Wow, your response is amazing, not since I had Mrs. C causing a stir in a previous story was my inbox bombarded (in a wonderfully good way!) with so many of you going "Agh, eek and it's got to be Harry…." Thank you SO much. I hope it lives up to expectations….

"Nikki?"

"Ooh, Harry did you call her? How did it go? Why are you calling me? Just come back over here and tell me about it. The sharks are circling out here Harry. Don't leave me out here on my own much longer!" Nikki cried.

"Nikki!" Harry repeated.

"What? Harry stop joking around, have you called her or not, what did she say?" Nikki asked as she looked all around trying to spot him.

"Nikki," Harry said a third time, how could she be so oblivious. "I did call her,"

"Yes, but what did she say?

"Well, she said…"

"No scrap that Harry," Nikki interrupted "What did you say? You'd better have thought of something good, if this girl is as amazing as you say she is, I hope you said something good."

"I said something," Harry replied.

"Something, Harry? Something doesn't sound good. Shit Harry! We should have practised before I let you call her. I'm an idiot," she babbled but she was obviously getting nowhere so decided to change track slightly.

"Well if you're not going to tell me what you said, to the woman of your dreams, the one you compare every other woman to, the one you can't live without you could at least tell me what she said to you." Nikki declared.

There was a long pause and then Harry said.

"You really want to know?"

"Of course I want to know, come on Harry we tell each other everything." Nikki replied.

'Not everything' thought Harry. He was making his way back across the bar towards the table now.

"She said…" Harry began.

"Yes!"

"She said, 'Zak, where the hell are you?'" Harry stated, just as the two rugby players in front of him moved off to a corner leaving him a clear view of Nikki's confused face.

"But Harry, I said that about two minutes ago. You were supposed to tell me what this girl that you're crazy about said, when you phoned her and told her that you'd always fancied her, or whatever train wreck of a sentence you came up with..."

"But I did phone her, I have phoned her, I am phoning her." Harry explained.

He saw Nikki look across the room to him, look into her phone, look back at him and drop the phone onto the table. She swallowed and then pointed to herself. Harry smiled shyly at her and nodded.

He walked back to the booth and sat down.

"I was right," Nikki said tremulously. "She is way out of your league!" and let out a broad smile to assure him she didn't mean a word of it and took hold of his hand.

They sat in silence for a while, quietly adjusting and processing. Nikki was worried; most of the ideas about this girl of his were the ones she had formulated, she had no clear picture of what Harry really wanted or what he was expecting and he had a date in less than an hour.

"Why didn't you say something?" she asked gently, tilting her head back so that it rested on his shoulder in a position they had sat in so often before.

"S'complicated," he repeated into her hair.

"But…" began Nikki.

"Oh, Nikki how do I even start? I never knew where to start, what to say?

"Then why didn't you do something?" she asked, sitting forward and looking him in the eye. "It's not like there's been a lack of opportunities," she added.

"I know, I know," he said scrubbing at his hair. "But I never wanted it to be because I was angry or relieved, or frightened or bored or jealous or drunk or just so glad that you were still my friend. Nikki you are my best friend and I'm terrified of messing that up and I get so confused sometimes and then more time passes and it just gets harder and harder. Then the times in between when we're not angry, or relieved or frightened or bored or jealous or drunk just keep getting smaller and smaller. Somewhere you seem to have picked up this notion that a man's passion is directly linked to the speed with which he can get you into bed, I can't compete with them, I've already failed in fact but I don't want to compete with them. I don't want to take drunk flirty Nikki back to my bed."

"Harry?" Despite the stillness she had instilled over her body, her brain was racing and not comprehending all that Harry had said. Except that last sentence, that one had stung.

"Then what exactly is all this about? You don't want Charlotte, or Amy or Barbara or Vera because they're not me, but you don't want me either? Do us all a favour and take a vow of celibacy then and get lost," she said the tears smarting in her eyes.

"Nikki," he soothed, raising his hand to her cheek. "I don't want to take drunk flirty Nikki home, because that's not the Nikki I'm in love with. I don't want to sleep with Nikki the perfect pathologist, or Nikki the passionate people's crusader, they are all aspects of you that I admire to varying extents but they are all just personas you wear, just like you've done tonight with these other girls. I hadn't really thought about it until tonight but it is what you do. Above anything else in the whole world I want to go home with Nikki Alexander, no pretending, no fake boobs, no dodgy accents. I want the one who cries with me when she's sad, and teases me when I deserve it and is always there to say the right thing when I'm about to go off the rails, even if she's balanced precariously on a precipice herself, and I don't want to have to leave quickly in the morning after some awful row. I love the real you Nikki, not the one you think you ought to be. Just you. Just you."

He had to wipe the tears away that had fallen down her cheek. Nikki was staggered.

"You really mean that?" she asked.

"You prefer my pig headed stubbornness to my air pump bra?" she asked a smile beginning to form on her face.

"You love…me?" she continued still processing all he had said.

Harry nodded but he couldn't help his brain from thinking about the air pump bra; 'so that's how she did it.'

"Heaven help me, but yes I do!" he said obviously checking out her cleavage as he did so. "I'm thinking of retracting that comment about the fake boobs though."

"Too late now," she smiled. "What are you going to do?"

"Kiss you, I expect," he said lazily.

"No, I mean about Charlotte." Nikki asked checking her watch.

"Oh, I phoned her earlier and cancelled, I said something had come up and it was important." Harry confessed.

"Liar," Nikki responded.

"Something has come up, that is important," Harry restated. "I'm not lying."

"Yes, but I bet you made is sound like a work something," Nikki insisted, she could always tell when he was lying.

"Are you complaining?" Harry asked leaning in close to her, switching his gaze from her eyes to her lips.

"Not yet," Nikki replied licking her lips right on cue.