Chapter 1: Espresso and Exposed Sketches
The bell above the coffee shop door jangled, a sharp sound that always made Roslyn flinch. She kept her head down, focused on wiping the steam wand with a damp cloth. The morning sun streamed through the front windows, cutting through the lingering scent of espresso and toasted sourdough. She liked the routine of it, the quiet predictability before the lunch rush. The walls, cluttered with signed jerseys and faded team photos, watched over her like silent, sporting ghosts.
“Three black coffees, Roz. Make them strong enough to wake the dead.”
Her head snapped up. Alistair MacLeod was leaning against the counter, his training jacket zipped halfway up his chest. He smelled of fresh grass, damp earth, and clean sweat. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell; it was organic, like the air after a storm. He took up space differently than other people, not just with his height and the width of his shoulders, but with a calm, easy energy that seemed to push the walls back.
“Hi. Sure. Just a sec.” Her words came out in a soft, rushed mumble. She turned to the grinder, her fingers clumsy as she fumbled with the portafilter. She could feel his eyes on her back. She always could.
“No hurry. We’re celebrating. Ham here didn’t vomit after fitness drills this morning. A personal best.”
Two other bodies crowded in beside Ally, filling her peripheral vision with more muscle and laughter. Euan, a flanker with a permanent grin, and Hamish—"Ham"—a prop whose neck was as wide as his head. They were still in their training kit, a trio of colossal, mud-splattered disruption in her orderly world.
“Lies,” Hamish grumbled, his voice a low rumble. “I just waited ‘til the coaches weren’t lookin’. Strategic regurgitation, it’s a key part of my game management.”
Roz’s sketchbook was lying open on the counter by the till, left there from her quiet morning break. She’d been working on a series of studies—the drape of a coat over a chair, the intricate machinery of the espresso maker. But the open page was something else entirely. It was a page of motion studies, quick, forceful charcoal lines capturing the dynamics of a rugby tackle. The central figure, a player caught in the brutal, beautiful geometry of a collision, was unmistakably Alistair. The rendering of his musculature under the strain of impact was precise, intimate in its anatomical detail.
“Celebrating with coffee? Standards have fallen, lads,” Euan said, eyeing the pastries. “Where’s the champagne breakfast?”
“My treat, is it?” Ally said, not taking his eyes off Roz as she worked. “You’re both a drain on my soul and my wallet.”
The machine hissed as Roz pulled the shot. She willed her hands to steady.
“So, Roz,” Euan leaned on the counter, his voice dropping to a mock-conspiratorial whisper. “You got a boyfriend hidden away somewhere? A moody poet in a garret? Because Ally here thinks you’re a phantom. Says you might vanish in a puff of steam if he speaks too loud.”
Roz’s entire body went hot. She nearly overfilled the cup.
“Leave her alone, you idiot,” Ally said, but he was laughing.
“I’m just asking what the whole pub wants to know! You’re a mystery. The silent coffee genius. We have theories. International spy? Witness protection?”
Hamish nodded solemnly. “I said underground tattoo artist. Those are the quiet ones.”
A small, choked sound escaped Roz. It was almost a laugh. She slid the first coffee across to Ally, finally risking a glance up. His eyes, a bright, clear grey, were fixed on her sketchbook. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“What’s this?” he asked, his voice quieter.
“Nothing,” she breathed, lunging to snap the book shut.
But his finger came down, not forcefully, but with a definitive weight, pinning the corner of the page open. He studied the drawing. The noise of his teammates faded into a dull buzz. He saw the care in every line, the understanding of physics and form, the reverence for the moment of impact. It was more than a fan sketch. It was a dissection.
“Roz,” he said. Her name sounded different in his mouth now. Not a casual greeting, but a realization.
Euan peered over. “Holy shit. Is that you? Getting your head taken off by the Springbok? That’s brilliant!”
“It’s not… I was just practicing figures in motion,” she whispered, the excuse pathetic even to her own ears. She wanted the floor to swallow her, the espresso machine to explode, anything.
