Closest To Heaven That I'll Ever Be

20. Angel

"Draco and Tori, if you are fucki—"

The door burst open with enough force to make me jump.

Whatever Blaise Zabini had been about to say died abruptly in his throat.

He stood framed in the doorway, one hand still wrapped around the handle and a thoroughly unapologetic grin already spread across his face. There were people behind him—I could see the top of Pansy's dark head over one shoulder and another figure further back—but Blaise had planted himself so effectively across the entrance that none of them could actually see into the room.

For one wonderfully awkward second, nobody spoke.

Blaise's eyes moved around the private booth. They landed on Draco first. Then me. Then, with an almost comical amount of interest, dropped to the very small space between us.

His eyebrows climbed. "Oh."

I became painfully aware of everything at once. How close Draco and I were sitting.

The fact that my body was still angled towards his after our conversation. The warmth of his arm beside mine.

And, most importantly, the fact that Blaise Zabini had just burst into the room apparently expecting to catch Draco doing something considerably less innocent with his girlfriend.

Blaise looked back at Draco. Then at me. A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face.

"Hello."

Draco closed his eyes. "Fuck's sake."

Blaise ignored him entirely. "You are Draco," he observed, pointing vaguely in Draco's direction.

"Excellent work, Zabini."

"But"—his finger moved towards me—"you are very much not Tori."

I bit the inside of my cheek.

Draco muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like a threat. "Blaise," he said through gritted teeth, "are you coming in, or are you planning to stand there all night?"

"Oh, I'm absolutely coming in."

Of course he was.

Blaise's grin suggested there was now nowhere else in the world he would rather be. He finally stepped aside, allowing Pansy to appear behind him. Her eyes immediately found me, then Draco, before darting briefly between us.

Unlike Blaise, she didn't say anything.

She didn't need to. Her eyebrows did enough.

I quickly shifted forward in my seat, putting a much more respectable distance between Draco and me.

Not because we'd been doing anything wrong. We hadn't. We were friends. Business partners. Friends who happened to have been sitting very close together while discussing loneliness, trust and being there for each other.

Completely normal.

Nothing remotely questionable about that.

"I didn't realise we had company," Blaise said as he crossed the room. "Had I known, I obviously wouldn't have burst in like that."

Draco snorted. "You absolutely would have."

"Yes, but I would've knocked first."

"No, you wouldn't."

"No," Blaise conceded easily. "Probably not." He turned his attention to me and gave a small, exaggerated bow of his head. "My apologies, darling. I hope I didn't frighten you."