Without a door to shut out the storm around the cove, a chill draught soon pervaded the lower deck. Sally's cardigan spewed seawater down her arms and back as she tugged the wool from her body, holding her breath through bouts of shivering to lay it out to dry on the floor. Goosebumps spanned the length of her exposed skin, and she rubbed her arms until she painted red streaks into her flesh.

    Flick had not stirred. A small cut split across her forehead, releasing a thin trickle of blood to darken her fizzing features. Her clothes were soaked through, and Sally almost heard her friend's body temperature plummeting to dangerous levels every moment she stayed slumped in the seat. After feeling how cold Flick's hands were, Sally broke from sitting by her side to find some way to keep them both from chilling beyond saving.

    The yacht looked fancy from the outside, yet inside it was a modest vessel, designed for afternoons floating over the shallows rather than long trips in rough weather. There were no rooms to shut themselves away in, and certainly no heating system to combat the cold's invasion. What Sally could see were storage compartments, though every drawer, cupboard, and locker she opened was devoid of contents, save for a flyer promoting a range of flotation aids. She hoped things did not come to that, given she had not found a single life jacket so far.

    As her hopes flitted away, Sally opened up the final locker by the steps and leapt back as it tossed a bundle of material at her. Taking it from the floor and unfurling it, she found that Martin Rowe had left one bright red towel onboard along with a thin facecloth, their dry fibres a relief to touch. She wiped her face with the cloth, then made her way to her friend's side and dab the cut on her forehead clear of blood. Her hands shook more with every movement. This was not the situation she had in mind when she daydreamed about undressing Flick.

    Her boots and socks came off easily, though the buckets of water they spat out coated the floor in a slippery mess. Even her flannel shirt was no issue to peel free of Flick's skin, its deep red lines flaring against the earthy tones of Sally's cardigan in the corner of the room. As soon as Sally turned back to Flick, however, she spotted a pair of scarlet bra straps peeking out from below her friend's top, a sight that struck her in two very different ways. It was a relief, because Sally had half-expected Flick to forgo bras in the name of comfort. However, it also sent extra shivers along her shuddering spine. She was really about to take Flick's top off.

    The first sight of Flick's stomach raised flames in Sally's cheeks, every added inch of bronze flesh stoking her fires hotter and hotter until she had forgotten about the freezing storm outside. A gasp stole the breath from her body as her knuckle brushed against the curve of Flick's chest, the wine-red hue of her bra glowing through the wet fabric. Sally shut her eyes, took a firm hold on the garment, and lifted it up.

    Keeping her eyes shut, Sally threw the ragged top with the rest of their clothes and felt around for the towel. It eluded her blind grasp after several attempts, and she cracked an eye open to guide her hand, only to catch sight of Flick in front of her.

    As much as the girl's soft tawny skin and sleek undergarment competed for her attention, it was the shimmering golden locket that Sally's hand drifted towards. Flick never talked about it, and Sally had never thought to ask about it. It was light and small, resting comfortably on three of her fingers, and she flipped it around to find an engraving on its rear. "F.S. x M.F," she read aloud, ushering a droplet of water off the metal with her thumb. "Felicity Scott and..."

    "Take a picture if you want. It's nothing Miri's never seen before." The sound of Flick's voice startled Sally into dropping the locket and stumbling backwards, and her friend's hand snapped to her wrist to catch her. "I'm shook right now, Sal. You could've just asked to see me topless if you were so curious."

    Sally felt the spear tips of her friend's eyes pierce her face. "I – that's not – I was just –"

    Suddenly, Flick cracked a smile and let her hand fall into Sally's, their frozen fingers slipping together. "Chill out, I'm just messing with you. I guess I'm losing my pants for you too, right?"

    "If you're okay with it," Sally said, stammers rocking her voice. "I can look away if it helps."

