We come down the Minster steps and pause at the bottom.

“Well, that was a lot quicker than the journey up,” Sage muses.

I smirk. “That’s because at one point I swear you were jet propelled coming down those steps. You looked like my mum’s old Labrador when she used to lean into the wind.”

He shakes his head. “Good old Poppet. Didn’t she bite your mum once?” I nod and he sighs happily. “Good old Poppet.”

I shake my head. “Well, what did you think of my date?”

He gapes at me. “That was your date?”

I reel back slightly feeling like he’s slapped me. “I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

He stares at me. “I loved it. What are you on about?” He shakes his head. “I meant don’t you feed your men on a date, or do you starve them to death?” He pauses. “In which case I also have to ask why you didn’t pursue that option with Hugo?”

Relief rushes through me and I laugh as I push him. “Come on then, you total whinge bag.”

He laughs and follows me obediently. It’s still cold but the rain has stopped and the streets are filling up again with tourists. We edge down the narrow lanes of the Shambles, the stooped old buildings looming over us like rows of little old men. I skirt a big party of Americans discussing a map held out in front of them and turn to see Sage at my heels like a particularly gorgeous shadow.

“Where are we going?” he immediately and predictably asks. Sage hates being left in the dark.

“A restaurant I know. I think you’ll like it.”

“Did you go with Hugo?” The note of disdain in his voice is very clear despite him having to duck and weave to avoid an old lady with a shopping trolley.

He comes up beside me at the next opportunity as I think hard. “No, I don’t think so. I came with a few people from my old work.” He brightens and I shake my head. “Perhaps you need your own version of Trip Advisor.” I snigger. “You could call it Hugo Adviser and you could use it to tell you which restaurants he’s eaten at in York, so you can avoid them. I have to warn you though, that you’ll starve. He’s eaten at most of them. He’s a serious foodie.”

“I remember,” he says sourly. “We couldn’t even eat a plate of chips until he’d rhapsodised about the quality of the salt and whether it had been harvested by virgins during a lunar eclipse.” He pauses and shoots me a sidelong look. “I just don’t want us to go to the same places that you went to with him. I want us to have fresh experiences.”

I shoot him a confused look that hopefully covers the softness in my stomach at his words. “I don’t even think of him anymore,” I say softly. “I don’t know why I was so upset when he cheated.”

“I think the idea of Hugo is infinitely better than the reality,” he says gloomily. He stops me with a hand on my arm. “He was a fucking idiot,” he says earnestly. “Anyone who cheats on you is a blind twat.”

I stare at him for a long second, warmth filling my chest. “You have to say that,” I finally say. “It’s clause number one of the best friend charter.”

For a second I see a funny expression in his warm eyes. Then he shakes his head. “I think the second clause is feeding me. Where’s this restaurant?” I point up the street to the tapas bar and follow him feeling like a moment has been lost.

I wake the next morning feeling unusually keen to start the day. Today is our second date and just the thought of the two of us being on a date makes me bound out of bed and dive into the bathroom to start the shower.

We sat for hours last night, talking and laughing and sipping rich, dusky red wine. We ate enough for four people, and the evening was filled with the usual heady combination of warm familiarity and breath catching attraction. Well, at least that’s the way it always is for me. Sage seemed as oblivious as ever, remaining focused on me and totally engaged.

He left me with a hug and a promise to pick me up at ten this morning, when apparently, I would be in his power. That thought is more thrilling than I think he knows.

I become aware that I’m standing in a bathroom filled with steam, so obviously the water has heated up. I slide in and hiss in appreciation as the hot water sluices down over my body. I twist and groan when the powerful spray hits my cock. It stirs and I reach down and start a long, slow slide, my fingers tightening on the upstroke and twisting.

For a second my mind is mercifully blank, but then suddenly he’s there, front and centre in my brain. I can see him in my mind’s eye, twisting under the spray, as the water caresses his body in long streams, running over the colours that mark it.

I try to backtrack and think of the actors I’d seen in a porn video the other night, but it’s no good. Sage is still there. My swollen cock is hard and throbbing, my balls full and pulled tight. I need to come so badly, and in the end, I have to give in. I rest one arm against the wall and look down at my other arm bunching as I shuttle my cock through my fist. I squeeze my eyes shut and he’s there again, his dark hair plastered to his skull and those warm, tawny eyes intent on me. In my imagination, he lowers himself to his knees and looks up at me, the water making his eyelashes spike like starfish.

