Page 15 of Date Knight (Roll for Romance #2)

Amy

I n the cruellest of ironies, my teenage dream of being Phil Owen’s girlfriend had come true, but I didn’t get to enjoy it, because it wasn’t real. In fact, it started out downright clinical, with the creation of four rules.

Rule one was mine: no unnecessary PDA.

“Don’t be naive,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Have you never seen a rom-com? There will be mistletoe somewhere.”

“Phil, it’s June. We couldn’t be further from mistletoe.”

“Then a one-bed trope at the very least.”

My mouth went dry at the thought of sharing a bed with him. I couldn’t think of why that would come up, but he was right– if we didn’t think about it, the universe would almost certainly force us to deal with it at one point or another.

“That’s why I said unnecessary PDA,” I said.

“I don’t need you hanging all over me.” I pulled a face, hoping to communicate disgust at the idea, but really, I just didn’t want to get confused like I had the other night at the bar.

I wasn’t convinced I’d be able to keep things straight if the snuggling and hip hugging and kissing became a regular occurrence.

Phil looked affronted but agreed anyway; no unnecessary PDA.

Rule two was about dating other people. For the duration, we would be exclusive. This meant I couldn’t date anyone, of course, though that was no skin off my back given my complete lack of romantic life. But it also meant Phil had to give up “swipe time” and his Saturday night dates.

He agreed to this more readily than I’d expected, saying that it really didn’t make sense to let it continue in a small town like ours if we’d any hopes of maintaining the illusion.

Which brought us to rule three.

“We haven’t exactly spent a lot of time together, just the two of us,” I said. “When are we supposed to have gotten together?”

“You heard your brother,” Phil said. “As far as he knows, we’ve been spending every Saturday together when you’ve been here with Ethel.”

That was true, though there was one witness who could contradict that.

“Won’t Ethel know that’s not true?”

Phil’s face fell. “I mean, I hate to say it, but…”

“You think she won’t remember?” Yikes. It did suck to admit, but it was probably true.

“Probably not. We can fix it when it comes up if she does, but I suspect she won’t look that closely at it anyway.”

I tapped my finger against the table, thinking. “So when did we get together?”

We decided to keep a shared note on our phones called “Our Lore”.

If either of us made something up about the relationship, we would add it to the note so the other person didn’t get caught off guard.

So when we decided we’d been together for just two months– any longer and it would have been rude not to fill in our friends and families– into the note it went.

And then finally, the fourth rule, which was the most practical , but somehow felt the most uncomfortable to talk about.

When we broke up after my trial with my dad ended, we’d need to do so in a way that didn’t make either of us the bad guy.

That made it plausible that we could continue to exist as friends.

So we’d work together for the next three months to come up with something that made sense.

By the time we’d agreed on our rules, I had to leave; I hadn’t exactly gotten permission to drive Mum’s car, and I knew she had book club in an hour.

Phil walked me inside where I said goodbye to Ethel, and she thanked me for the pretty new crystal, requesting a blue one next time.

I immediately thought of blue calcite and kicked myself for not having brought it sooner; calcite was the stone of the mind, and I was pretty sure I had a blue one on my dresser.

I promised her I would bring it on Saturday.

“I’ll be camping,” Phil reminded me, and my smile slipped. That stupid fucking camping trip. “But why don’t you come to the pub quiz tomorrow?”

I scrunched up my nose. I hadn’t realised those plans had solidified; no one had told me. “I’m rubbish at trivia.”

“So?” he said with a shrug. “Me too. Besides, the point isn’t to show off our general knowledge. It’s to hang out. I think it would make sense for my girlfriend to be there, don’t you?”

Ethel watched our conversation, looking back and forth between Phil and me as we spoke, her face a picture of glee. I felt a pang in my side– would it feel like betrayal every time we pretended in front of people we loved? If so, it would be a looooong summer.

“I guess we could use it to hard launch, if you’re ready for that.”

“Absolutely,” he said, almost too quickly.

“Okay, deal,” I said, then gave Ethel’s arm a pat and moved to walk past Phil and leave.

He reached out and grabbed my hand as I walked past, pulling me back to him.

