I allow myself one last touch before dropping my hand and stepping back to give her the space she needs. “Well, it’s Friday night and your best friend is here to celebrate your completed dissertation. What do we do next?” I smile to cover the truth that I’m terrified she’s going to ask me to leave.

She looks to the living room and then back to me. “Before you got here, I was about to watch a movie. Do you want to watch it with me?”

I grin. Little victories. “Sounds good. What are you watching?”

“The Princess Bride. It’s one of my comfort movies. Is that okay? If not, we can—”

“It’s great.” She could tell me she planned to watch a documentary on drying paint, and I’d be game. I doubt I’ll be able to keep my attention on the screen anyway. I’m just glad to be spending time with Shay.

We both sit on the couch, keeping a friend-appropriate distance between us, and she pulls her feet up under her as she starts the movie.

I watch her posture go looser and looser and her eyes get heavy. We’re not even thirty minutes in when she falls asleep. She shifts in her sleep and leans against me, using my arm as a pillow. Her neck’s at an awkward angle, and her body’s torqued. I hate to imagine how knotted her neck will be if she stays like this long, so I grab a pillow, put it in my lap, and guide her to rest her head on it.

Then, like any friend would, I spend the rest of the movie watching her sleep. Totally reasonable friend behavior.

After the credits roll, the TV cycles into a screensaver, and the sudden quiet startles her awake. She blinks up at me. “East?”

“Hey.”

“Have I been sleeping long?”

“Movie’s over.”

She rubs her eyes but doesn’t jerk away from me, so I’ll consider that a win too. Slowly enough so she can stop me if she wants to, I cup her face in one hand and trace the line of her jaw and the shell of her ear.

“Was it as good as the first dozen times you saw it?” she asks sleepily.

“I enjoyed every minute,” I say, though I didn’t waste a minute looking at the screen once she was sleeping in my lap. She stretches her arms overhead, arching her back, and my gaze snags on her hard nipples pressed against the image on her thin T-shirt. There’s a real possibility I’ll get a semi from the sight of Shakespeare’s face from here on out, and that’s just screwed up.

“I should go to bed,” she says.

“If you want.”

Silence pulses around us, thick with sexual tension. “And you should probably leave.”

“If you want me to.”

“I don’t,” she whispers.