“Noah,” he moans, and opens his mouth. In my daydream, I lean forward and slide my cock along that full lower lip, before slipping it between his lips. He groans in his chest and I look down and see him fisting his own cock. The vision is so hot I can feel my balls tighten even more.

“Sage,” I groan, and open my eyes in time to see streams of creamy liquid hit the wall, only to be washed away. For a second I stand panting, my mind a pure dazzling empty. Then the knowledge that I just wanked off over Sage floods my brain, and I groan and blush. Fuck. It’s not the first time I’ve jerked off over thoughts of him, of course, but for some reason this one feels more important, and I’m now going to have to spend the day with him in the knowledge that I thought of face fucking him until I came. I shake my head. This dating app has certainly complicated my life.

I dry off and then dress in jeans and a thick, grey jumper. Sage had told me to wear warm, comfortable clothes and sensible shoes. I’d enquired at the time whether he thought I’d be wearing platform sandals, but he just shook his head and said he’d take me any way he could get me. That thought steers a little too close to my earlier activities, so I hasten into the kitchen and make a cup of tea.

Ten minutes later there’s a knock at the door, making me start and spill my drink. “Fuck,” I hiss and mop it up with a tea towel, before speeding over and opening the door. Sage stands there dressed in old, faded jeans and a forest green jumper. Dark hair sticks out from under a charcoal coloured beanie, and he’s wearing a thick, navy parka.

“Ready?” he asks, wandering in and making a beeline for the kitchen. “Oh, great. You’ve made tea,” he says happily, and swipes both my cup and my piece of toast.

“Help yourself,” I say tartly, and grab my own parka from the hook.

“Make sure you’re warm,” he offers with his mouth full of my toast. “Although you do look a bit flushed, Noah. What have you been doing?”

I try to ignore his eyes which I’m sure will see straight through to what I did earlier. Instead, I snatch the toast back. “Is there anything else you want from my person?”

He looks me up and down slowly and carefully, and I fidget under his stare. His gaze sharpens and he smiles slowly. “There’s plenty I want from your person, Noah.” With a lightning change of mood, he laughs. “But we’ve got plans, so get your cute arse out to the car.”

It’s freezing outside. The sky is a stormy grey and a strong wind buffets us as we walk to his car.

“Where are we going?” I ask, jumping in and holding out my hands to the heater. He obligingly starts the engine.

“It’s a secret, but do feel free to question me extensively,” he says cheerfully, and I glare at him.

“You know I don’t like surprises.”

He shakes his head. “You don’t like the wrong surprises. Luckily, I know you and I can give you the right kind.”

“Well, if you’re not going to tell me, it entitles me to be in charge of the music,” I say snippily, and he groans.

“Not the eighties.”

“Yes,” I say with relish. “But only the really loud power ballads.”

“Okay, okay. I give in.” He does a neat three-point turn, and I try to avoid looking at his strong hands with the veins showing prominently. The colours of his tattoos move as he grips his fingers around the steering wheel. I can’t help it. I’m a hand slut, and he’s got the best.

I sneak a glance at my favourite tattoo which is a small frog on his left hand. It jumps up towards his knuckles from his thumb joint. It was the first one he ever did himself, and he said it was to commemorate our first meeting.

His voice breaks into my thoughts. “We’re going to Staithes.”

“Isn’t that out Whitby way?”

He nods. “About an hour and a half’s drive away.”

“What’s there? As far as I know it’s a fishing village.”

“Many things, but I have to keep some stuff back or there won’t be any surprises on our date. There’s lots of fresh air which you need after being hunched over the new book. Just know that I’ll treat you to some fish and chips.”

I sit back. “Okay, I’m fine with that.”

He laughs.

A couple of hours later we draw up in a deserted car park. I get out and immediately the wind hits me, flapping the corners of my coat about and snatching impotently at the car park ticket in Sage’s hand. While he reaches in to stick it on the dashboard, I wander over to the balustrade and look down at our destination.

It’s a charming little fishing village. Prettily coloured houses are crammed higgledy-piggledy into winding streets that run alongside the wide, grey expanse of the sea. It churns restlessly today, white horses jumping as the wind catches the water.

I start and immediately relax as Sage comes up next to me and rests his chin on my shoulder. His warm, mint scented breath strikes my neck and I swallow hard, but then ease into his side as he throws his arm around me.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” he shouts over the noise of the wind.