My breath caught in my throat as he caught me with a hand around my waist and levelled his gaze with mine.

For a moment, I thought he would kiss me again– would he flagrantly break our first rule so soon?

– but instead he just pulled me in for a hug.

Like he’d done dozens if not hundreds of times over the years, but for some reason it felt different. Like he was holding me differently.

“See you then,” he said softly, and then he released me.

* * *

The fates had even less of an idea what to make of the situation than I had; every reading I did over the next few days seemed to say something different.

I drew major arcana over and over, which I usually found helpful because they steered my interpretation so heavily, but with cards like an upright Emperor (authority, structure, order) next to a reversed Hierophant (rebellion and subversiveness), my interpretations were all over the place.

To be fair, we had tried to impose as much structure and order as possible– on my part, at least, it felt like a helpful way to keep it distinct from a real relationship– but my emotions were still all over the place, which didn’t help my readings.

My horoscopes were no more helpful, but the one that popped up on my phone the evening after I’d seen him was ominous as hell:

The higher your hopes, the farther you can fall if they don’t happen. Be realistic.

Great. Even my random horoscope app was telling me this was a terrible idea. But I was usually such an over-thinker that I figured I was due a bit of cognitive dissonance, so I decided to pretend like everything was fine.

Dad had asked me to write up a job description for my trial period, so I tried to get started, but just as I opened my laptop, my phone buzzed with a text from Phil:

PHIL

Daily Phamy lore drop #1. When you asked me out for the first time (because you definitely were the one to ask me out), I thought you were making fun of me somehow and said no.

I laughed out loud. Honestly, it was more likely to have been the other way around, but fine; we were making things up anyway, weren’t we? And I didn’t hate the insinuation that he had some sort of emotional stakes, even if it was only in this fictional relationship we were concocting.

I checked the shared note, and sure enough Phil had added that tidbit as the first entry.

AMY

Is Phamy our ship name? I don’t know how I feel about that.

PHIL

Embrace it. I’ve already doodled it all over my journal.

AMY

Fine. But I get to drop lore too.

You realised your mistake very quickly and were then the one to ask ME out, and I said no back out of spite. So instead of a first date, we just made out angrily in your front hallway.

PHIL

Honestly? That feels right.

I tried to turn my attention to my job description, but unsurprisingly, I failed.

I’d spent every day of my preteen and teenage years fawning over Phil to no avail, and then after what had happened five years ago…

well, needless to say, I found it hard to believe that we were documenting relationship lore, fake or not.

So much of the angst I’d felt about him over the years had been about how embarrassing he’d found me.

Now, even if it was all for show, he was not only willing to be associated with me, but even contributing to that appearance. It was strange and bittersweet.

The only thing that managed to snap me out of thinking about it was when my phone buzzed again, this time with a notification that I’d been added to a group message called “Niamh’s Hen Party!

!!!! ” I wouldn’t have thought anything could stop me reaching for my phone constantly, but that did the job.

* * *

The next day, as I tried to work on the quote for the Kenchester job, my focus was even worse, knowing I’d be seeing Phil in the evening to hard launch the relationship.

Jack messaged me to say he was excited I was coming along, and I knew everyone had heard about Phil and me anyway, but I was still nervous.

It would be the first true test of our acting skills.

Phil messaged midway through the day this time:

PHIL

Daily Phamy lore drop #2. We’ve outlawed the game Ticket to Ride in our relationship because you get mad every time I take a route you need, regardless of whether I need it too.

AMY

Fine, but we’ve also outlawed Cluedo because I once caught you cheating by looking in the envelope as I was coming back from the loo.

* * *

We broke our first rule almost immediately on Tuesday evening when Phil flung his arm around my waist as we walked into the pub.

He did ask if it was okay, to be fair, but I wasn’t sure it qualified as necessary.

I wasn’t mad about it though; like at the bar on Saturday, being held by him felt somehow stabilising.

So I snaked mine around his middle, too.

Chloe was the first to clock us– unsurprising given that she was craning her neck to watch the door– and the rest of the group erupted in cheers when they saw us walk up with our arms around one another. This of course made my face and neck go fully pink.