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“Not really. Start over.”

“I was asking how the whole practice dating thing went Saturday night.”

My eyebrows drop. How did she know about that?

I’m saved from asking as I watch Walker shovel three bites of their apple pie slice into his mouth and look off to the distance, focusing awfully hard on the light fixtures above the tables behind us.

“You told her?”

He swallows, chokes with a cough, and swallows again. “To be fair, you should know that whatever you tell me is basically going right back to her.”

My sister leans her head on Walker’s shoulder with a smile. “Go ahead, spill everything. Flick would only tell me that you guys went to a haunted house, that’s it.”

I groan into my hands and make sure my voice is low enough where Felicity won’t hear me from here. “It was a disaster, all right?”

Lottie winces. “I figured as much when she said haunted house.”

“I was trying to…shake things up. Show her I can do things she hasn’t seen before. And then I spent the whole time we were in that stupid place jumping and screaming while she laughed at me. We didn’t even get to talk. It was just nonstop frat guys jumping out left and right and…mice on the ground. Dolls.” I shudder. “You had to be there.”

Walker shakes his head. “I said show her a new side of you, but I didn’t really mean that side. You need something more intimate. A good chance to show off the relationship part of you.”

“I disagree,” Lottie says before she takes a bite of her own pie, talking with her mouth full. “I think the last date shouldn’t even count and the next date will be a clean slate. Something casual and not too high pressure. Intimacy seems to make both of you go stupid.”

I shrug a shoulder and tilt my head. Fair point.

Lottie continues. “I think you need something that makes it easy to be yourself, but maybe a little something else too. Like a group date.” She squeezes Walker’s hand. “We could all go!”

“We could all go where?” Felicity plops down next to me.

She smells like cinnamon rolls and her voice drips of sweet tea and honey.

“On a group date,” Walker answers. “It was Lot’s idea.”

Felicity gives a curious smile, and I turn to stare deep into the ice in my root beer. “Huh. Okay. Yeah, that would be fun. We could maybe go see a movie? I heard there’s another Mission Impossible coming out.”

“How many of those exist, seriously?”

“No.” My sister squints with her finger on her lip. “No movies yet.”

Felicity mouths, Yet? as Lottie snaps, “Wait, we haven’t gotten to do the pumpkin patch this year!”

“That’s because Knox and I spent the majority of last month setting the thing up,” Walker points out.

“Yeah, but Miller said the corn maze is, like, ridiculously hard. He said the only way people have made it through is because they’ve cheated.”

“Well, there’s your Mission Impossible.”

“Knox?” Felicity pushes the pie in front of her my way and smiles up at me, glossy lips stretched across her face in that sweet smile.

“Hm?”

“Do you want to do that? A, uh, group date?”

“Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s do that.” I cough into my fist. “Who else is going?”

“We’ll figure that out.” Lottie waves a hand. “Let’s do this Saturday.”

If this one doesn’t work out, then I’m not sure how I can pull this off at all.