Amy and I were both smiling, but our smiles faded in tandem as the implication of what I’d said sank in. That if that were true, she’d be crushed to learn that we weren’t actually together.
“Was your family happy?” I asked. “When they thought we were together?”
“Honestly,” Amy said, “Mum was so excited you’d think I told her she was going to be a grandmother. Absolutely uncalled for.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Patricia was like a second mum to me. We’d spent hundreds of hours together in the kitchen over the years; she’d taught me everything I knew about cooking. Even up until last year, I’d regularly gone over just to see her.
“And your dad?” I asked, less confident about Alan’s reaction. He’d always been pleasant enough, but he was a tough guy, and we had exactly nothing in common.
Amy’s eyebrows shot up. “Um, well, he actually gave me a job.”
I frowned. “Sorry, what?”
She nodded. “You heard me. He found out we were together– or, well, Jack said we were– and he gave me the job I’d been asking for. Said if I was putting down roots, he’d obviously misjudged me. So now I’ve got a three-month trial to prove it wasn’t a mistake.”
“Well shit,” I said, sitting back in my seat and sinking further into the grass as a result.
“Chloe’s pissed we didn’t tell her.”
“Yeah, I picked up on that,” I said. “Grey, too, which means Fatima almost certainly knows.”
Amy let out a sigh. “Wow. So that’s reached just about everyone, hasn’t it.”
“Seems like it,” I said quietly, my gears spinning. I was having what I was almost sure was a really, really bad idea. But as I looked up at Amy, she looked almost sad. Was it wishful thinking that maybe she was sad for the same reason I was?
“Can I say something stupid?” I asked, and I didn’t miss the way her gaze flicked instantly to mine, her eyes widening slightly.
“I suppose I should be used to it by now.”
I rolled my eyes. Even now, of course she was throwing barbs my way. “Fuck off,” I said, making her laugh.
“Go on, what were you gonna say?”
I sucked in a breath through my teeth, gathering courage. This was either going to be the most embarrassing moment of my adult life, or… well, or it wouldn’t be.
“What if,” I said, and she sat up a bit straighter in her seat, bolstering me, “what if we didn’t correct them?”
Her mouth fell open slightly for just a second before she snapped it shut again. I could tell she was trying to keep a straight face.
“Say again?” she asked, and was it just me, or was she fighting a smile?
I cleared my throat before continuing. “I mean it,” I said. “Chloe and Ethel have been on my back for ages about finding someone, and clearly your family is happy about it too. So maybe, at least between now and the end of your trial with your dad, we just… let them believe it?”
I said it like a question, and really it was. Because I heard myself, and I was ridiculing myself internally even as I spoke. It was absolutely unhinged, the idea of pretending to date someone to keep Ethel and Chloe off my back. Never mind Amy, the woman I’d thought about every day for five years. Whose family was like family to me. Whom I couldn’t just casuallydate, because our lives were so entwined that a breakup would have catastrophic consequences… right?
But I didn’t take it back. I didn’t turn it into a joke. I just let it hang there between us, watching as Amy’s own gears spun behind her eyes.
I imagined having three months where I didn’t have to hand Chloe my phone for “swipe time”, where no one at Ethel’s social groups tried to set me up with their grandkids, where I could hold Amy’s hand whenever I wanted to. I’d need to come up with a solution for the very specific kind of tension I always felt after too much time around Amy, but maybe that would be worth it for the rest?
I watched Amy, wondering what her own internal battle looked like. Eventually she sighed and shook her head emphatically. “Bad idea.”
I forced out a laugh, half relieved that my stupid idea hadn’t worked, and half hurt that she agreed it was stupid. But she wasn’t done.
“I couldn’t do that to you,” she said. “It’s way too much.”
I frowned. “What do you mean do thattome? It was literally my idea.”
“Semantics,” she said again.
