by Alix Kelso
“I’m going out tonight,” Laura said, tapping a reply to John. “The flat’s yours if you and Olly want it.”
“Going somewhere fun?”
“John’s taking me to dinner, some fancy place to make up for last weekend.”
Yvonne’s eyes practically popped out of her head. “Laura, for God’s sake, why are you still seeing that guy? You don’t even like him.”
“Of course I like him.”
“But is liking him really enough?”
“Yvonne—”
“I know, I know, I’m sticking my nose in. But if you and that guy, Bruce, had actually kissed each other last week, would you still be going out with John tonight?”
“Well, no, but—”
“That’s your answer, right there. John might be a nice guy, at least as far as you’re concerned, although I can’t see how, considering he dumped you to go out with his friends. But either way, he’s a placeholder. He’s not the one. So why are you wasting your time?”
Sighing, Laura dumped her breakfast uneaten into the recycling caddy. “I need to get ready for work,” she said, and headed for the shower.
At Valentino’s, her shift seemed endless. She was kept busy with Mr Davidson complaining about his eggs, and a noisy lunch group celebrating a birthday, but still the minutes dragged. Potential buyers visited the restaurant in the late afternoon, and she did her best to ignore them as she fidgeted with a late sandwich lunch in an empty booth while Natalie and the commercial estate agents showed them around.
Staring out the window towards The Crooked Thistle, she wondered whether Bruce was in there. Had something happened between the two of them, or hadn’t it? The answer to that question should be obvious, and yet she was clueless. One minute, they’d been milliseconds away from kissing, the next he was sprinting out of her flat never to be seen again.
Men said women were complicated. Showed what they knew. They ought to take a good look at themselves.
Idiots. They were all idiots. And if Bruce was over there hiding in The Crooked Thistle, she thought, pushing away her uneaten sandwich, she hoped he damn well knew it.
“You’re an idiot,” Jack said, as Bruce pulled the car into a parking space.
“Thanks very much.”
“I mean it.”
“I wish I hadn’t told you.”
“Well you did tell me. And you told me because you hoped I’d commiserate and say, oh, poor Bruce, still so confused after the collapse of his marriage, and how thoughtless of this lovely woman Lana—”
“Laura.”
“Laura, how thoughtless of this Laura, making him want to kiss her and leaving him all muddled about whether he should kiss her or just flee like the building’s on fire.”
Bruce turned off the engine. “That voice you’re doing doesn’t sound anything like me.”
“When you’re whining, which you are, it sounds exactly like you.”
Bruce squinted at the pub they’d pulled up beside. It sat on a corner, towards the end of a line of shops in a leafy residential area on the fringes of Glasgow’s west end. There was good footfall, lots of flats and townhouses and shops, and plenty of potential customers within easy walking distance. The place had only been on the market a few weeks. He thought it might be a contender.
“What do you think?” he asked, turning to Jack.
“That you’re an idiot.”
He sighed. “I mean, what do you think of the pub?”
Jack glanced at the building. “Didn’t think you’d be interested in a place with private flats above it.”
“I figured it couldn’t hurt to take a look.”
He saw the agent come through the doors of the pub. The business was no longer trading, and the agent showed them around the empty unit and delivered his sales pitch. Bruce looked at the layout and at the potential for renovation, which he could now see was limited. Still, he decided not to reject the place out of hand. When the agent stepped out, he walked behind the bar and tried to imagine himself there permanently.
He couldn’t.
“You’re not some confused teenager, unsure about how this is supposed to work,” Jack said, poking at the open fireplace that stood on one wall.
“What?” Bruce said, frowning in confusion.
Jack turned around and spread his hands. “Laura. This Laura woman.”
Sighing, Bruce looked at the back-bar and down along the counter. “Can we just forget I mentioned it?”
“No, we can’t. Surely you know how to do it.”
“Do what?”
“How to kiss her! How to let her know you like her! You’ve been married, for God’s sake.”
“Exactly, I’ve been married. And now I’m divorced.”
“That’s what’s holding you back?”
“Well, kissing one woman when I’ve only just stopped being married to another doesn’t sound like the ideal way to start off a new relationship.”
Jack’s eyes widened. “You think you might want a relationship with this Laura person?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, stop harassing me. You wanted me to start looking for a new pub to buy. And that’s what I’m doing. Now you also want me to throw myself into some romance with a woman I hardly know, when the ink’s barely dry on my divorce papers.”
Jack pointed a finger at his brother. “You think you can line things up in life in order of preferred implementation. First I’ll do this, and then I’ll do that. First I’ll stew in my own misery for months following the collapse of my marriage, and then I’ll think about putting my life back together again. Life doesn’t work that way, Bruce. When I decided to leave my job at the car dealership and start my own company, we found out that same week that Claire was pregnant with Chloe. Do you know how easy it would’ve been for me to say, well, now that we’ll soon have the responsibility and expense of a kid, I’d be mad to leave this job where I’m making good money and risk it for a business that might fail, so maybe I ought to wait? But I took the risk. And I’m glad I did because it was the right thing.”
