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

Phil

“I told you!” I crossed my arms and sat back in my seat so suddenly I nearly tipped backward, though I thought I played it off. Amy rolled her green eyes at me from where she sat across the table, mimicking my posture.

“It’s literally my first game,” she said. “How was I supposed to know?”

“I don’t know, maybe listen to the people who have been playing for longer than you?”

Amy waved one finger in the air in a circle to indicate the rest of the group. “I was! And every single one of us thought you were full of shit. So I did what felt right.”

“And you got someone killed in the process!”

“Well, if you’d waited five seconds before holding a knife to her throat, I would have used the spell on you instead, and everyone would still be alive.”

“And she would have gotten away, and we still wouldn’t have gotten any information.”

Amy narrowed her gaze, her jaw tensing. Then she turned to look down the table at the others, who all sat watching us with varying looks on their faces.

Amy’s older brother Jack, also my best friend, was wincing.

It was exactly what his D this was similar to her fighter character’s approach, too.

Grey’s eyes were widened in interest, not unlike their half-orc barbarian.

Chloe’s smile was one I recognised instantly from two decades of friendship: pure glee. Just like her tiefling sorcerer Calamity, she was chaotic as hell, and I loved her for it.

Even Morgan’s dog Pablo, a little teddy bear of a thing, looked down the table at us with interest from where he sat cosied up in Grey’s lap.

I looked in the other direction to find Fatima, our game master, smirking.

“You,” I said, turning my ire to her. “You knew what you were doing having me roll that perception check in secret.”

“What does that mean?” Amy asked her brother, but I put a hand on the table between us and answered her myself.

“It means she was being underhanded. She wanted you all to doubt me. You didn’t know I rolled a natural twenty on my perception check, so you all thought I was seeing things.”

Jack’s mouth fell open as he turned to Fatima. “You created inter-party conflict on purpose ?”

Fatima just shrugged.

“You messy bitch,” Chloe said, but she was smiling approvingly, twirling a strand of her long red hair around her finger. She lived for this kind of drama, in real life as much as in Dungeons I was half tempted to shave it just for the hotter months.

It was only just June, not even technically summer yet, but it was already sweltering, even at half past eight.

At least the sun was beginning to set, promising a temperature drop, and painting the sky a vivid pink that matched the scrunchy holding up Amy’s long blonde hair.

Her ponytail bobbed from side to side as she walked a few paces in front of me, arm in arm with Chloe.

“I need one of those fans that you can wear around your neck,” Chloe was saying to her, and I pulled out my phone to add it to the running list of gift ideas I had going. Her birthday was in July, so she’d have to suffer a little while longer.

As I opened my phone, I noticed that I had a message from Anil.

I felt a Pavlovian twitch of panic– Anil looked after my grandmother Ethel when I was out, and anytime I saw his name on my phone, my nervous system insisted on jumping to the worst-case scenario.

My brain knew it was nothing; that I would have missed calls if anything were wrong.

But until I opened the message and saw something innocuous, I wouldn’t know for sure.

ANIL

Class got cancelled on Saturday. Do you want me?

Anil had looked after Ethel every Saturday night for over a year until a few months ago, when he’d started a weekend certification course in a nearby city. Amy had been staying with Ethel on Saturdays instead.

I lifted my chin to look up at Amy and nearly ran into her instead– she was stood completely still in the middle of the pavement, staring down at her own phone.

“Fuck’s sake,” I said, stopping just a fraction of an inch from her. “Watch it.”

“I believe you’re the one that nearly ran into me?” she sneered without looking up from her phone.

“Yeah, because you stopped dead in my way.”

“Whatever,” she said, literally waving it off as she fell into step beside me. “Question for you. How late do you think you’ll be on Saturday? Dad wants me to do a site visit with him on Sunday morning, and it’s obnoxiously early.”

“I didn’t know you were doing site visits?” Her dad was a contractor, and I knew she’d been working for him, but the last I’d heard she’d just been doing a few hours a week of admin.

Amy sighed. “Yeah, well, Dad’s notes are impossible to read, so I told him if he wants me to put together his quotes he needs to take me with him. I think the eight a.m. call time is just to punish my insolence.”

“Sounds about right,” I said, chuckling. “Well, you’re in luck. Anil’s free on Saturday, so I don’t actually need you at all.”

I watched Amy out of the corner of my eye, surprised when her mouth drooped in a frown. Then I watched as she forced herself to smile instead.

“Perfect. That’s my Saturday night back.”

* * *

For all the cons in the heat, the beard had its pros, too.

Namely, it made my facial expressions harder to read, which was especially important if Amy were going to be spending more time with the group.

As fun as antagonising her was, I wasn’t always the best at keeping a straight face, and the facial hair helped disguise the grins when they popped up.

Not that I’d had to try very hard to keep a straight face after tonight’s game.

Was attacking me very on-brand for her as Amy?

Of course it was. But it wasn’t exactly helping to further the mission.

And yes, I’d been the one to suggest she join us, but I was beginning to regret giving her another channel to use to drive me crazy.

I watched her from across the table– we were at our usual picnic table in the pub’s beer garden, which was really too small for seven of us, but Jack had pulled Morgan onto his lap so we could all fit. Amy was at the end of the opposite bench from me, laughing at something on Chloe’s phone.