“I guess we could use it to hard launch, if you’re ready for that.”
“Absolutely,” he said, almost too quickly.
“Okay, deal,” I said, then gave Ethel’s arm a pat and moved to walk past Phil and leave. He reached out and grabbed my hand as I walked past, pulling me back to him. My breath caught in my throat as he caught me with a hand around my waist and levelled his gaze with mine. For a moment, I thought he would kiss me again– would he flagrantly break our first rule so soon?– but instead he just pulled me in for a hug. Like he’d done dozens if not hundreds of times over the years, but for some reason it felt different. Like he was holding me differently.
“See you then,” he said softly, and then he released me.
* * *
The fates had even lessof an idea what to make of the situation than I had; every reading I did over the next few days seemed to say something different. I drew major arcana over and over, which I usually found helpful because they steered my interpretation so heavily, but with cards like an upright Emperor (authority, structure, order) next to a reversed Hierophant (rebellion and subversiveness), my interpretations were all over the place. To be fair, we had tried to impose as much structure and order as possible– on my part, at least, it felt like a helpful way to keep it distinct from a real relationship– but my emotions were still all over the place, which didn’t help my readings.
My horoscopes were no more helpful, but the one that popped up on my phone the evening after I’d seen him was ominous as hell:
The higher your hopes, the farther you can fall if they don’t happen. Be realistic.
Great. Even my random horoscope app was telling me this was a terrible idea. But I was usually such an over-thinker that I figured I was due a bit of cognitive dissonance, so I decided to pretend like everything was fine.
Dad had asked me to write up a job description for my trial period, so I tried to get started, but just as I opened my laptop, my phone buzzed with a text from Phil:
PHIL
Daily Phamy lore drop #1. When you asked me out for the first time (because you definitely were the one to ask me out), I thought you were making fun of me somehow and said no.
I laughed out loud. Honestly, it was more likely to have been the other way around, but fine; we were making things up anyway, weren’t we? And I didn’t hate the insinuation that he had some sort of emotional stakes, even if it was only in this fictional relationship we were concocting.
I checked the shared note, and sure enough Phil had added that tidbit as the first entry.
AMY
Is Phamy our ship name? I don’t know how I feel about that.
PHIL
Embrace it. I’ve already doodled it all over my journal.
AMY
Fine. But I get to drop lore too.
You realised your mistake very quickly and were then the one to ask ME out, and I said no back out of spite. So instead of a first date, we just made out angrily in your front hallway.
PHIL
Honestly? That feels right.
I tried to turn my attention to my job description, but unsurprisingly, I failed. I’d spent every day of my preteen and teenage years fawning over Phil to no avail, and then after what had happened five years ago… well, needless to say, I found it hard to believe that we were documenting relationship lore, fake or not. So much of the angst I’d felt about him over the years had been about how embarrassing he’d found me. Now, even if it was all for show, he was not onlywillingto be associated with me, but evencontributingto that appearance. It was strange and bittersweet.
The only thing that managed to snap me out of thinking about it was when my phone buzzed again, this time with a notification that I’d been added to a group message called “Niamh’s Hen Party!!!!! ” I wouldn’t have thought anything could stop me reaching for my phone constantly, but that did the job.
* * *
The next day,as I tried to work on the quote for the Kenchester job, my focus was even worse, knowing I’d be seeing Phil in the evening to hard launch the relationship. Jack messaged me to say he was excited I was coming along, and I knew everyone had heard about Phil and me anyway, but I was still nervous. It would be the first true test of our acting skills.
Phil messaged midway through the day this time:
PHIL
Daily Phamy lore drop #2. We’ve outlawed the game Ticket to Ride in our relationship because you get mad every time I take a route you need, regardless of whether I need it too.