“Good for you. But I don’t know what the right thing for me is, other than finding a new pub. Can’t you just be happy I’m taking that step?”
Bruce saw his brother’s expression shift.
“Okay, you’re right. I’m pressuring you. I’ll stop.” Jack gestured to the pub. “So, what do you think about this place?”
Bruce came out from behind the bar. “It’s not for me.”
“Didn’t think it would be. Where’s next?”
Back in the car, Bruce punched the next destination into his phone and began following the navigation directions. “How are the girls?” he asked as he drove.
“They’re good. Oh, I almost forgot.” Jack reached into his pocket, pulled out a sheet of paper and unfolded it. “Isla drew this for you.”
Slowing for traffic lights, Bruce glanced over and saw a drawing of a stick man with an enormous head. In one hand he held some kind of pole, in the other a squinty rectangle. When the mental adjustment kicked in, and he saw the image through the mind of a small child, finally it clicked. Isla had drawn a picture of him pulling a pint behind the bar.
He laughed. “I love it.”
“After we visited you last year in London, Isla talked endlessly about how your job was to pull pints. She got obsessed with this thing about pulling pints, and she’s been drawing variations on this picture ever since. When I told her we were looking at a new pub this afternoon, she drew this and asked me to give it to you.”
“She’s a little sweetheart.”
“I’ll leave it here.” Jack slid the drawing into the glove compartment. “Once you find a new pub, Bruce, the girls are going to love coming to visit you there.”
“Me too. Are they enjoying the summer holidays off school?”
“Loving it. Six weeks of me and Claire wrangling childcare chaos.”
“Sounds tough.”
But Jack waved a hand. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Those two girls are the lights of my life.”
Turning at a set of lights, Bruce felt his brother’s eyes on him.
“You deserve those things too, Bruce. Children, a family. I know it’s what you want. You’ll be an amazing dad one day.”
“Can’t imagine when that’ll happen.”
“It’ll happen when it’s the right time. For all you know, this Laura could be the one you’ve been waiting your whole life for.”
Bruce shot a glance at his brother. “So not only do you want me to kiss her, you want me to have kids with her now, too?”
Jack laughed. “I’m just kidding around.” Peering further up the road, he pointed and curled a lip. “Is this the next place?”
Bruce nodded and parked the car, but knew before he’d even turned off the engine that this second pub was all wrong. It was in a bad location next to a scrubby patch of wasteland, and several of the cars parked on the street looked long abandoned. The pub had looked better in the paperwork that had been prepared by the selling agent, and now that he saw it with his own eyes, it seemed cold and hard.
However, as the agent had the desperate look of a man who’d been attempting to flog the property for a long time, Bruce spent ten minutes inspecting the place before thanking him and making good his escape.
“Sorry, that was a waste of time,” he said to Jack as they drove off.
“I’m happy to come along for the ride. How many sites did you look at before you bought your pub in London?”
He thought back. “Close to twenty.”
“See, there you go. Just keep at it. If we’re all done for the day, drop me back at my office. There’s some work I want to finish before I go home.” Jack turned and studied his brother. “How about we go out tonight, have a few drinks and get some dinner?”
“Isn’t Friday night your movie night with Chloe and Isla?”
“Claire won’t mind me missing it to be with my brother who needs a pal right now.”
“I’m not taking you away from movie night with your girls, and I’m working at the pub anyway. One of the bar staff’s got a family member in hospital, and I said I’d cover.”
“In that case, come over on Sunday. I’m planning another barbeque. There’s a special feature with one of the gas burners I haven’t tried out yet.”
“Hard to turn down a dinner offer involving a special feature on a gas burner. What time?”
“Six o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.”
“And listen, I’m serious about what I said about this Laura woman. If you like her, don’t wait. In life there’s no such thing as the perfect moment.”
For the rest of the drive home, Bruce found himself wondering if that was true.
And despite not wanting to think about Laura, he found himself thinking about her anyway and whether, that afternoon in her kitchen, he’d somehow stumbled into the perfect moment with her ... and botched it.
Keith stirred sugar into his cappuccino and watched Natalie tapping at her laptop behind the counter in Valentino’s. She had a look of concentration on her face he found oddly alluring. “Any interested buyers yet?” he asked.
Glancing up from the keyboard, Natalie shook her head. “These things take time, and—” Her attention shifted to a passing waitress. “Fiona,” she called out, signalling the young waitress back. “I asked you fifteen minutes ago to clear tables eight and nine, and they’re still a mess.”
“Oops sorry, I forgot,” the young waitress replied, giggling.
Natalie shook her head as Fiona scurried towards the dirty tables. “Now that’s something I won’t miss when I leave this place,” she said in a low voice to Keith. “Constantly herding staff members who are unable to line up a list of tasks in their heads and get them done.”
Keith chuckled and sipped some coffee. “You’ve got good staff here. Laura’s a gem.”
