Page 30 of Date Knight (Roll for Romance #2)

Phil

M y first date night without Amy was a stark reminder of how much I’d been struggling in the previous months.

Ethel had her first-ever sundowning episode, which the specialist had supposedly prepared me for, but nothing could have made me ready.

She knew who I was, but she kept pacing the room back and forth, shouting at someone who wasn’t there.

I tried multiple times to get her to sit down, or to take her to bed, but she fought me off every time.

I’d tried to keep myself busy by working on the costumes– specifically, I was stitching together the various components of Grey’s chain mail armour– but I kept messing up and had to frog it twice, so eventually I resigned myself to sitting on the sofa and watching Ethel.

The dishes sat unwashed in the sink, the data entry job I’d been ignoring all week sat undone on my laptop, and the chain mail sat unassembled on the coffee table.

It took every ounce of mental energy I had to just make sure Ethel didn’t hurt herself, and by the time we were both in bed, I was so tired that I didn’t even do my usual nightly spiral about Amy.

* * *

I woke up from a fitful night of sleep the next morning, and I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. Ethel wasn’t much better; she was in relatively good spirits, but she seemed exhausted, and I made the executive decision that we’d have to skip the Evans family dinner.

PHIL

Hey, so sorry, but we had a really bad night last night, so I think Ethel needs a chill day. We’ll have to wait until Tuesday to see each other.

I regretted it as soon as I’d hit send– it was unlikely she was constantly counting down to the next time she’d see me the way I was with her– but she saw it straightaway, so I didn’t get the chance to edit it.

AMY

Oh no! Everything okay? Why don’t I come to you instead? I can hang with her whilst you catch up on things?

I honestly considered taking her up on it. I missed her, which was wild after just two days, and I knew seeing her would make me feel better. But she didn’t deserve to be my emotional support crutch.

PHIL

No, that’s okay, thank you though.

AMY

BTW

Let your mischievous side come out to play for a little while today.

It took me a moment to realise it was my horoscope.

She’d taken to sending them to me most mornings, and it was the highlight of my day; not because I cared much what my horoscope said, but because it broke the texting seal so I could message her back without worrying if it was too much.

As long as she kept sending them to me, I knew I hadn’t scared her off.

PHIL

That’ll be hard to do, but I’ll see if Ethel is up for a bit of poker maybe.

AMY

Do you know what your moon and rising signs are btw?

PHIL

…no?

AMY

Do you know what time you were born?

I did know, but only because a girl I’d dated in uni had asked me and I’d had to phone Ethel, who knew down to the minute. So instead of telling Amy, I opened my browser and found something that would calculate my moon and rising signs.

PHIL

Aries moon, Cancer rising apparently

AMY

Hmmmmmmmm interesting

PHIL

Why, what does that mean?

AMY

That you’re a prick

PHIL

Omg wow, you’re SO funny

AMY

I mean, that’s what the cards say, too. I don’t make the rules.

PHIL

Maybe you need new cards.

AMY

Tell me about it.

This, of course, sent me down an hours-long rabbit hole trying to find a new tarot deck for Amy.

I was pretty sure it was tarot, anyway…

actually there were loads of kinds of decks, including something called oracle decks, which were way more varied.

I found a few good options, then got overwhelmed and decided to start looking later on.

But between looking up my moon and rising signs and looking for decks, and maybe all my googling of what the crystals on my windowsill actually meant when I forgot, I’d clearly told the internet gods I was into all that.

I started getting ads everywhere for all kinds of tarot-themed stuff, witchy decorations, online courses, the works.

Eventually, there was one ad that made me stop scrolling with how perfect it was.

I bought it on impulse, even though Amy’s birthday wasn’t for about nine months, and like Christmas, we wouldn’t be together anymore. Maybe it could be a breakup present?

Plus, I’d now told the internet I was happy to buy this shit from ads, so I’d get them for the rest of my life and never be allowed to go a second without thinking about Amy. I was pretty sure she’d love that, no matter how she felt about me when all this was said and done.

But no, I didn’t want it to be a breakup present.

More and more, I was certain that I didn’t want to break up with Amy.

I was also becoming more and more sure that she felt the same way, at least on some level.

I knew I’d hurt her five years ago, but maybe she was further past that than I’d thought.