I smile. “You always did like the wild weather.”

He smiles. “You too.”

I laugh. “Do you remember how we used to climb out on top of my mum’s shed whenever there was a storm? God only knows why we weren’t struck by lightning.”

He chuckles. “Especially when the rain got too intense and we used to put your mum’s brolly up.”

“Death by purple-flowered umbrella.”

He tucks his arm in mine and pulls me along. “Come on. I want to show you what I love about this place.”

I follow him obligingly, like always. It’s not just his personality. It’s the fact I’m conditioned to know that whatever he has planned will have something in it that will please me. He’s always been that way.

We wander down the tiny lanes and I peer, hopefully unobtrusively, into cottage windows. I love to see other people’s homes. Sage has always teased me that my reading material should be estate agency listings.

He looks at me and grins. “You still do that. Do you remember when we were kids and we read The Enchanted Wood? There was a pixie in it.”

“The Angry Pixie,” I breathe, and he smiles.

“Yeah. He used to get really cross when someone peeked in his window and he’d inflict bodily harm on the peeper.” He laughs. “I always swore if we managed to find that tree you’d have been murdered before the second chapter.”

I laugh out loud and then look around. It hasn’t escaped my notice that we appear to be the only people insane enough to be out here in this weather. “Where’s this thing we’re going to see?”

“Here,” he says, and comes to a stop.

I look around in bemusement. We’re standing in front of a little, white painted cottage, but there doesn’t seem to be anything unusual about it. I nudge him. “What am I looking at?”

He throws his arm around my shoulder and pulls me to face the cottage full on. I swallow hard at feeling his warm grip and the weight of his body against me and have to concentrate very hard to understand what he’s saying.

He points at the door. “What do you see over the door?”

I look closely. “It’s a carving of a mermaid looking into a mirror. It’s lovely, Sage.” It really is. The mermaid is leaning against a bed of seaweed, and there’s an impression of quirky cheekiness about it.

“It is lovely, but that’s not a carving.”

“Of course it is,” I say, stepping closer. “I can see the shadows from the angles of the stone and … oh!”

He chuckles. “Exactly. It’s a painting. More pertinently, it’s an illusion.”

“A what?”

“Illusions are trompe l’oeil paintings, which literally means ‘trick of the eye’. The artist makes a flat surface appear three-dimensional. This is one of a set which were painted by a local artist. They’re dotted about the village and you have to find them. I’ve never managed to get all of them. I’m missing the Noah’s Ark, and you’re going to help me find it.”

I smile at him, impossibly charmed. “How did you find out about this?”

He shrugs. “You know me and art. I read an article about it and came to the art festival here. It was amazing. They had people carving statues out of wood, craft shows and art exhibitions. They open up the houses and there’s a really good buzz. We’ll have to come next time it’s on.”

I try to ignore the feeling of happiness running through me at the fact that he wants to plan something in the future. The only trouble is he’ll probably be with someone else by then, and I’ll have to make my excuses so I’m not being the gooseberry. I push the depressing thought away and focus back on him. “And what about the illusions caught your fancy?”

He shrugs, looking sheepish. “They’re small and easily overlooked, so when you find one it gives you a feeling of joy.”

“Joy?” I echo, and he blushes and shoves me.

“Yes, joy. Art gives me joy. Lots of things give me joy. Take the piss if you want, but there must be something that gives you the same feeling.”

You I think, and it’s so clear in my head that for a second I’m sure I’ve said it out loud. He stares at me, his eyes dark and searching. Whatever he’s looking for, he must find it, because he steps back looking ridiculously happy.

“Come on, Noah. You’re my good luck charm. I’m looking for the ark.”

“Okay then. Lead on.”

We wander up and down the lanes and count off the illusions we find. They include a very realistic seagull and a prehistoric deer fossil, but his face when we find the ark is priceless. It’s situated over a pair of very weathered garage doors, and I laugh at him as he does a little happy dance around. “You look like fucking Snoopy.”

He grabs me and does a quick two step, and before I can say anything, he grabs my face in his long fingers and presses a firm kiss to my lips. It’s a simple kiss, gone before I can even really register it, but for a second, I can feel the phantom sensation of his dry lips and the scent of bergamot in my nostrils.

I step back and stare at him, but he’s chattering happily about having a treat for me. I obligingly follow him as he talks, but half of me is still back there on the narrow lane and in my head, I kiss him back.

