Not that I’d had to try very hard to keep a straight face after tonight’s game. Was attacking me very on-brand for her as Amy? Of course it was. But it wasn’t exactly helping to further the mission. And yes, I’d been the one to suggest she join us, but I was beginning to regret giving her another channel to use to drive me crazy.
I watched her from across the table– we were at our usual picnic table in the pub’s beer garden, which was really too small for seven of us, but Jack had pulled Morgan onto his lap so we could all fit. Amy was at the end of the opposite bench from me, laughing at something on Chloe’s phone.
Chloe and Jack were my two best and oldest friends. I’d known them since the first day of secondary school, which was my first day living in town after growing up until then across the border in Wales. Ethel had become my guardian after my parents both died in a car accident when I was eight, and eventually we’d had to move from my mum’s hometown back to Ethel’s house so she could go back to work, and I’d had to start at a brand new school. And if I hadn’t met Jack and Chloe that first day, if they hadn’t started talking to me without even introducing themselves as if we’d always been friends, my life could have looked very different.
Of course, Amy had come into my life not long after. It had started with me hanging out at Jack’s, Amy nosing her way into things as much as possible. But when their mum Patricia had found out Ethel was raising me alone, she’d made it her personal mission to look after us. So the Evanses had become like a second family to me– Patricia had even started teaching me to cook when I was a teenager– meaning Amy and I never went long without seeing one another. Of course, I knew even then that she had a crush on me, but it had always felt innocent. Unserious, even.
Then Jack, Chloe, and I had all gone to different unis, which was when I’d met Grey, despite the fact that they were from the same town as me. I met their best friend Fatima, too. And then we’d all moved back to the same town after uni, and they’d been my people ever since. Between Ethel, the Evanses, and my friends, I’d never once had the opportunity to feel lonely. And for a kid who had lost his parents so young, that was saying something.
For a nearly thirty-year-old who was a full-time carer for his nan with dementia, it was still a godsend.
“Oh my god, that’s definitely you,” Amy said, handing Chloe’s phone back to her, no doubt in response to something like “you as a sleepy kitten based on your rising sign”.
Grey, Fatima, and Morgan were talking about something across the table in front of me, but I wasn’t listening; I was trying to figure out what Chloe was saying that was making Amy’s mouth quirk up in that very specific way.
“Maybe Amy should go out with him,” Fatima said, and Amy and I both snapped our heads to look at her.
“With who?” she asked, grimacing. “There’s no way you know my type.”
“It’swhom,” I muttered under my breath; she rolled her eyes at me in response.
“Some new teacher at Fatima’s school,” Morgan said, passing her own phone to Amy. “But I get red flag vibes.”
“No way,” Fatima insisted. “He’s really lovely. And great with his students.”
Amy looked down at the phone, and I felt a pinch in my gut as her eyebrows shot up, as if she were impressed. “Okay, I’m listening.”
Fatima leant in as she took her phone back. “He just moved from Surrey to be closer to his family, and he teaches classics.”
Amy frowned. “I thought you taught at a primary school? Who’s reading Virgil at age ten?”
Fatima shook her head. “It’s a private school. Goes all the way through sixth form.”
“Okay, okay,” Chloe said, waving her arms between Fatima and Amy to interject. “Let’s cut to the good stuff. When is his birthday?”
“How am I supposed to know that? I met him like a week ago.”
“Twenty-ninth of November,” Morgan said, holding her phone out, showing his Facebook page. It was hard to tell from where I sat, but I supposed he didn’t look obviously hideous. “And he’s in some group called ‘I Hate Coriander’.”
“Ooooh, a Sagittarius,” Chloe squealed. “Just like Morgan!”
“Fire sign power couple, Sag and Aries,” Fatima said.
“Just what I need,” Amy said, her voice thick with sarcasm. “No, I don’t date fire signs anymore.”
I watched them volley back and forth about Amy’s astrological compatibility with this random man, and it was like they weren’t even speaking English anymore for how little I understood them.
“You should invite him to the quiz then,” Amy said. “So I can meet him with no pressure.”
“What quiz?” I asked. I hadn’t heard about any quiz.
“The pub quiz,” Grey said, tapping on the flyer in the middle of the table. I picked it up and read it; the pub would be having a summertime quiz series on Tuesdays starting the next week.
I stopped paying attention; I didn’t have Ethel cover on Tuesdays. Plus, pub quizzes weren’t usually my thing; people always expected me to be good at the sport or history questions from the way I looked, when really I barely knew how many players per side there were in rugby sevens. (There were, I’d embarrassingly learned in a uni pub quiz, seven. Hence the name.)
Had I been a normal person my age, it might not have felt weird to have weekly pub quizzes, weekly D&D games, weekly film nights, and sporadic weekend plans. But between all of Ethel’s appointments, Anil’s schedule, and having to keep up appearances of going on dates, my calendar was getting downright unruly.
I tuned back in briefly to find that the rest of the table had moved on to talking about their costumes for the fantasy festival we were going to in a few weeks. I should have been paying attention as I was making half those costumes. I’d been sewing since I was eleven, when Ethel had taught me to tailor my own school uniform, and recently I’d become the de facto costume designer for the group. It was probably my fault– we’d gone to America for a Ren Faire last year, and I’d volunteered to make the costumes for that– but for the fantasy festival, things had gotten a bit out of hand.
