Page 31 of Date Knight (Roll for Romance #2)

“You know I have Anil’s number too, right?”

I gulped. “Oh.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” The way she said it, it was clear it wasn’t a request, or a platitude. She was letting me know that she knew Anil hadn’t been sick, and that whether I wanted to or not, I’d see her tomorrow.

* * *

And then it was date night. I’d asked Anil if he could pretty please come over after his course, even though it would be late, both to make up for his lack of hours so far that week and so I could make things up to Amy.

Not that I had to– there was nothing in our rules that said we’d do anything in particular, or see each other more than once a week– but I wanted to.

She’d shown me the night before that she wanted to be there, and for now at least, I was done keeping her at bay.

PHIL

I’ve got Anil tonight. What should we do?

AMY

Leave it to me. I have an idea.

Amy showed up at half past seven, just a couple minutes after Anil did, with an actual picnic basket made of brown wicker, with a red checkered lining and a rolled-up blanket.

“Ooh, let me guess,” I said after she’d greeted Ethel. I stepped out the front door, slinging a backpack over my shoulder. “Skydiving? Wait, no. Ice skating?”

“How’d you guess?”

Instead of heading back to her car, she started walking down the street; clearly we weren’t going far.

It felt good to be walking– it was hot as hell, but I’d been inside all day cleaning up after an isolated week so Anil wouldn’t feel like he needed to do it.

There was still a huge pile of tailoring work to do, and I hadn’t finished a job all week, but at least the house was properly clean for the first time in ages.

And now I was touching grass with Amy whilst Ethel was well cared for at home.

Things were pretty good by my standards.

We walked out to the edge of town, about twenty minutes away, and across a big green meadow towards the river.

“You Evanses and your swimming spots,” I said when I realised where we were headed.

I was pretty sure Jack had pulled this exact move on Morgan when they’d gotten together, which was a weird thought.

My stomach did a backflip at the idea that Amy was trying to make a move– was this what I’d been hoping for?

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not expecting you to swim.”

That was good, since I didn’t have my swim trunks.

There were dozens of other people out here on the green, tossing frisbees and flying kites and having picnics of their own.

It was late enough that the oppressive heat had lifted, and we passed the last of the swimmers walking in the opposite direction as they headed home.

It took us twice as long as it should have to cross the meadow because Amy kept stopping to pet dogs that came up to us.

When we got to the river, the path diverging to either side, Amy didn’t follow either route but rather took off her sandals and started fording the river, as if that were the most normal thing to do.

“Come on,” she said. “I know a spot.”

Okay, this was definitely starting to feel like a move. But my body was moving, my socks and shoes in hand, before my brain could question it.

Once we were across the river, we walked barefoot for a few minutes on the other side until we reached a secluded clearing just a couple of metres from the water.

The sun was still very much out, so the shade from the surrounding trees made it noticeably cooler.

It was golden hour, and the broad-leafed trees glowed around the edges.

The light caught Amy’s hair too as she rolled out the blanket, and I found myself frozen to the spot on the edge of the clearing as I watched her.

She was so beautiful, and she’d made me a picnic, and she drove me half crazy. God, I was in trouble.

“Come on,” she said as she sat down, waving me over to the blanket. I walked brainlessly over to her; I would have jumped off a bridge if she’d asked me to in that moment. Thank god she was too busy unloading the basket to pay any attention to the way I was gawking.

Except eventually my attention snapped to the blanket like a rubber band, because she’d produced a full-on charcuterie board, with at least half a dozen cheeses, just as many meats, fruit, crackers, and even a bottle of wine.

“I had to ask Jack for the pairing guide you sent him ages ago,” Amy said, holding the bottle out to me, “but this should be a good all-rounder.”

“You did well,” I said, pretending to look at the bottle but knowing I would have drunk it no matter what it was.

She had done well though; I eventually found enough wherewithal to actually eat like a normal person, and it was delicious.

The perfect meal for a summer’s evening.

I hoovered it up, half because it was so good and half because chewing meant not having to talk.

And I didn’t trust myself to talk like a normal person.

Amy, on the other hand, talked enough for the two of us.

