“It’s about time!” Morgan said, swaying Amy back and forth in their hug, and we caught eyes over our respective embraces, both equally confused by their responses. Though perhaps we shouldn’t have been; I’d been getting a lot of wink-wink, nudge-nudges from Jack over the last year where Amy was concerned. Maybe she’d gotten the same.
“How long has this been going on?” Jack asked, stepping back and gesturing between Amy and me.
“Less time than you’d think,” I muttered.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Amy said, then cocked her head. “And what are you guys doing here anyway?”
Morgan pointed at the bar. “It’s the only good place for cocktails around here. Wanna join us? Ooh, double date!” She clapped her hands together in glee.
“We were just going, actually,” Amy said, pulling me away by the arm. “Let’s go talk, yeah?”
“Yeah, wait a minute,” Jack said, holding up his phone. “Why did you answer my rescue call?”
Just then the door opened again, and Chris and Niamh walked out. Instinctively, I reached for Amy’s hand, probably out of some ill-placed protectiveness, but she grasped for me too.
“You’re still here?” Niamh asked, rushing over, leaving Chris by the door. “You sure you don’t need a lift?” Then she seemed to notice who had joined us. “Oh, hi, Jack!”
“Niamh?” he asked, scowling at Amy now. “You were here with Niamh?” Then realisation dawned over his face as he answered his own question about the rescue call.
Amy nodded exaggeratedly, her lips pressed into a line. “Yep, and Chris is here too,” she said, pointing over Jack’s shoulder, where Chris was already walking away. “They’re getting married.”
Jack nodded back, his eyes wide, seeming to catch on. “Got it,” he said. “Well, congrats, I guess.”
“Oh, thank you,” Niamh said, placing a hand on Jack’s bicep, and he recoiled slightly at the same time Morgan’s face dropped into a frown.
“Let’s go, babe,” Chris yelled, and Niamh cantered off to meet him.
“See you both at the wedding!” she called over her shoulder to Amy and me as she left.
“Is this for real?” Jack asked, sounding almost hopeful as he looked down at our hands, which were still clasped together. Even then, neither of us dropped the other’s hand. What did that mean? “Is this what you’ve been doing on Saturday nights all this time?”
“Absolutely not. Can we just talk about this later?” Amy asked through a sigh, sounding exasperated. “I need to get home so I’m ready for that site visit in the morning.”
She turned to smile at me, stepping in to give me a hug goodbye. There was nothing weird about that on the surface; we hugged all the time these days. But she rested her head on my chest in a way she didn’t normally, then brought her lips to the side of my face.
“Can we talk aboutthatlater, too?” she whispered, then stepped away, and finally our hands broke apart.
I nodded, gulping as I did, before she turned and walked away. I watched her go for a good few seconds before Jack cleared his throat again, and I turned back to him.
“Listen, man, I get it. You wanted to feel it out between the two of you before telling me. Morgan and I did the same thing when we got together.” He looped his arm around Morgan and pulled her close. “But for what it’s worth, I love this for you both.”
“Seconded,” Morgan said, lacing her fingers through Jack’s. “Now come on, let him go after her.”
She pulled Jack towards the bar, and they both waved as they went. Then I was stood on my own on the pavement, wondering what the actual fuck had just happened.
I watched the door for a while, wondering if someone else would come out and keep the circus act going– maybe Poppy, whom I’d left inside on her own, or hell, even Ethel at this point– but it stayed shut, and my thoughts finally came back to me.
I’d just kissed Amy Evans. Like, actually. In real life. Not in my dreams. And it hadn’t been a near miss. Her mouth had touched my mouth. Her body had pressed against my body.
But she hadn’t kissed me because she’d wanted to. She’d kissed me as a punchline to her back-and-forth with Chris. And despite what Morgan had said, I was almost certain she didn’t actually want me to go after her in that moment. So instead, I just started walking home, trying desperately not to let my mind fill in the gaps of what might have happened if Ididgo after her. After all, I had five years of experience getting carried away imagining being with Amy; I didn’t need any more.
Chapter7
Amy
I’d known from the moment I’d walked away from Phil, Jack and Morgan that it had been a mistake not to set the record completely straight, but I couldn’t help myself; after so many years of being obsessed with Philip Owen, we’d finally kissed, and he hadn’t recoiled in disgust. So sue me for enjoying on a perverse level the five seconds where people actually believed we were together.
I could have done without those people being Jack and Morgan, but I figured I could just clear things up with Jack at family dinner the next day. So I let myself put it out of my head as much as possible when I got home, collapsing onto my bed and looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars Jack and I had pressed onto the ceiling decades ago.
