“Excuse me?” I asked, my mouth hanging open.
“I said spread ’em, Evans,” he said, smirking, but he pulled a small retractable measuring tape out of his pocket. “I’ve officially got everything I need for your festival costumes, so I need your measurements.”
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t actually need me to spread my legs though, right?”
He shrugged. “I don’t technically need your inseam, no. Both your costumes involve skirts.”
“Then I’ll be keeping my legs firmly closed,” I said, holding my arms out to the side. “Otherwise I’m all yours.”
Still, when Phil knelt on the ground in front of me and looked up at me with those bright blue eyes, close enough that his beard tickled my belly where my shirt rode up, I nearly crumbled.Stay strong, I told myself, looking up at the ceiling.That is not your man.
I felt him wrap his arms around my legs, bringing him even closer, and for a moment I could feel his breath on my exposed skin. I stayed frozen in place, willing myself not to meet his gaze. But then I felt him draw the tape across my ass, presumably to measure my hips, and a full body shiver went through me.
“Easy there,” Phil said, and I shot a withering glare down at him. I found him smiling up at me with so much mischief in his eyes that I couldn’t help but picture him knelt in front of me in a very different context.
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said, stepping back, though he held the tape tight, not letting me go. So I reached down and grabbed it out of his hands, wincing as it retracted and the metal end hit my knuckles.
“You want a costume?” Phil asked, standing up. “That means made to measure, kiddo.”
“Then I will measure myself,” I said, extending the tape again and wrapping it around my hips, roughly where he’d had it.
“A bit lower,” he said, reaching out to adjust it, but I smacked his hand away.
“Use your words, Philip.”
He sighed. “Lower in the back. It needs to be the widest part.”
I glared at him, but ultimately obeyed, getting the proper measurement so Phil could take a note on his phone. Then I repeated the process for my bust, underbust, and waist– there was no way I would have survived Phil taking those– and then handed the tape back over so he could take my shoulder and skirt length measurements.
I was beyond desperate to pull focus from my body, so I sat back down on the sofa and pulled my knees to my chest. “Can I ask you a D&D question?”
Phil nodded. “Yeah, of course.” He sat down too, turned with his back to the arm of the sofa so he faced me.
“Where did you get the idea for my new character build?”
I’d applied Phil’s suggestion exactly as he’d given it, changing my subclass and subrace but nothing else. He was right; they were both cool as hell, and right up my alley. Instead of turning into animals, I could turn into constellations. And Fatima and I had already started discussing some cool backstory elements to incorporate. I hadn’t even meant to tie into the whole astral diamonds subplot, but it had worked out perfectly.
Phil smiled, but not smugly this time. He looked almost… embarrassed?
“Honestly,” he said, “I thought of you as soon as I heard about them.”
“Which was when?”
“Um, well, we only started playing D&D like four years ago? Fatima has an online subscription so we can use digital character sheets, and when I was building my character on there, I clicked around to see the different options.”
I blinked at him, confused. “And you thought of me?” I didn’t know why that tied my stomach in knots so badly; maybe because four years ago I’d been nursing a serious grudge against Phil. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Well, Astral Elves are literally described as having a starry gleam in their eyes because of their connection to the astral plane. And Circle of Stars, I mean, come on. Literally turning into a constellation, and using the stars to divine the future? I take it you saw the part where you can use a crystal to power the star chart?”
“It’s really cool,” I admitted, which was a sentence I’d never thought I’d say about Dungeons & Dragons. But here we were. “Thank you for suggesting it.”
“Thankyoufor playing with us,” he said, smiling softly, before narrowing his eyes. “Even if your character is almost as insufferable as you are.”
* * *
We were seeing moreof each other than ever without even trying, with the pub quiz every Tuesday, D&D every Thursday, and date night every Saturday. I’d finally started crashing his film nights with Chloe and Jack on Fridays, too, mostly because one week Chloe walked from Jack’s cabin to the house in the pouring rain to drag me down there. I’d been worried about the dynamic, just the four of us, but it was the same as it had always been: comfortable.
I did wonder how Phil managed to do everything he did without burning out. The more time we spent together, I realised just how much he did for Ethel. He worked as much as he could, but so much of his time was spent shuttling her to appointments and looking after her. Then there was everything he did for his friends– he’d been obsessively shopping for the perfect gift for Chloe’s birthday, which was still weeks away, and he never showed up to a D&D session without baked goods in hand. Adding our fake relationship into the mix was more than I would have been able to handle. I just hoped he would say something if he needed to take a step back; I certainly would have been happy to help out more.