Maybe what had happened with Niamh and Chris had put that into perspective for her.

And maybe, just maybe, we’d grown close enough through all this for her to let herself feel something for me again. I could only hope.

But that wasn’t right either. I could do more than just hope. I could pull my finger out and tell Amy Evans how I felt, for the first time in our storied history. Or better yet, show her. And this new deck was just the first step.

* * *

When Tuesday came, Anil called in sick, and I knew Amy was head down working on a big pitch for her dad, so I suggested we bail on the pub quiz and just see each other in a couple of days.

I felt like I was running out of time– the festival was the following weekend, and Ethel was having more bad days than good in terms of how much care she needed– and I was trying desperately to buy myself more of it.

The irony, of course, was that I was running out of time with Amy, too; we had just weeks left until the ball. But it was easier to focus on the less confusing and more overwhelming things going on around me, like Ethel, so I tried to put it out of my mind.

Sure, I was drowning without her, but every time I looked around the house or took a mental inventory of what I had to deal with, it became easier to justify keeping Amy at arm’s length.

She was twenty-five, and so full of life.

She finally had the job she’d wanted, and she’d gotten closer to the rest of our friends.

She didn’t need to be playing chauffeur to her fake boyfriend and his demented nan.

She deserved to be getting something out of her relationships, and I just didn’t have much to give her.

* * *

By the time Ethel’s Thursday appointment rolled around, I cancelled on Amy again, claiming Anil was still sick, and that I would drive Ethel to physio myself.

But I should have known she wouldn’t just let me get away with it.

Amy Evans had never let a single thing slide unmentioned in her life, and quiet quitting our fake relationship was apparently not the exception.

So on Friday, when I told Jack I wouldn’t be at film night, Amy, Jack, and Chloe showed up on my doorstep at seven with my go-to takeaway order.

Ethel was having a good day, actually, and as soon as they all walked in, she beamed.

I expected her to go straight to Chloe, since they hadn’t seen each other in months, and clearly Chloe expected that too, walking in with open arms. But Ethel went straight for Amy, wrapping her in a hug and asking why she hadn’t been around that week.

Once Chloe had recovered from being jilted, she asked Ethel if she remembered how to play Hold ’Em.

“Remember?” Ethel asked, affronted. “I’m pretty sure I taught you lot how to play.”

“Yeah, well, you also taught me how to drive,” I said, “but I had to take your licence off you years ago when you forgot how roundabouts worked.”

“You go the wrong way round one time,” Ethel said to Amy, leaning in conspiratorially, and Amy dutifully scoffed.

“The cheek!” she said, smiling over at me, and my whole body relaxed. Seriously, why had I convinced myself it was better for her to be anywhere but here, with me?

“To answer your question, Chloe,” Ethel continued, “these hands will remember how to play Hold ’Em long after my brain goes full veg.”

Chloe sputtered a laugh; she clearly hadn’t experienced how candidly we joked about Ethel’s condition. I had to admit it was seeming less and less funny to me.

“Well then,” Jack said, producing a deck of cards from his pocket, “put your money where your mouth is.”

Ethel scoffed. “You think I’m going to just take all your money from you? I’m far too kind for that.”

“I think I can help with that,” Amy said, reaching into her backpack and producing two family-sized bags of Galaxy Minstrels.

Just a few minutes later, the five of us were crowded around our tiny dining table, the lights low at Ethel’s insistence.

I watched Ethel closely as she dealt the first hand.

It did take her a moment to remember what she was doing, but as she predicted, the moment she started shuffling, the muscle memory kicked in.

She even attempted to do what we’d dubbed the “casino accent” growing up, which was essentially a bad mid-Atlantic American accent, though it melded more with her own accent the longer we played.

The only thing she struggled with was the concept of bluffing.

Every hand, her bets matched almost perfectly with the quality of her hand, folding the moment someone else made a big move.

I was overjoyed– it made her a less lethal opponent, for sure, but it also meant she was still able to process how good of a hand she had and make decisions quickly.

Amy seemed to notice this too, commenting every time on how well Ethel had gauged the odds.

I just wished nights like this weren’t so rare these days.

At the end of the night, Amy paused in the doorway as Jack and Chloe left.