Page 8 of Date Knight (Roll for Romance #2)

I felt my eyes go wide as he said that, but I bit back my smile. Damn, he was good. And I could tell his attempt to catch them off guard had worked; the two of them looked at one another in confusion, and Niamh stammered a bit as she answered.

“Well, Amy and I lived together in Manchester, isn’t that right?” She looked at me as if for confirmation.

“That’s right.”

“And she and Chris dated for a bit too, though I think it was pretty casual, wasn’t it?” She and Chris were nodding like a couple of bobbleheads.

Again she looked at me to affirm what she was saying.

It was egregiously revisionist to describe it that way– we’d moved in together, for fuck’s sake– but I didn’t need to correct her.

I could fill in the gaps for Phil later, and she knew what she’d done.

I could see it in the panicked look in her eyes as she waited for my reply.

I settled for squinting my eyes slightly in reproach until I saw a flush spread across her pale cheeks.

“More or less,” I said, my voice light and even. I chanced a look at Chris, who was narrowing his own eyes at me. He knew what I was doing, making sure Niamh felt bad, and he was trying to do the same to me. I wouldn’t let it work though.

“Oh!” Niamh exclaimed, loud enough that the table next to us looked over in annoyance. “Sophie and Maya say hi, by the way. We all miss you so much.”

Sophie and Maya were our other flatmates, and Niamh’s uni friends. I hadn’t heard from either of them since the day I’d left town, so I doubted they’d actually asked Niamh to say hi to me.

“That’s lovely,” I said mildly. “Tell them hi back.”

We talked for a couple of minutes about the things people always talk about when they meet: Chris bragged about getting promoted at the consulting firm he worked at, and Niamh used an absurd number of acronyms when describing her marketing job, and they talked about the summer holiday they had planned to the French Riviera.

Chris was predictably condescending about the part-time data entry work Phil did around caring for Ethel, but I wasn’t having it, and I played the part of the proud girlfriend well.

It wasn’t hard; I’d always thought Phil was a better person than most for how dedicated he was to Ethel.

Otherwise though, I let Phil carry the conversation until the waiter came with two flutes of champagne and two glasses of water.

“Well, we’ve got exciting news to share,” Niamh said, “though I’m sure you’ve seen it on socials already.”

I pursed my lips and shook my head. “I haven’t really looked,” I said, refusing to acknowledge that I had them both blocked.

“Well…” she said dramatically, then held out her left hand as if she hadn’t been talking with it since we’d arrived.

I was so enormously proud of both Phil’s and my performances of Unimpressed Man and Unimpressed Woman. I chanced a quick look at him and saw that, like me, he’d creased his brow in confusion, as if the Mount Everest on her finger was the most pedestrian thing we’d seen.

“Oh,” I said, sounding underwhelmed, “is that news? We’d already seen the ring– you didn’t exactly try to hide it– so I just assumed your news was something else.”

Niamh’s face fell in disappointment. “Oh, could you see it from outside?”

“I think they can see that thing from space,” Phil said, somehow managing not to make it sound like a compliment. “But congrats.”

“Thank you,” Niamh said, visibly shaking off the awkwardness of her failed announcement. “Anyway, we’d love for you both to be there.”

All my impeccable control went to shit as I tipped my head back and laughed. A full-on belly laugh that would have put the jolliest of Santas to shame. It was a good few seconds before I looked up to see that all three of them, Phil included, were looking at me as if I’d broken out in the Macarena.

“Wait, seriously?” I asked, leaning forward to prop my arms up on the table.

“Well yes,” Niamh said, taking my hands in hers, and it was everything I could do to not recoil. “You were so instrumental in us getting together.”

It was such an outlandish thing to say that I was almost certain she was having me on. Instrumental? If that were true, I should have been their fucking maid of honour. Was it possible that she genuinely didn’t know how fucked up her actions had been?

“We’d be honoured,” Phil said, reaching around my waist to pull me back away from Niamh and into his side, and I bit my tongue to keep from laughing again. I knew Phil wouldn’t be caught dead at anyone’s wedding, much less theirs. “When’s the big day?”

“The seventh of September at Chris’s family’s place.”

I resisted an eye roll; Chris’s family lived in a listed manor not far from Manchester, with enough land to get lost in.

His family were unbearably posh, with their waxed Barbour jackets and pedigree spaniels, and their membership at a wellness club dear enough to not list their prices online.

I’d only been to the family estate once, and it had been the most fish-out-of-water experience of my life, but I had to admit it would make a beautiful wedding venue.

Just as Niamh launched into an obviously oft-repeated monologue about their wedding plans, I felt a buzz on my left hip. It was Phil’s phone in his pocket. I looked up at him to see a panicked look on his face as he answered.

“Everything okay?” he asked, then paused as a muffled voice on the other end of the line said something.

