500 Miles from You (Scottish Bookshop #3)(62)

He saw the shot and winced. He’d been right about the curly hair.

Well. Good for Jake. They looked incredibly happy.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen her,” he said.

Kim-Ange looked at him crossly. “You don’t follow her Insta? Although her Insta is very boring,” said Kim-Ange, whose Insta was not in the slightest bit boring.

“Ach, I don’t really go in for that stuff,” said Cormac shyly.

“You’re sleeping in her bed!”

“I know,” said Cormac, still staring. Her smile beamed. The screen faded to black on Kim-Ange’s phone and he handed it back, somewhat reluctantly.

He had kind of known what she looked like, from what Jake said. But from her missives, her slightly short, occasionally sarcastic emails, he’d been expecting someone a little . . . more uptight. The girl in the picture, she was radiant.

“She looks happy,” said Kim-Ange. “Good. It’s been a while.”

“Yeah,” said Cormac. “Good.”

And they tried to take one together to send back, but Kim-Ange wasn’t happy with the angle and insisted on nine more, and then Cormac got called away to pay the bar staff, and it never happened after all.





Chapter 46


Lissa fell, got up, danced, and still constantly felt she was absolutely fine because it was still light outside, even as everybody else started to drift off. She wanted to dance on and on. The relief of it all was quite something.

Finally, there was a massive circular “Auld Lang Syne,” and when the music stopped, you could feel, at last, the chill of the spring night come on them, and she found herself shivering. Jake immediately took one of the blankets off the hay bales and put it around her shoulders. She smiled at him gratefully.

“Thanks,” she said. She looked around. The previously shy teenagers were now snogging their heads off by the side of the barn. Cars had vanished from the fields, and the lowing of cows, disturbed by the recent noise, reached them across the distant fields.

“Walk you home?” said Jake, handing her a large glass of water that she downed in one.

“Oh, thanks,” she said. “I needed that.”

“Fierce stuff, the elderflower,” said Jake.

“Uh-huh,” said Lissa.

They headed out, and she put her foot into a massive muddy rut on the road and nearly stumbled over. Jake put out his arm to steady her and, once he had done so, left it there.

“So,” he said. “You had fun.”

Lissa’s tongue felt thick in her mouth, the way it did when you’re trying to explain something but can’t quite remember how, but somehow feel that regardless, it’s still very important to get out what you mean. In other words, she was a little drunk. Pinpricks of stars were appearing overhead.

“I did,” she said. “I did, you know. And for the first time . . . for the first time . . .”

She heaved a breath.

“I wasn’t . . . It was like I was just feeling lighter. Just living in the moment. Not anxious, not scared every second of the day. Not terrified for whether I was safe.”

“Is that because you were pished up, though?” said Jake with a smile.

“Yes . . . No!” said Lissa emphatically. “It’s because when you’re dancing you can’t really do anything else. Not when you’re trying to remember the steps and how they go.”

Jake kindly did not mention that not one single time had Lissa managed to remember the steps and how they went.

“You just have to get on with it. And then you manage it, and it’s fun, and it’s just different from everything, and everything else falls away, and all you’re doing is dancing.”

She attempted a pirouette in the middle of the road. Jake steadied her again.

“Oh! Sorry!” she said, realizing she was blundering. “But,” she went on, “it’s been so hard . . .”

“Cormac said,” said Jake, and Lissa blinked suddenly, realizing she wanted to tell Cormac, wanted to tell him she wasn’t feeling so cranky anymore, wasn’t so annoyed with everything. She picked up her phone, but she had to shut one eye to read anything off it so decided against it.

“So,” she said as they reached the door of the little cottage, the roses starting to bud in the beds alongside it. “Thank you. That’s what I wanted to say. Thank you.”

She looked up at him, but Jake could see her mind was elsewhere. And she was definitely rather on the squiffy side. It absolutely wasn’t, he thought, the moment to try to kiss her, even though her eyes were sparkling, her smile wide. She’d regret it tomorrow, he thought. And he wanted to see her tomorrow, and after that if he could.

“Drink some water,” he told her, taking back the blanket. He could drop it off in the morning. “Lots of water. Take some aspirin.”

It was true; just in that moment there had been, Lissa had felt, a tiny bit of magic in the air, a definite sense that she might say, Screw it. Give me a little bit. Give me a little bit back of being young.

Give me back my fearless side that violence has stolen away. Give me some carelessness, where I am not worried, and scared, and trying to please people.

Give me tonight, with a handsome man in a kilt by my side, and a heavy warmth, and a short night, and a pair of fiddles, and a glass of sweet elderflower wine, and let me dance.