Free Sacrifice by M.G. Morgan

want. I didn’t want her to look at me with pity. It was one emotion I loathed.
    She linked her arm through mine and began to tow me across the street towards her apartment. I thought about resisting. Making up a fib and telling her I had to be somewhere else. But in the end my brain couldn’t think of anything at all and I didn’t want to turn away from my best friend.
    She didn’t say anything else to me until we made it inside the quiet safety of her apartment. The place was filled with little trinkets. Photos in home made frames decorated the tables. Rachel was a colourful person, she liked to have pretty things around her in some ways she reminded me of a magpie, always needing shiny little baubles surrounding her in her nest.
    “So you have to tell me everything that happened?” She sat me down in a seat next to her breakfast counter as she began to make coffee. I watched without opening my mouth as she headed for the fridge and pulled a carton of milk and a can of cola from its depths.
    She plonked the can down in front of me before smiling. “I thought you’d prefer that.”
    Grinning I nodded and popped the ring pull, the satisfying hiss of the fizz instantly relaxing me. She had her back to me when she spoke again.
    “So, I remember you were sitting on the couch talking to Ian… And then you disappeared.”
    “You didn’t notice him leaving with me?”
    Rachel turned to me and set the french press down on the counter and two mugs. She chewed her lip and tried not to make eye contact with me. “I didn’t…” She seemed to hesitate for a second before bursting out. “It wasn’t my fault. The drummer from Backward Sliding Domino started talking to me… And he is just so cute and funny and a little bit shy and…” She paused again, cutting off her own excited outburst. “I’m sorry. I’m a terrible friend I should have noticed.”
    I shook my head and sipped from the can. I didn’t hold it against her. If it had been me and the drummer from Domino had started talking to me I doubted I would have noticed anything odd happening.
    “It’s fine. And anyway Ian is a creep. He planned it that no one would notice. He didn’t count on Sam…” I trailed off as a blush crept up my cheeks. I couldn’t shake the image of him lying in my bed, stripped to the waist, his dark hair tousled.
    Rachel sat down opposite me, a glint in her eye as she noticed my sudden discomfort. “Did something happen between you and Sam?”
    “No.” I answered to quickly, the word practically jumping from my mouth. Inwardly I cursed myself, she knew now that something had happened. But how was I supposed to explain it. Technically nothing had happened but I had felt it and I knew Sam had too. I knew from the look in his eyes that he had felt what I felt…
    “Na-tash-a…” She drew out the sound of my voice like I was a small child and she needed to fight with me to get the truth.
    “Fine, nothing actually happened but something almost did…”
    She looked shocked for a minute, her hand covering her mouth. “He didn’t… You know try anything on while you were?”
    Laughing I shook my head. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I watched her try to recover her expression. She wiped the look of shock away and replaced it with indignation.
    “God, no. He was a perfect gentleman… Although I almost wasn’t a lady when I woke up this morning and saw him lying in my bed half naked.”
    The look of shock was back on Rachel’s face instantly. “But how?”
    I shrugged and sipped the drink she had given me. “I don’t know. I presume he thought it was best to sleep over when he brought me back last night… Maybe he was worried or something?”
    With everything that had gone on it hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder why he had been half naked in my bed. Could he really have been worried about me? He didn’t know me enough to worry about me, or at least I presumed. Maybe because he had been the one to take me from Ian.