An agreement

“Oh okay,” Amanda glanced in the same direction as David to see that a group of people were coming up to the Pub and Grill before turning back towards him again, “So, should we exchange numbers?”

“Sure,” David found himself liking the way in which Amanda was looking at him as though she was almost a little nervous to ask him that, “but I’ll have the finals to take care of during the coming week, so I won’t be able to make it to Chesterville until Monday the week after that at the earliest.”

“Or you could show up next weekend.” Amanda suggested, retaining her somewhat tense expression. For a moment, David thought that it looked as though she was about to bite her lip.

“Well, uh, I wouldn’t want to **** you to work on a weekend.” David offered up a weak and slightly bumbling objection to her suggestion.

“Oh no, I wouldn’t mind,” Amanda said, paused, and then added “I really wouldn’t.”

“But then the least I can do is to buy you dinner afterwards.” David considered it to kind of silly of him to be feeling so shaky about asking Amanda an innocent question like that.

“Alright.” Amanda nodded her head at him and smiled again.

“Good,” David fished his phone up out of his pocket and got Amanda’s phone number, after which the two of them got up to greet the first few guests attending the lunch party for Courtney.

David didn’t know if it was because Amanda was a bit self-conscious about suddenly standing in front of a group of unfamiliar faces, but suddenly he felt her slip her hand into his. Glancing at her, David tightened his hand around hers and then they stepped forward together to begin socializing while waiting for all the guests to arrive.

Pretty much the first people they ran into were the Lang family, minus both their sons. Tommy Lang Sr. was a friendly giant of a man who owned the Moonlight Diner and ran it along with his wife Janice and his sister Janine, and David liked him, even if he was primarily interested in football when it came to sports.

Finding himself liking introducing Amanda to the Langs’, even if he wasn’t too fond of the “friend” part, David conducted some small-talk with Tommy Sr. until he spotted that Kathryn and Bryan Carlson had arrived.

Excusing themselves from their conversations with the Lang family, David and Amanda moved over towards Kathryn and Bryan, with David not quite liking the triumphant smile that Kathryn broke out into upon spotting them holding hands.

“Well, you two look like you’re getting along just fine,” Kathryn relished the opportunity to tease David.

“Nice to see you Kathryn,” David greeted Kathryn, deciding to be the bigger man, even if he did smirk a bit.

Amanda finally let go off David’s hand to give Kathryn a hug, a hug which seemed almost quite intimate.

After some conversation with Kathryn and Bryan, David glanced at the door to see that Courtney was now arriving.

The rest of the Carlson family was already there; including Charlie Jones Sr., who David realized that he ought to talk to about his parents, and possibly Cynthia’s journal, but Courtney wasn’t showing up on her own. Instead, Courtney was walking hand in hand with Jeremy Lang.