusing on exploring this pretty town with Kayleigh.

As I waited outside, I listened to the variety of languages around me. I heard people speaking French, Spanish, German, Chinese and then someone speaking English in a thick Greek accent.

‘Come, we will go on the cable cars. The views are spectacular.’