500 Miles from You (Scottish Bookshop #3)(39)

“Well, get on Facebook then, like normals.”

Cormac screwed up his face. “I am on it, remember? It’s just my mum sending me pictures of armadillos and my old army pals sharing really, really dodgy stuff. Ugh.”

“Well then. You’ll never know if she’s a frog monster or not.”

“Don’t say frog monster,” said Cormac. “Also, is she a frog monster?”

Jake’s voice went quiet for a while. Then he started up again, and it had an uncharacteristically dreamy tone to it Cormac hadn’t heard before and certainly not when he was talking about Ginty MacGuire.

“Well,” Jake said eventually, “you know Meghan Markle.”

“Mm-hmm?”

“Nothing at all like her,” clarified Jake. “I mean, not really. I mean, she’s curvier, aye, and, well, no she doesn’t look . . . but she’s got these freckles. And they’re . . . they’re dead cute. And all this hair! She’s just got loads and loads of hair and it’s all ringletty and it’s everywhere and . . . anyway . . . Anyway. No, I havenae seen her.”

“Jake Inglis! You think she’s cute!”

“I do not.”

“Well, there you go! She’s lonely. You can ask her out and thank me later.”

“No!”

“That proves it then,” said Cormac. “I know how you work. You ask everyone out and run the laws of statistics. If you’re not doing it it’s because you’re sweet.”

“I don’t,” said Jake, although he did and had never seen anything wrong with it. Jake liked women in the abstract and found something attractive in practically every woman he’d ever met. Holding back was very uncharacteristic.

“Well, I’m just glad you’re not harassing her.”

“I don’t harass anyone!” protested Jake. “I’m charming!”

“That is very much a matter of opinion,” said Cormac, although several hours later he would be sitting in an overpriced club full of weird squawking beautiful people, wishing he had just a touch of the old Jake charm.

MEANWHILE, JAKE WAS standing in the middle of the village square, tongue-tied for once in his life.

“The what?” Lissa asked.

“The shows?” He shrugged.

“Like, rides and stuff?” She still looked confused.

“And, like, a fun house, and you can win teddy bears on shooting ranges and stuff?”

“Oh, you mean a fair?”

“Yeah, all right,” said Jake. “There’s a fair. And it’s mostly run by travelers who do that in the summer but help with the harvest and stuff. We know them all, more or less . . . It’s grand.”

“Well . . . wait, sorry, do I have to work at it?”

“Oh! No. Nobody’s fallen off the Ferris wheel for at least a year.”

Lissa wasn’t sure whether he was joking.

“I’m kidding. The St. John’s Ambulance does it. No, I was just telling you in case you wanted to go.”

Lissa smiled to herself. She did love fairs: the bad boys spinning the waltzers, the clashing scents of popcorn and hot dogs and candy floss, the sense of danger as night drew in. She used to go with her girlfriends, slipping out of school, turning up their skirts. She hadn’t been in a very long time, as if it had been banned, left behind with becoming a responsible grown-up and a health care professional.

“Um, I’m still here,” said Jake, coloring. He couldn’t believe this was going quite as badly as it was. Normally a cheeky wink and a story or two about a particularly daring and possibly slightly exaggerated ambulance callout and it was a done deal, more or less, or if it wasn’t, well, thank you, next, plenty more fish in the sea.

“Thanks for telling me,” said Lissa, slipping out of her reverie. “Okay, well, good to know it’s there.”

Jake put his hand on the back of his neck. “Actually, I was asking if you wanted to go. With me.”

Lissa’s eyebrows shot up. It was the oddest thing; another side effect, she supposed. She hadn’t been thinking about boys at all.

Of course she’d had the same dating-in-London problems as every other girl she knew, competing for decent men with approximately infinity other people. And then there was Ezra. The ghoster. She had sent him one short, consoling letter about Kai, hoping against hope he didn’t think it was another ploy to get his attention. She hadn’t expected to hear back from him, and she hadn’t. But to be ghosted had been so painful. The internet was just such a tough place to meet men.

So she was extremely surprised and jolted to be “asked out”—London men never asked you out. You hung with them or you met via the internet. They didn’t just walk up to you in broad daylight and . . .

Jake put his hands up as if he were reading her mind. He’d gone puce.

“Sorry!” he said. “Didn’t mean to frighten you! It’s all right, don’t panic, just a thought, didn’t want to trouble you.”

And before she could rearrange her face into something vaguely appropriate, he had gone.

LISSA WENT BACK home and called Kim-Ange, who was out with her phone switched off, and of course Lissa couldn’t get her on social media anymore. Then she pulled up the laptop and thought she’d like to get Cormac’s advice. But he hadn’t sent anything over . . . he was out, she realized. It was Friday night and everyone was out except her. She wondered where he was. Surrounded by happy people having an absolutely brilliant time, she imagined. While she was just here.