Page 127 of The Blind Date

The plan was to make our parents patch things up in time for the golf finals tomorrow. That, and to avoid the awkwardness that would come from all future family events once Cedric and I finally announced our relationship. We had previously worried they would be far too excited about the news, but right now, we were threatened with the opposite.

Somehow, this turn of events was so much worse.

“What’s going on here?” I frowned in question, coming to a stop in front of the coffee table and what looked like to be a very serious game of poker.

"Your parents never play poker with you?" Yasmin snorted, and Mum joined her as they burst out laughing.

"In our defence, I tried to teach her as a child, but she could never master the poker face,” Dad chuckled, taking a swig of his beer.

Beer? How did they even get their hands on beer in here? The door had been locked, and the last time I checked, there wasn’t a secret stash of beer hidden in my room.

"That still doesn't explain what's going on here." Cedric frowned from beside me. "Have you guys made up, or is this a ploy to rob each other of money?"

“There was nothing to make up over.” Mum shrugged.

"What does that mean?" I asked with a confused frown. "We locked you guys in here for three hours, and you're still fighting? It doesn't look like you're fighting."

“Well, that was a waste of time,” Cillian huffed, moving around us to drop himself onto the bed. He pushed himself back to lie down and whipped out his phone, his thumbs immediately tapping away at the screen. If the situation with our parents didn’t demand my entire attention, I would have asked if he was texting Penny.

“It definitely wasn’t a waste of time,” Alfie grinned. “I’m up by £500.”

"And I'm down by £500,” Dad groaned, taking a peculiarly large gulp of his beer, no doubt trying to ease the loss of so much money in such little time.

"And we weren't fighting at all," Yasmin grinned triumphantly. "It was all an act."

“What?” Cedric and I questioned at the same time.

“What do you mean you weren’t fighting at all?” I asked, my lips parted in shock.

“And what do you mean that it was all an act?” Cedric’s voice was laced with the same sense of urgency as mine, and all our parents could do was blink innocently at us.

“We’ve known that you two have been secretly dating for a while now.” Alfie shrugged with a knowing smirk on his face. Cedric and Cillian definitely got their smirk from him.

"I'm pretty sure we've known from the beginning,” Dad added.

“Arguably, we knew before you both did,” Mum snorted, and they all laughed at us.

"How did you figure it out?" I asked, still gaping like a blowfish.

“For one, you two are holding hands,” Yasmin pointed out with an elated expression on her face.

Yasmin was right. In all our confusion, we hadn’t realised we were still holding hands. It was such a natural thing for us to do now. Yet, even with our parents grinning at us two with knowing looks that said:‘I told you so’, I couldn’t bring myself to let go. Instead, I squeezed his hand and couldn’t stop my lips from twitching at the corners into a small smile.

“So, let me get this straight,” I murmured in an unsure voice. “You guys staged this fake fight to get us to admit we were secretly seeing each other?”

“Yes!” They all chimed and nodded, none of them the least bit bashful about it.

“I can’t believe this,” I scoffed in disbelief. “You knew all this time and kept it a secret from us?”

“Just like how you kept your relationship a secret from us.” Yasmin countered with a raised brow.

“She has a point,” Cedric murmured to me before returning his attention to our parents. “I can’t believe you guys went to this extent to get us to reveal our relationship. You could have just asked us.”

“And you would have told us the truth if we asked you?” Mum asked.

When we didn’t say anything, they had their answer.

“And I can’t believe you made Cedric hide out in your bedroom when we were over that day. I knew it was green eyeshadow as soon as I saw it, but I pretended I didn’t know so you could sneak him out,” Dad laughed.

---