    Her offer went unnoticed, mainly because by the time she had finished speaking, Flick had already yanked her jeans down her damp legs and hurled them into the corner. The mismatch between her beaming red bra and her jet-black underwear might have grated some, yet to Sally it was so precisely, perfectly, quintessentially Flick that she would never have asked for anything else. Flick brushed a brace of wet hairs from the side of her face, and even that simple move sent Sally's heart racing.

    Sally held out the towel, only for Flick to push it back into her chest. "No way, bud," she said, a devilish twinkle in her eye. "You've seen mine, now you show me yours. Tit-for-tit."

    Her arms trembling, Sally extended the towel again. "Flick, you'll catch your death if you stand there like that!"

    "And so will you if you keep slumming in those gross wet rags, Sal!" Flick knocked the towel aside and held Sally's hands, closing the distance between them until Sally could feel her friend's dwindling body heat against her face. Slowly, one of Flick's hands crept to the hem of Sally's t-shirt. "Unless you want me to get them off for you?"

    Sally swallowed. Every nerve in her body yearned to give into Flick's touch, to let what she had dreamed of so much become real, yet fear shrieked over all their signals and pushed Sally out of the girl's reach. "I can do it, don't worry."

    With a grin, Flick tossed the fallen towel over her shoulders. "Nice! You strip off, and you can join me in the towel when you're ready. Good thing I brought supplies, right?"

    Confusion stilled the shaking of Sally's hands enough for her to start undressing. By the time Sally had gotten her jeans off, Flick had opened up Miri's bag and pulled out her tin hip flask along with a second, smaller drinks vessel. Flick held the flasks up, shook them to reveal their ample contents, and turned to face Sally with a whistle. "Wow. You really are as cute as I think you are, aren't you?"

    "Thanks," Sally strained to say through her dry mouth. Whether it was the cold deck air holding every inch of her delicate pale skin still, or the fact her friend was just as exposed, she did not move to cover herself from Flick's eyes. Her sky-blue bra defied the stormy clouds overhead to shine in the yacht's interior, and the front of her light pink underwear wore a small charm that glinted in the low light. Pushing through her nerves, Sally forced a friendly smile. "You look great too."

    Flick laughed and took Sally's hand. "Real smooth, bud. Are we getting under this towel or not?"

    Huddled in the corner of the room, the towel suddenly seemed a lot smaller when asked to spread itself across the two of them. Sally folded her limbs as tightly around herself as she could, and she endeavoured to keep a millimetre of space between her bare skin and Flick's. Without warning, Flick's arm swung around her soft shoulders and pulled her close, and the towel wrapped around her body to pack them together.

    Sally froze in place. Inside the cover, one of the flasks clinked against her fingernails. "It won't kill you, Sal. Relax," Flick said, swilling the liquid around the flask's walls. Her other hand fiddled with a stray lock of Sally's shadowy hair, the tips of her fingers glancing past her bra strap.

    Letting her head fall to rest on Flick's shoulder, Sally took the flask and unscrewed it. It was before dusk, she reckoned, yet the storm outside showed no signs of letting up, and she needed something to thaw the ice that threatened to encase her organs. She took one sip and immediately coughed, the burn sudden and intense enough to make her choke. "How do you drink that every day?" Sally shouted through her spluttering.

    Swigging from her own flask, Flick giggled and squeezed Sally's arm. "I was about to ask if you'd ever drank straight whisky before, but I guess I have my answer!"

    Feigning a frown, Sally swallowed down the rest of the fire in her mouth and settled her head by Flick's neck again. She had been close to Flick before, yet from here she saw the slight freckles along her friend's neck and shoulders, their ranks falling in sweeping curves that Sally wanted nothing more than to trace with her finger. Instead, she looked up at Flick's face as her free hand found her friend's under the towel. "How are you feeling?" she asked, her voice softer than she expected.

    Flick tightened the towel around them. "Honestly? My head's killing me, I'm freezing my butt off on this floor, and I'm not nearly drunk enough to justify feeling this awful." She looked down, her lips brushing against Sally's forehead. "But other than that, I'm pretty chill. How about you? You had to pull some superhero-level stuff up there."

