Page 13 of Date Knight (Roll for Romance #2)

I wanted to tell her she did have friends, but I knew that wasn’t strictly true. Things between us had soured a couple of years before she’d left, and it had taken her and Jack a while to form a friendship after he’d moved home. I might have wanted a new start too if I were her.

“Anyway, Chris was friends with our other flatmates, and we all hung out together a lot. I could feel them pushing me on him, and honestly, he can be really charismatic and attentive when he wants to be. So yeah, I guess I liked him. It got weird the moment I moved in with him, though. When it was just us, it became painfully clear that we didn’t really have a lot in common.

I realised pretty quickly– within a couple of months– that he was cheating on me, and honestly, I know it sounds terrible, but I was kind of relieved.

I had a reason why it hadn’t worked, and I could move back in with Niamh.

She didn’t need the rent money, so she hadn’t filled my room still.

“But a few weeks later I caught them together, and I realised they’d been sneaking around for a while. And when I tried to talk to our other friends about it, it turned out they all already knew.”

I fought back a scowl; it made me furious to think of people treating Amy like that. She could be spiky, sure, but she was one of the most thoughtful people I knew. It was a mystery to me how someone so wonderful could end up surrounded by people who were so awful.

“Anyway,” she said, physically shaking it off, and I resisted the urge to reach out and cover her hand with mine. “That’s why I wanted to pretend around them. They clearly got off on hurting me, and I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.”

“I’m glad you didn’t tell me all this beforehand,” I said, my jaw still tight. I brought my hand to my chin to loosen it. “I’m not sure I could have been so civil to them.”

“Well then I’m glad, too,” she said, smiling weakly. “Your complacency was perfect. Niamh was so confused.”

“Happy to be of service,” I said. “But that kiss?—”

She cringed. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“I mean, I kissed you, technically,” I said with a shrug.

“Semantics. I put you in that position. I didn’t really give you a choice, did I?”

Oh, I chose , I thought. But it was too close to what Chris had said, so instead I asked, “So what now? We seem to be in a bit of a mess.”

“And look what arrived,” she said, placing an envelope on the table between us. I could tell just from the weight of it hitting the table that it was a wedding invitation. A bit of chocolate from her finger smudged onto the white paper as she placed it down.

“Fuck,” she said, hurriedly trying to wipe it off but just smearing it further.

“That was fast.”

“They hand-delivered it,” she said. “And look at the names.”

It had her name and address written in beautiful calligraphy, and then my name, first and last, added in blue biro next to it, as if it had been scrawled hastily before delivery. I laughed.

“I hadn’t expected to be invited by name.” I looked over at her and found her looking down at the envelope with a strange expression on her face. She almost looked… longing?

“Amy,” I asked, leaning forward, “do you wanna go to this thing?”

She shook her head vehemently. “Definitely not. I mean, showing them they didn’t hurt me is one thing, but subjecting myself to celebrating their love is another thing entirely.”

“Because you know I’d go with you if you wanted me to,” I said without thinking, and her gaze snapped up to meet mine. Her brow knitted together in consideration.

“You would?”

“Yeah, I would,” I said. I’d do anything you wanted me to, I didn’t say.

“That’ll be fun to explain to our families,” she said, laughing. “Once we tell them we’re not actually together, and then fuck off to go to a wedding in three months’ time.”

I laughed too, and nodded. Then I saw movement over Amy’s shoulder, and I looked up to see Ethel standing at her bedroom window, shamelessly watching us. She made a kissy face when I looked at her, and I rolled my eyes, shooing her off. Amy turned around to look just as Ethel darted away.

“Oh my god,” she said. “She’s incorrigible.”

“She’s been on my case for so long to find a girlfriend,” I said. “I think this might be the happiest day of her life.”

Amy and I were both smiling, but our smiles faded in tandem as the implication of what I’d said sank in. That if that were true, she’d be crushed to learn that we weren’t actually together.

“Was your family happy?” I asked. “When they thought we were together?”

“Honestly,” Amy said, “Mum was so excited you’d think I told her she was going to be a grandmother. Absolutely uncalled for.”

I couldn’t help but smile. Patricia was like a second mum to me. We’d spent hundreds of hours together in the kitchen over the years; she’d taught me everything I knew about cooking. Even up until last year, I’d regularly gone over just to see her.

“And your dad?” I asked, less confident about Alan’s reaction. He’d always been pleasant enough, but he was a tough guy, and we had exactly nothing in common.

Amy’s eyebrows shot up. “Um, well, he actually gave me a job.”

I frowned. “Sorry, what?”

She nodded. “You heard me. He found out we were together– or, well, Jack said we were– and he gave me the job I’d been asking for. Said if I was putting down roots, he’d obviously misjudged me. So now I’ve got a three-month trial to prove it wasn’t a mistake.”

