Page 3 of Date Knight (Roll for Romance #2)

Chloe and Jack were my two best and oldest friends.

I’d known them since the first day of secondary school, which was my first day living in town after growing up until then across the border in Wales.

Ethel had become my guardian after my parents both died in a car accident when I was eight, and eventually we’d had to move from my mum’s hometown back to Ethel’s house so she could go back to work, and I’d had to start at a brand new school.

And if I hadn’t met Jack and Chloe that first day, if they hadn’t started talking to me without even introducing themselves as if we’d always been friends, my life could have looked very different.

Of course, Amy had come into my life not long after.

It had started with me hanging out at Jack’s, Amy nosing her way into things as much as possible.

But when their mum Patricia had found out Ethel was raising me alone, she’d made it her personal mission to look after us.

So the Evanses had become like a second family to me– Patricia had even started teaching me to cook when I was a teenager– meaning Amy and I never went long without seeing one another.

Of course, I knew even then that she had a crush on me, but it had always felt innocent. Unserious, even.

Then Jack, Chloe, and I had all gone to different unis, which was when I’d met Grey, despite the fact that they were from the same town as me.

I met their best friend Fatima, too. And then we’d all moved back to the same town after uni, and they’d been my people ever since.

Between Ethel, the Evanses, and my friends, I’d never once had the opportunity to feel lonely.

And for a kid who had lost his parents so young, that was saying something.

For a nearly thirty-year-old who was a full-time carer for his nan with dementia, it was still a godsend.

“Oh my god, that’s definitely you,” Amy said, handing Chloe’s phone back to her, no doubt in response to something like “you as a sleepy kitten based on your rising sign”.

Grey, Fatima, and Morgan were talking about something across the table in front of me, but I wasn’t listening; I was trying to figure out what Chloe was saying that was making Amy’s mouth quirk up in that very specific way.

“Maybe Amy should go out with him,” Fatima said, and Amy and I both snapped our heads to look at her.

“With who?” she asked, grimacing. “There’s no way you know my type.”

“It’s whom ,” I muttered under my breath; she rolled her eyes at me in response.

“Some new teacher at Fatima’s school,” Morgan said, passing her own phone to Amy. “But I get red flag vibes.”

“No way,” Fatima insisted. “He’s really lovely. And great with his students.”

Amy looked down at the phone, and I felt a pinch in my gut as her eyebrows shot up, as if she were impressed. “Okay, I’m listening.”

Fatima leant in as she took her phone back. “He just moved from Surrey to be closer to his family, and he teaches classics.”

Amy frowned. “I thought you taught at a primary school? Who’s reading Virgil at age ten?”

Fatima shook her head. “It’s a private school. Goes all the way through sixth form.”

“Okay, okay,” Chloe said, waving her arms between Fatima and Amy to interject. “Let’s cut to the good stuff. When is his birthday?”

“How am I supposed to know that? I met him like a week ago.”

“Twenty-ninth of November,” Morgan said, holding her phone out, showing his Facebook page. It was hard to tell from where I sat, but I supposed he didn’t look obviously hideous. “And he’s in some group called ‘I Hate Coriander’.”

“Ooooh, a Sagittarius,” Chloe squealed. “Just like Morgan!”

“Fire sign power couple, Sag and Aries,” Fatima said.

“Just what I need,” Amy said, her voice thick with sarcasm. “No, I don’t date fire signs anymore.”

I watched them volley back and forth about Amy’s astrological compatibility with this random man, and it was like they weren’t even speaking English anymore for how little I understood them.

“You should invite him to the quiz then,” Amy said. “So I can meet him with no pressure.”

“What quiz?” I asked. I hadn’t heard about any quiz.

“The pub quiz,” Grey said, tapping on the flyer in the middle of the table. I picked it up and read it; the pub would be having a summertime quiz series on Tuesdays starting the next week.

I stopped paying attention; I didn’t have Ethel cover on Tuesdays.

Plus, pub quizzes weren’t usually my thing; people always expected me to be good at the sport or history questions from the way I looked, when really I barely knew how many players per side there were in rugby sevens.

(There were, I’d embarrassingly learned in a uni pub quiz, seven. Hence the name.)

Had I been a normal person my age, it might not have felt weird to have weekly pub quizzes, weekly D maybe it was just overprotectiveness from knowing her since she was little, or maybe…

no, it was definitely just that, I told myself.

It would be hypocritical to be jealous, given that she looked after Ethel every week so I could go on dates, right?

I pulled my own phone out to distract myself.

“And not a single phone in sight,” Jack said sarcastically, which alerted Chloe to what I was doing.

“Ooooh, gimme!” she said, holding her hands out. “Swipe time!”

I groaned. “Not now, Chloe.”

Amy frowned. “Swipe time?”

“It’s Thursday,” she said, still holding her hands out towards me. “Phil needs to find his date for Saturday. Thursday is prime swipe time for that.”

“No way,” I said. “The last time you ended up matching me with someone I dated in school.” I was watching Amy’s face, which had gone a bit red, maybe from the beer she was drinking.

“It’s not my fault you’ve been through the majority of this town’s eligible population.”

I wanted to remind her that the only reason I went out with so many people was because she and Ethel were obsessed with me finding someone to settle down with.

As long as I kept meeting up with new people, they stayed off my back.

If I were intentionally keeping those people at arm’s length, or if I sometimes pretended to go out on a date when I actually just went to the cinema alone, that was quite frankly none of their business.

I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to date properly with everything else I had going on.

Chloe was right, though; I did still need something to do on Saturday.

It had been months since I’d actually let myself go on a proper date.

I’d met up with Hinge matches, sure, at the only good bar in town.

And until a few months ago, I’d gone home with some of them from time to time.

I was only human, after all. But once Amy had taken over Saturday night shifts with Ethel, I’d thought it would feel too weird to come home from a hookup to find Amy in my lounge.

But Amy wouldn’t be there on Saturday night. And based on the tension I felt in my chest every time Amy looked my way, I could do with a proper night out, and all that entailed. And I knew there was one person I could message for a true no-strings-attached evening.

PHIL

You free Saturday?

Poppy’s reply came in less than a minute.

POPPY

Sure am. Usual time and place?