    "I'm fine. Honestly, I was too busy worrying about you to focus on how crazy things got," Sally answered, sighing as the aches ebbed out of her limbs. The bag lay on the seat opposite her, its zips jingling as the yacht rocked on the waves. "Flick, can I ask you something?"

    With a shrug, Flick sipped from her flask again. "I don't know, can you?"

    "Why do you call your camera Miri?"

    The question fell to the deck like lead, and Flick sucked air through her teeth before placing her flask between her legs. "It's funny, she's not really my camera. It's just...she's all I've got left of someone I used to care about."

    Setting her own flask down beside Flick's, Sally could not take her eyes off Flick's soft face. "Your friend from home," she whispered.

    "Miranda wasn't just my friend, Sal." Flick spoke without her usual bouncy tone, her words landing with a mournful sigh instead. "She was my real deal, my ride-or-die, the greatest fricking person I'd ever met until..."

    Sally raised her head from Flick's shoulder. "Until what?"

    "Until she wasn't." Shutting her eyes, Flick pulled her arm from Sally's shoulders. "I screwed up big time, and now it's too late to do anything about it. She's gone."

    It was too dark to tell, but Sally swore she saw faint ripples forming at the corners of Flick's eyes. "I'm sorry, Flick. Were you and she...together?" she asked, glancing down at the locket around her friend's neck.

    Flick hesitated, then nodded. "We never even had to think about it. We just clicked. We lived together, worked together, slept together...you couldn't drag us apart if you tried." She laughed as tears ran down her cheeks, not bothering to wipe them away as her smile faded. "Then, the one time she needed me more than ever, what did I do? I freaked. I freaked out, ran away and never even looked back, like she meant nothing to me."

    "I'm sure it wasn't like that!" Sally gasped, placing her hand on Flick's shoulder. "I've seen how bold and confident you are. I don't know what happened, but I know you'd never do something like that without a good reason."

    "A reason like I was scared? A reason like I watched a crisis tear up her life and just left her because I couldn't handle it?" Flick's head dropped as she choked on the rest of her words, her tears falling faster onto the towel. "That's the real Flick Scott for you. I'm a coward. As soon as things get tough, I snap. Look at what happened just now in this storm, when I abandoned you."

    Sally placed a hand on Flick's face and wiped a tear from her cheek. "That wasn't your fault, and I don't think what happened before was your fault either." As the girl met her eyes, Sally let a smile grace her lips. "You say you're a coward, I say you have a big heart. You say you abandoned me, I say I would never be doing this without you. You say that's the real Flick Scott, I say I like the real Flick Scott."

    As tears poured from her eyes, Flick looped her fingers around Sally's wrist. "Sal..." she sighed, her voice barely more than a sigh. The air swirled with the warmth of her breath.

    She had resisted again and again, yet now Sally's inhibitions crumbled into burning coals under the flames of her passion. Before she knew it, she placed her other hand on the girl's face and closed the distance between them, sealing their bond by planting her lips on Flick's. The towel tumbled into messy folds around Sally's thighs as she drank in the sweet spice she found on Flick's lips, its heat much more intoxicating than the liquor she had tasted before. When Flick pulled Sally onto her knee and slipped her tongue into her mouth, Sally wished for the rest of the world to slip away to make proper space for the feelings swelling inside her chest.

    The world granted her wish sooner than Sally expected. Moving her hands to Sally's shoulders, Flick lay a line of kisses along her neck before she pressed her lips to Sally's ear. "Sal, if you want to..." she whispered, her fingers sliding under Sally's bra straps. "So do I."

    Sally shivered under Flick's touch, words evading her every effort to grasp them. Soon, she settled for stroking away the last of Flick's tears and smiling into her glassy hazel eyes, realising her words had fled because they were no longer needed here. She had everything she needed in the girl between her arms.