“I’ll be there soon,” he said, ending the call and pushing away from the table quickly enough that his chair almost tipped backwards.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, standing with him, my hand on his arm in an uncharacteristically intimate way, though the way we had just been pressed together made it feel inconsequential. “It’s not Ethel, is it?”

“Afraid so. Anil can’t find her new beta blockers, and she needs them before bed.

” He looked down at Niamh, who had her brow knitted together in concern, and Chris, who looked frankly relieved that the evening had come to a premature end.

“Sorry, folks. Congrats and all, but we’ve got to call it.

” He looked back at me again. “You good to walk?”

“We can drive you!” Niamh offered, but Phil waved her off.

“It’s okay, it’ll take as long to direct you there as it’ll take us to walk. But thank you, and lovely to meet you.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the front door, and I spared a casual wave back at Niamh as we left.

“See you at the wedding!” she called, and I just pressed my mouth into a thin smile in response.

“God they suck, saying you were instrumental in their twisted little love story,” Phil said as soon as we’d rounded the corner outside the bar. He slowed right down, mouth wide as he laughed.

“Yeah, they’re the worst,” I said, tugging at his arm. “But come on, don’t we need to hurry?”

“Oh, no,” he said, shrugging me off, and I frowned; apparently the physicality of our little ruse was over. “That wasn’t Anil. That was Jack.”

I stopped in the middle of the pavement and scowled at him. “Jack? As in, my brother Jack?”

Phil laughed. “Yeah, he rings me at half seven every Saturday and pretends to be Anil in case I need an out. I haven’t used it in a while, but it came in pretty clutch, didn’t it?”

I laughed– I’d never felt more grateful to my brother. But before I could ask more questions, I saw Chris appear over Phil’s shoulder, looking around as he left the bar. I grabbed Phil and hissed for him to keep moving, grasping his hand as he tried to wrench it away.

“Amy!” Chris called, jogging after us. I pretended to see him for the first time, turning around as if in surprise.

“Everything okay?” I asked, faux concern in my voice. “Did you need us to chip in for the champagne?”

“We’ve got it,” he said, sounding as smarmy as he looked. “No, I just wanted to ask you to please actually come to the wedding.”

I couldn’t help but break character yet again. After all, I didn’t really care what Chris thought of me, which is why I’d been fine to come tonight to begin with. The emotions, the act; it had all been for Niamh’s benefit, not his.

“And why the hell would I do that? Is that really why you came all the way here?”

“It would mean a lot to Niamh.”

“And it would have meant a lot to me for her to not fuck my boyfriend, and yet…”

“Please,” he said, catching my eye, and maybe for the first time ever, including when we’d dated, I saw nothing but earnestness in his expression. It was slightly unnerving.

I squinted sceptically. “You really love her, don’t you?”

“I do,” he said without hesitation. “Not that that makes a difference to you. But I couldn’t let you leave thinking it was a throwaway comment, her wanting you there. She’s been talking about it for weeks, but she didn’t think you’d say yes.”

I looked at him for a long moment, not sure how to respond. I didn’t want to see them get married, and I didn’t actually give a shit about making Niamh feel better when she couldn’t even acknowledge how fucked up her behaviour had been.

But it made me miss the life I’d had. I missed Sophie and Maya, even if they didn’t actually miss me. It had been a hell of a long time since I’d been invited to something and felt like my presence was actually, genuinely wanted.

“I’ll think about it,” I said finally. “You know where to send our invitation.”

Chris snorted. “Seriously?”

I groaned. “Fuck’s sake, Chris. What now?”

He gestured to Phil, who was standing behind me, and I only just noticed that his hands were placed lightly on my hips. Had I really not noticed that happen?

“What?” I asked defensively. “It’s not like you and Niamh weren’t all over each other in there. Don’t tell me you’ve become a prude in the last ten months.”

Chris scoffed. “You really expect me to believe you’re with this townie ? No way. He’s not coming with you. Plus ones are for actual partners.”

I felt Phil’s grip tighten on me, and I placed my hands over his in response. That condescension wouldn’t fly, especially not about Phil.

“Come on, Christopher,” I said, evening my voice and levelling my gaze at him. “You can’t be bad in bed and this much of a twat. You have to choose.”

His sneer was instantaneous. “Oh, I chose alright.”

The double meaning stabbed sharply into me. But instead of reacting with the hurt expression I was sure he was after, I kept my face as calm and neutral as I could.

“If you want me there for Niamh’s sake,” I said, “you’ll send an invite for both of us. Now fuck off back to your fiancée, Chris. You two deserve each other.” Then I imagined crossing my fingers that Phil wouldn’t kill me for what I was about to do.

I pressed up onto my toes, spun around in Phil’s grasp, and brought my hand to his face. We only had a fraction of a second to do this if we wanted it to look natural– hell, even then it would look performative at best– but thankfully, Phil didn’t hesitate.

He leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine, and the rest of the world disappeared.