I follow him up the hill, until we reach a long building and he turns to me. “Ta dah!”

“What?”

He grins widely. “Look at the sign.”

I go a bit closer to the sign and the words make the history buff in me smile. “Captain Cook’s Heritage Centre.”

He grins. “He was employed in the village. They’ve actually recreated a street here the way it would have been in his day, but more importantly for you, there are over two hundred books in there.”

“And you’ve been in? It doesn’t seem like your sort of thing at all.”

He shrugs and looks fully at me, an incomprehensible expression crossing his face. “No, I’ve never been in. I wanted to bring you. You say it’s not my thing, but it is yours, and while I might not have liked history at school, I like it when you talk about it.”

“Why?”

“Because you come alive and you make it interesting to me.”

I’m beyond touched. “That might be the biggest compliment you’ve ever paid me.”

He smiles. “I could pay you more, but you’re not quite ready.”

“Not quite ready for what?” I call out, but he ignores me and I’ve forgotten the question within a few minutes of being inside the museum.

When we emerge, it feels like we’ve been in there for days. I look at him to find him grinning. “What?”

He laughs. “I lost you in there for a while. I thought you were actually going to come when you saw the books.”

I shove him. “Most of my time was spent trying to get that virtual reality headset off you so the children could have a turn.”

He laughs. “It was the deck of The Endeavour, Noah. What do you expect?”

“We’re a couple of geeks, aren’t we?”

He smiles. “Yes, but we’re geeks together, so who cares? Come on, let’s get some fish and chips.”

We find a little cafe and by mutual consent we get our orders to eat out and wander over to the front to eat them. The sea is churning and sending wild spumes fountaining up into the air as its waves hit the rocks. The salt is heavy on our lips.

I look at him as he stands munching on a chip and staring out to sea. “Why did you stop travelling?”

He looks up startled and so am I, but that question has been on the tip of my tongue for ages.

“I haven’t stopped,” he says slowly. “I love travelling.”

It’s true. He’s visited many countries over the years. He will disappear for a month, and reappear tanned and tired, but content and full of stories. He backpacked solo around Europe in the year after college.

“You haven’t been for ages, though,” I say persistently. “You were planning Vietnam last year, and then it all went quiet and I’ve never heard you mention it again.”

He searches for words, looking almost shy, and my interest intensifies. Finally, he shrugs. “I got tired of doing it alone, or with mates. There are so many things to see and do, that I want the next time I travel to be with someone who I can really share it with, who will appreciate it the way I do, who will see what I see and point out things I miss. I want to do it properly with someone I care about.”

I think wistfully of how wonderful it would be to travel with him. I’m financially secure and can work anywhere. He asked me to go with him to Europe after college, but I’d said no. At the time I’d been suffering from a combination of nerves and my ridiculous crush on him, which was very strong back then, and it had dictated my response. I’ve regretted it ever since because I think I hurt him, and he’s never asked me again.

“Anyone in mind?” my mouth says independently of my brain, because the question sounds much too eager to my ears.

He obviously can’t sense it because he shrugs and smiles a secretive sort of smile.

“Maybe.”

My heart crashes and burns. Shit. I’ve been living in a make-believe world for the last day. I’m treating it like we’re really on a date, when in fact I’m just his best friend. Nothing more, nothing less.

“That’s good,” I say briskly. “I’d like to see you settle down.”

“What?”

He looks startled, so I make myself nod firmly. “Yes. You should find yourself a decent bloke. One who’ll love you the way you should be loved.”

At first his expression looks almost panicked, but it suddenly smoothes out into a blinding smile. “And how’s that?”

I stare at that smile and almost forget I’ve been asked a question.

“What? Oh,” I hesitate. “Properly,” I finally say. “You should be loved properly and fully, because you’re amazing.”

I can feel his gaze on the side of my face, but I stare steadfastly out to sea.

“Where do you think I’ll find someone like that, Noah?” he finally asks.

“I don’t know,” I say crossly, already sick of the lilt in his voice. “A gay bar, I suppose.”

“That’s lucky then,” he murmurs. “Because that’s where we’re going for the final part of our date.”

“What?” I shake my head as I remember we’re trying out dates. “Not sure you should use this date for anyone else, Sage. It’s a bit tailored to the things you and I like.”

“Well, of course it is,” he says placidly, and screws up his and my empty wrappings. Chucking them in a bin he strides up the hill, leaving me more confused than I was at the start of the day.