I smiled and nodded. Tink knew what I had been fighting against in my head. I liked Tudor... a lot.

There, I’ve said it!

I let out a dejected sigh. “What we starting with, Tater-Tot?” I teased, using Tink’s inventive pet name.

“Priscilla okay?” I could tell he was worried he’d offended me.

“Yep, let’s watch a c**k in a frock on a rock,” I quoted.

He gave a shy grin, and we settled back and watched our fill of Australian drag queens bopping to the soundtrack of Cece Peniston and lots of ‘fucking’ Abba.

We had just started the second film in our movie-marathon day, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when there was a knock at the door. Tink jumped up and seconds later he walked back in, followed by Tudor. My fairy drew my attention and gave me his ‘I told you so’ glare.

Tudor moved from behind him to meet my eyes, and gave me his lop-sided smirk. The killer Tudor smirk.

Heart. Skips. A. Beat.

“Hey, Tash. How are you today?” he asked in an upbeat tone.

He looked good, as always. Hell, who am I kidding, he looked positively edible. He had on dark-wash jeans and a fitted long black T-shirt, showing the top of his tattoo-coated pecs and as ever, a matching black beanie hat. I quickly glanced down at myself, not remembering what I had thrown on haphazardly that morning. Standard black leggings and long denim shirt with my hair in a messy bun and the puppies pushed together, creating a fabulous cle**age. Not too shabby.

“I’m feeling loads better, thanks. Cheers for looking after me last night. Sorry I wasn't awake when you left.”

He smiled back at me, flashing the delicious dimples, and shrugged. “No problem, glad I could help.”

I stared at him, my head tilted to the side in contemplation. He seemed different – friendlier, and not as stiff. He was speaking to me like one of the guys, where before he had been more intense.

He headed in my direction, jumped onto the couch next to me and scooped up some of the sweet popcorn I was clutching in my hands, pushing the whole lot into his mouth.

“You hungry?” I teased.

He lightly punched my shoulder. “Always hungry for your goods, Tash.” he laughed.

He punched my arm, my friggin’ arm! Well shucks, friend-zone it is.

“Tate was just telling us that it was actually you that chose the sunflowers for Wil,” Tink chirped up as I nursed the burgeoning bruise on my upper tricep.

Tudor fidgeted and blushed under the fairy’s steely gaze, rubbing his lips together, exposing his dimples. “Oh, yeah... I did.”

He flicked a glance my way. “They just reminded me of you. I don't know… I-”

“I love them, thanks. A nice apology gesture from a new friend,” I interrupted, taking into consideration what Tate had just said and exaggerating our platonic status.

He looked slightly confused but chose to ignore it. “So, what are we watching? Is that Tim Currie in latex and suspenders?” he leaned forward to get a closer look.

I laughed. “Sure is. Keep watching, big boy. You’re in for a real treat!”

He fell back and shuffled closer to the popcorn bowl between us. “I have a feeling this will be educational, Tash.”

I winked. “Like I keep saying, if there is one thing Natasha Munro can do, it’s teach!”

And so the afternoon went on, involving lots of jokes and friendly banter and absolutely no touching or all-consuming stares from Tudor. I’m going to be honest and say that I was a tad gutted about the lack of physical contact or affection, but at least we were friends. When Tudor loosened up, he was actually really nice to be around.

The rest of the week went by in much the same way. Tate would come over to see Tink, Tudor would tag along, and we would chat and watch TV or play games.

Our favourite topic of discussion was linguistics. Tudor introduced me to Canadian slang words and ribbed me about my accent. He tried to imitate me, but, like most non-Geordies, he ended up sounding like a dodgy version of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

He laughed at my pronunciation of his name, ‘Chew-da’, and informed me that beanie hats in Canada were ‘Tuques’ (pronounced ‘Toook’) and woolly hats in no way resembled beans, thus ‘beanie’ was a stupid name in the first place. I couldn’t believe he thought ‘Tuque’ was any better.

He explained that Canadians say ‘eh’ at the end of practically every sentence, and he laughed when I told him us Geordies say ‘like’ at the end of ours. He explained that a ‘loonie’ was a dollar coin and a ‘toonie’ was a two dollar version, and I made him say ‘out house’ over and over again until we could barely breathe from laughing. I explained what the difference between a ‘bonny lass’ and a ‘canny lass’ was, and introduced him to the staple terms of ‘alreet’, ‘Aye’ and of course the obligatory ‘howay, man!’ Tudor vowed never to go to Newcastle without me there as his personal translator.