She picked at her food in between telling me about the rewilding trip with her mum, the ideas she and Fatima had for Eden’s backstory, and the meeting she had coming up in a few weeks to present the pitch for the Kenchester job.

Meanwhile, I sat there watching her, in awe of the woman she was, so full of life and so interested in everything and so fucking thoughtful.

I needed to tell her how wonderful she was.

How much joy she brought me. How around all the logistics and worries of my life, part of my mind was always stuck on her.

I didn’t know exactly what to say, but I was finally going to say it.

I opened my mouth and sucked in a deep breath for courage, just as she took a bite of her food.

“Amy, I?—”

“Oh shit,” she said suddenly with her mouth full, sending a few cracker crumbs spraying in my direction, and we both laughed as she tried to hold the rest in her mouth.

“I forgot to send you your horoscope for today,” she said once she’d composed herself.

“I’m sorry, that’s what was so important you couldn’t swallow first?”

She held up her middle finger with one hand as she got out her phone with the other. “Here, look.”

She held up the screen so I could see:

You are in charge of your own pleasure. Don’t be afraid to take it, selfishly and often.

If it hadn’t been in her astrology app, I would have thought she’d written it herself. That she’d somehow read my mind and was telling me to make my move. But no, it was right there on the screen.

“I have something for you,” I said, my bravado evaporating under her gaze, grasping for anything I could do in that moment besides take my pleasure.

Amy’s face broke into a grin. “Yay, presents!” She held out her hands in front of her, opening and closing them.

“Alright, close your eyes then,” I said, but she pulled a face.

“If you give me something gross, Philip?—”

“It’s not gross, I promise.”

“Fine,” she sighed, then complied. I reached into my backpack and pulled out what I had ordered her earlier in the week, placing the small cardboard box in her hands.

I took a moment to look at Amy before letting her open her eyes.

It would be so easy to lean in and kiss her right now; to do what I’d been wanting to for years, and what my horoscope was literally telling me to do.

She looked so beautiful, with the setting sun filtering through the trees to cast orange streaks across her freckled skin.

“Okay, open,” I said instead, and it took her a moment to process what I’d given her and read the front of the box, but when she did, she gasped in delight. God, I wanted to make her make that sound again and again.

“Phil,” she said as she turned it over, her voice heavy with emotion.

“I went for an oracle deck in the end,” I explained. “All the research I did implied that you can sort of bond with a tarot deck, right? So I didn’t wanna just buy you a new one. But this looked cool.”

It was cool, actually; I’d flicked through it when I’d opened it.

It was an astrology-themed deck with a watercolour design style.

All of the cards were heavenly bodies and houses, from the zodiac constellations to the planets to the phases of the moon.

Most of it meant nothing to me, but given how astrology-obsessed Amy was, I hoped it would mean something to her.

“It’s perfect,” she said quietly, opening the box to see the cards. For a good five minutes, she flipped between reading the cards and paging through the accompanying booklet that explained their meanings.

“Do you wanna do it now?” she asked suddenly, and I was embarrassed at how long it took me to realise that she wasn’t propositioning me, and to shake off the effect that misunderstanding had had on me.

“Yeah, go for it,” I said, helping to clear space between us on the blanket. I was inexplicably nervous all of a sudden. I’d never done any kind of reading, and I just knew I’d manage to bungle it. I didn’t even believe in all that, but I didn’t want to mess it up somehow.

Amy held the deck out in front of her and had me put a hand on top and focus all my energy into it.

I didn’t really know what that meant, so I just zeroed in my attention on the spots where my hand met hers on the edges, and the heat that passed between us.

Amy had her eyes closed, and I supposed I should do the same, but I still couldn’t take my eyes off her.

“Okay,” she said with a nod, opening her eyes, and I quickly shut mine so I could pretend to be slowly opening them too. “Tell me when.”

She started shuffling, and I wasn’t sure what to look for, but I was pretty sure I’d done it wrong when she reached the end of the deck and I still hadn’t said anything.

“Sorry,” I said, but she shook her head.

“That’s okay. Don’t tell me to stop until it feels right.”