“Well shit,” I said, sitting back in my seat and sinking further into the grass as a result.

“Chloe’s pissed we didn’t tell her.”

“Yeah, I picked up on that,” I said. “Grey, too, which means Fatima almost certainly knows.”

Amy let out a sigh. “Wow. So that’s reached just about everyone, hasn’t it.”

“Seems like it,” I said quietly, my gears spinning. I was having what I was almost sure was a really, really bad idea. But as I looked up at Amy, she looked almost sad. Was it wishful thinking that maybe she was sad for the same reason I was?

“Can I say something stupid?” I asked, and I didn’t miss the way her gaze flicked instantly to mine, her eyes widening slightly.

“I suppose I should be used to it by now.”

I rolled my eyes. Even now, of course she was throwing barbs my way. “Fuck off,” I said, making her laugh.

“Go on, what were you gonna say?”

I sucked in a breath through my teeth, gathering courage. This was either going to be the most embarrassing moment of my adult life, or… well, or it wouldn’t be.

“What if,” I said, and she sat up a bit straighter in her seat, bolstering me, “what if we didn’t correct them?”

Her mouth fell open slightly for just a second before she snapped it shut again. I could tell she was trying to keep a straight face.

“Say again?” she asked, and was it just me, or was she fighting a smile?

I cleared my throat before continuing. “I mean it,” I said. “Chloe and Ethel have been on my back for ages about finding someone, and clearly your family is happy about it too. So maybe, at least between now and the end of your trial with your dad, we just… let them believe it?”

I said it like a question, and really it was.

Because I heard myself, and I was ridiculing myself internally even as I spoke.

It was absolutely unhinged, the idea of pretending to date someone to keep Ethel and Chloe off my back.

Never mind Amy, the woman I’d thought about every day for five years.

Whose family was like family to me. Whom I couldn’t just casually date , because our lives were so entwined that a breakup would have catastrophic consequences… right?

But I didn’t take it back. I didn’t turn it into a joke. I just let it hang there between us, watching as Amy’s own gears spun behind her eyes.

I imagined having three months where I didn’t have to hand Chloe my phone for “swipe time”, where no one at Ethel’s social groups tried to set me up with their grandkids, where I could hold Amy’s hand whenever I wanted to.

I’d need to come up with a solution for the very specific kind of tension I always felt after too much time around Amy, but maybe that would be worth it for the rest?

I watched Amy, wondering what her own internal battle looked like. Eventually she sighed and shook her head emphatically. “Bad idea.”

I forced out a laugh, half relieved that my stupid idea hadn’t worked, and half hurt that she agreed it was stupid. But she wasn’t done.

“I couldn’t do that to you,” she said. “It’s way too much.”

I frowned. “What do you mean do that to me? It was literally my idea.”

“Semantics,” she said again.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Amy,” I said, leaning forward and hanging my head in my hands. This woman annoyed the hell out of me sometimes. “It’s not semantics, alright? I said it because I was genuinely suggesting it, and I kissed you outside that bar because I fucking wanted to.”

She looked at me wide-eyed, her face flushing, and I felt myself backpedal immediately, deciding I’d better add a qualifier.

“I wanted to help you put those twats in their place. And now I think we can help each other.”

She breathed out slowly through her mouth, holding my gaze. It was like she was trying to see if I’d fold; trying to call my bluff. But I wasn’t going to, no matter how ill-advised the idea was. Not if there was a chance she’d take me up on it.

“Fuck it,” she said, and I grinned. There was the fiery girl I knew.

“Fuck it,” I repeated.

“We’ll need to set ground rules,” she said. “And we’ll need to figure out an exit strategy that doesn’t explode our whole lives. But if we stay on the same page, it could actually work.”

“Definitely,” I said, nodding my head.

“And if at any point it’s not working, we stop. No big deal.”

I smiled, trying to keep it cool and casual. “Exactly. We can just see how it goes. Easy peasy.”

“Lemon squeezy,” she said back, her own smile tentative, like she couldn’t quite believe we were actually having this conversation. Despite having had the mad idea, I was right there with her.

I reached forward and grabbed her hand, holding her gaze. It was genuinely absurd, what we were talking about doing. Lying to the people we loved most. Ignoring our catastrophic shared history. I needed to make sure she was genuinely on board, so I narrowed my eyes at her, waiting.

“So… we’re doing this for real,” she said.

I nodded, and I couldn’t help but grin. This might be a terrible idea, but I was pretty certain it would be fun.

“Amy Evans,” I said, taking a deep breath, amazed that I was saying these words after everything we’d been through. “Will you be my fake girlfriend?”