Page 18 of Don't Clause a Scene

“What about the fifteenth?” Alex asked. “Thanksgiving is really messing up our scheduling.”

Sam laughed. “Our scheduling is always messed up.”

“Aren’t Andre and Ethan coming back for Christmas? Why don’t we schedule around them?” Jason suggested.

“I’d rather play darts and get some beers with them and hear about how things are going in Seattle,” Finn said.

“Hmm. Good point.” Alex consulted his calendar app again. “What do you think, Mickey?”

While he checked his phone, I checked mine after feeling it buzz.

Amos: [photo of a recipe from an old magazine. There are five bananas wrapped with ham lined in a glass dish with cheese poured on top.] Ham. Cheese. And bananas.

Amos: AND MUSTARD. You BAKE IT.

Amos: If you tell me we should add this to the menu, I’m telling Bo I’m out.

A laugh burst from me. God, Amos was hilarious. We’d texted off and on the past week as we’d started a deep dive into his family’s recipes, which led to googling and swapping horrible recipes from the 1940s and '50s. While we’d been in an epic D&D battle tonight, Amos had gone down a Reddit research black hole.

My skin prickled at the sudden silence. When I glanced up, everyone was staring.

“What? Oh shit. Did you say my name?” I asked Alex. “About Andre?” My brain worked to piece together the snippets of conversation I’d caught.

“Who are you texting?” Sam leaned into my space and tried to glance at my phone screen.

“It’s for the festival.” Sort of.

“How’s Amos doing?” Jason asked while sporting a knowing smirk.

“How’d you know it was him?” I slid my phone into my pocket as my cheeks burned.

Jason shrugged. “I didn’t, but you just confirmed it. Someone at the farm heard you two were planning something together for the Christmas festival.”

“Wait. AmosFlynn?” Sam gaped at me.

“Yeah. We’re planning a community Christmas Eve dinner together.”

“Together?”

I shifted in my seat. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal?”Sam’s voice kept inching higher.

“Are you going to keep parroting me?” I asked, laughing.

“Polly want a cracker,” Alex said in a terrible parrot impression. Finn threw popcorn at him.

I hadn’t told any of them that Amos was who I’d been talking to on Halloween and never made a peep about almost hooking up with someone. As far as they knew, I’d been chatting with a guy who left when he had a wardrobe malfunction. Which wasn’t a total lie.

My friends wanted the best for me and were well-meaning, but that was what kept my lips zipped. Ever since Alex and Cody had gotten together a couple of months ago, everyone had turned their attention to me as the last single person in the group. If they knew what had happened on Halloween, they’d form a tactical plan to get us together that would make the Marines proud.

Since we saw Brandon with the “I swear, he’s just a work friend” guy, their comments about me dating had doubled. At our last hangout, they’d debated which dating app to sign me up for. They’d created an entire scheme of vetting my matches and setting me up on a series of dates like a Bravo reality show.

“Has anyone seen Amos since he got back in town?” Sam asked.

“No, but should we make a scouting mission to Sparky’s? I’ve got some good costumes,” Alex said.

I loved my friends, but they didn’t understand. I was the common denominator between my failed relationships. More specifically, my job was. When people called out, I had to fill in for them, and that happened more often than not with a bunch of part-time college students. Not to mention serving food at festival events, at least one or two weekends a month. On top of that, I used most of my spare time for my side hustle. It was hard to find someone who understood those constraints.

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