“No argument there. Although she has been acting strangely this week. When I quizzed her, she said she’s doing a ten-kilometre race in a few weeks’ time and the training is taking a toll. She looked decidedly peaky during her shift earlier. I only hope she isn’t coming down with something. The last thing I need right now is to have my best waitress off sick.”
Natalie tapped on her keyboard and scowled. “Oh for goodness sake! Sorry, Keith, but I need to go to my office and make a call about an invoicing error. Something else I won’t miss when I sell this place – all these constant paperwork mistakes.”
“I’ll wait until you come back.”
“I might be a while,” she said, picking up her laptop. “Listen, we can have coffee some other time. I shouldn’t have suggested this afternoon – I knew I’d be rushed off my feet.”
“Wait, there was something I wanted to ask you.”
Natalie, already disappearing through to her office, looked over her shoulder. “Okay, just come through with me while I get this call started.”
In her office, she set down her laptop, picked up the desk phone and dialled. Keith made his way to one of the chairs on the other side of her desk. Music was playing in the office. Opera music. Grinning, he felt relief rush through him.
“I just dialled this number and have immediately been put on hold with these clowns at my meat supplier, can you believe that?” Natalie said.
“Disgraceful.” Keith set down his coffee cup on the edge of her desk. “Listen, I happen to have a couple of tickets to the opera and I wondered if you’d like to go?” He pulled the tickets from his pocket and waved them in the air before peering at them. “Rigoletto at the Theatre Royal.”
Across the desk, Natalie looked at the tickets and then at Keith. “You just happened to have opera tickets on your person?”
“Well no, not exactly. Last week at dinner, you said something about liking opera. So I thought I’d find out if there was any opera playing. And there is. The only tickets still available were for tomorrow night. Maybe that’s late notice—”
“I’d love to go,” she interrupted. “Late notice, yes, but I happen to like Rigoletto very much. In fact, I knew some months ago it would be playing but never got around to doing anything about it.”
Pleased, he tucked the tickets back into his pocket. “Good. Shall we get some dinner before the show?”
“Can you manage a late supper afterwards? I’ll be busy here most of tomorrow.”
“That works for me. I’ll get Bruce to cover at the pub. I was also wondering—”
She held up a finger, listened into the phone, then sighed and shook her head. “I’m still on hold. Go ahead, what were you going to say?”
“I wondered if you’d take a look at the new whisky menu I’ve designed for the pub. You’ve always had a good eye for these things, and I know you helped design Valentino’s menus. I’d value your thoughts.”
“A whisky menu?”
“For the new single malts I’m introducing, and—”
“Of course, I remember you told me. I’d be glad to take a look. I’ll pop over when—” Leaning forward in her chair, she shifted the phone from her shoulder and spoke into it. “Yes, this is Natalie Fachini at Valentino’s. I’m afraid there is a serious problem with the invoice you just sent through.”
Keith rose and headed for the door, taking his coffee cup with him. He gave Natalie a small wave, which she returned distractedly while she continued her phone conversation. He was happy not to be the person on the other end of that discussion. Natalie, he could plainly hear, took no prisoners.
In the restaurant, he deposited his coffee cup on the counter and nodded to Paul as he left.
Natalie had agreed to go to the opera with him. He could suffer through opera – for her.
He found himself grinning all the way back to The Crooked Thistle.
The fancy restaurant to which John had promised to take Laura turned out to be the Pizza Hut at the nearby retail park.
She had no quibble with pizza, or with Pizza Hut for that matter. But it definitely wasn’t fancy, whi
ch meant she looked really silly in the sleek midnight blue dress and killer silver stilettos she’d chosen to wear. The waitress, along with just about every diner in the place, had given her long looks as she’d swished through the place. She’d never felt more embarrassed in her life.
John, in contrast, had turned up wearing old jeans and a Darth Vader T-shirt.
“I know I already said it, but you look great,” he said, chewing through a slice of spicy meat feast.
Laura jabbed her fork at the ham and pineapple pizza she’d ordered. A family of four sat at the next table, where the kids were currently engaged in a game of who-can-throw-the-pepperoni-slices-furthest-across-the-room. Laura sat clenched in fear that one of those slices would soon be headed towards her and her beautiful dress.
Quite why John had promised fancy if he’d always intended bringing her here was beyond her.
To make things worse, she’d felt a headache brewing just as John had arrived to pick her up – an ill omen, she now decided – and it had only got worse as the evening went on. She wanted to chalk it up to the after-effects of that morning’s disastrous training run, and maybe it had actually begun hatching so long ago. But she also knew that the weirdness of the evening – her all dolled up in an evening dress, John slouching across from her in Star Wars gear, the two of them surrounded by the roar of a Saturday night in a fast food place filled with noisy children and screeching packs of teenagers – wasn’t exactly helping keep a tension headache at bay.
Plus, John had hardly said a word since they’d arrived. She studied him, munching on his pizza and trying to pretend he wasn’t reading a message on his phone.
What am I doing here? Laura wondered. Why am I with this person?
Yvonne was right: there was no future in this relationship, if it even was a relationship. John wasn’t a bad person. He just wasn’t right for her. And she just wasn’t right for him.