Arya had received the text on Saturday afternoon. It was from Gendry and all it said was "Got new bike. Want me to come get you 10am Monday?"

They'd swapped numbers the week before when she'd met him again in, probably the most embarrassing place she could have imagined: the doctor's surgery waiting room. After three years, there he was, her best friend from childhood, sitting in the crowded, local doctor's surgery. She groaned inside. She had planned to get this doctor stuff sorted quietly but as soon as she walked in she met someone she knew. Someone she'd known was probably a more accurate assessment of the situation now. All the same, she felt like she'd been found out, caught. Guilty and she hadn't even done anything yet! This was not how she'd planned her trip to the doctors to turn out, but maybe this unexpected meeting could turn out to be just what she needed after all.

Last time they'd seen each other she was seventeen with absolutely no interest in boys. Having four brothers was enough to put any girl off them for life – or so she'd thought at the time. Gendry was about the same age as her two older brothers; about five years older than her. While she was still at school they were out drinking, partying and chasing anything female with a pulse. They had changed from being dirty, smelly, crude boys to posers, still stinking but this time the reek was of way too much of the latest aftershave. The three of them had seemed to Arya then to be either permanently mooching around or hung-over or letching at the latest "babe".

Not that Gendry was anything like her brothers in most ways. Jon and Robb had gone to the best fee paying schools. When they weren't letching after girls, their time was spent fencing, horse riding and playing at being Captains of Industry in their school clubs. Gendry hadn't had all their advantages in life. He'd not grown up in Winterfell, the largest stately home for miles around, but rather in a tied cottage in the grounds. As manageress of the "The Wolf's Head", the village pub owned by the Winterfell Estate, his mother had been entitled to use of one of the cottages on the edge of the Winterfell grounds and that was how Arya and Gendry had met, had become best friends. While her brothers and big sister Sansa had been packed off to boarding schools and gone willingly, Arya had hated it so much she'd run away dozens of times in the first few years. So may times that her parents had eventually given up and let her come home. Of course then she had to go to the local school and that's when she really got to know Gendry.

She'd walk through Winterfell's grounds to his mother's cottage every morning to meet him as he was the only other kid on the Estate going to the local school. He was expected to look after the Lord of the Manor's daughter and make sure she got there and back safely. Gendry took his responsibility very seriously, but he was also full of fun. Every trip had seemed to her to be a wonderful adventure, as they'd climbed trees, fallen in streams and taken advantage of every opportunity a country childhood could offer. She followed him everywhere, trying to copy everything he did. The boy and his shadow. He'd been her champion when the village kids had teased and tried to bully her for being the daughter of the Lord; not because she had any airs and graces, quite the opposite - just because she was different. "Sir Gendry" she'd called him sometimes to wind him up. With Gendry always ready to fight anyone who tried to pick on her, the local kids eventually gave up and got on with just resenting her. All too soon for her liking, he'd left school, got an apprenticeship as a mechanic in Baratheon's garage in the village and then there were no more daily adventures. Eventually he had not wanted a school kid hanging around at weekends either. Her hero worship had turned to hurt at the rejection, and then faded into memory as she found other friends and interests. And so they just drifted apart, hardly seeing each other until she'd left home at seventeen to go to University. If he'd been around during her infrequent visits to Winterfell in the past three years, then she hadn't noticed, but by God, she had certainly noticed in that waiting room.

The Gendry she remembered was permanently oily, scowling and had an attitude bad enough to scare anyone off, not just a gangly, insecure seventeen year old girl. He'd been a world away from her when she'd last seen him, busy becoming a man when she was very much still a girl. Now she was a sophisticated twenty year old, come back to the countryside, full of the confidence and misguided superiority instilled by three years of the best University education her father's money could buy. Now she'd had boyfriends, had boys as friends and knew that if she chose to turn on her sexuality, to work her practiced routine of the innocent girl in the woman's body, any man could be hers. She decided the instant her brown eyes met his blue; she was going to have Gendry Waters.

He had always been tall, but back then he'd been hunched, self conscious. Being broad shouldered but not yet filled out, at twenty two he still looked like an overgrown boy rather than a man. Three more years of manhood and a physically demanding job had turned him into a perfect example of how Arya thought a man should look. The broad shoulders were now obviously packed with muscle and even just sitting there in a T shirt and jeans she could tell there wasn't a spare bit of flesh on him: his T shirt tight on his toned stomach and arms. Fuck - the arms. He had big biceps, but not those weirdly bulging, stuck on biceps with the narrow wrists of the gym boys she knew, but powerful arms with the muscled forearms, solid wrists and strong, wide hands (she saw these only briefly before he stuffed them in his jeans pockets) that were only earned by heavy lifting and hard work, not bought with an annual gym membership. If she thought she could have got away with running over, jumping on him and just stroking those arms then and there she would have.

His face was almost the same, only smiling with surprise, instead of scowling. Bright blues eyes which, after first locking with hers, scanned her up and down with what Arya now knew from experience to be a man's usual reaction to a hot young girl. The reaction she'd hoped for as soon as she'd spotted him in the surgery. He had a man's dark stubble all over his jaw now, not just on his upper lip and chin like the last time she'd seen him and he also had a stupid big grin plastered to his face. She liked that much better than the stupid sulky scowl of his early twenties. The thick black hair was the same, now cut in a cool style but still falling over his forehead. Definitely sexier than the grown out fringe that used to permanently flop into his eyes - the greasy curtain he used to hide behind. It was the same Gendry only better: manlier, more attractive. Now, looking down at the crotch of his jeans she hoped she knew why he'd stuffed his hands in his pockets that weird way as she'd walked towards him. Yes! She was sure he was pleased to see her, much more so than he'd been three years ago.