Ally ignored Euan. He looked from the drawing to her face, his gaze tracing the panic in her eyes, the blush staining her cheeks. He didn’t look offended. He looked… intrigued. Perceptively, genuinely intrigued.
“You drew this from the television footage?” he asked.
She gave a tiny, desperate nod.
“The angle’s all wrong from the broadcast. You’ve corrected it. You’ve got the weight distribution here…” He tapped the page beside his sketched calf. “…perfect. The coaches would kill for this analysis.”
He finally lifted his finger. She snatched the book and clutched it to her chest like a shield.
“Right, you two,” Ally said, suddenly turning back to his friends, his usual easy tone returning but with a new edge. “Pay for your own coffees. And get me a cinnamon roll.”
“A revolution!” Euan cried. “The tyranny ends!”
As they bickered and fumbled for wallets, Ally kept his eyes on Roz. She was a statue, holding the sketchbook, poised for flight.
“You’re an artist,” he stated softly. It wasn’t a question.
“Student,” she corrected automatically, her voice barely audible.
He accepted the paper bag with the pastry from Hamish and took his coffee. The others were already heading toward a table by the window, their laughter booming again.
He didn’t move immediately. He stood there, towering over her, the smell of his training session mixing with the rich aroma of coffee. The morning sun caught the gold in his hair and the curious, appreciative light in his eyes.
“Roslyn,” he said, trying out the full name. He nodded once, a slow, thoughtful gesture. “Thanks for the coffee.”
He turned and joined the roar of his teammates. Roz stood frozen, the ghost of his gaze still on her skin, the imprint of his finger on the corner of her secret page burning like a brand. The bell on the door hadn’t jangled again. He was still here. And he knew.
The moment stretched, thin and taut as a wire. Roz finally managed to unglue her feet from the floor, turning her back to the room to hide the furious heat in her cheeks. She busied herself with wiping down the already-spotless machine, the rough texture of the cloth grounding her. His voice played on a loop in her head. You’re an artist. He’d seen it. Not just a doodle, but the intention behind it.
From the table by the window, a roar of laughter erupted. Euan was mimicking a missed tackle, his chair screeching back. Ally was watching her. She could feel it, a specific, warm pressure between her shoulder blades. She risked a glance in the reflection of the stainless-steel fridge. He was, his chin resting on his hand, his gaze thoughtful as his friends clowned around him.
The door to the back office swung open.
Susan, her boss, bustled through. “Oh, the rugby boys are here!” she said to the room, her voice a cheerful boom that made Roz jump. She was a woman built like a friendly bulldog, with kind eyes and an apron permanently dusted with flour.
“Susan!” they greeted in ragged unison.
“Hope you watched the game on Sunday,” Hamish called out, pointing a thick finger at her. “We were majestic.”
“I caught the last ten minutes. Just in time to see you lot get penalized for… what was it? ‘Rough conduct’?” Susan chuckled, loading a tray with clean mugs. “A fancy term for losing your tempers, if you ask me.”
“Aesthetic disagreement with the referee,” Euan declared, and they all laughed again.
Susan’s appearance broke the spell. The normal sounds of the shop—the grinder, the soft jazz from the speakers, the hiss of steam—rushed back in. Roz breathed. She carefully slid her sketchbook into her bag under the counter, zipping it away with finality. A secret, once uncovered, was no longer a secret. It was a fact. He was a fact, now sitting ten feet away, eating a cinnamon roll.
She moved on autopilot, taking orders from a couple of tourists, her smile polite and distant. But her mind was a riot. He’d studied doors. She remembered reading that in a profile once. Alistair MacLeod, a degree in door science or something equally bizarre. It didn’t fit the bruising rugby star image, and that mismatch fascinated her. It suggested layers, a mind that thought about mechanisms and thresholds. What did he see when he looked at her? A clumsy barista? A weirdo who drew him in her spare time?
She was collecting empty cups from a nearby table when his shadow fell over her.
“Hey.”
She straightened too fast, nearly upending the crockery. “Hi.”
He was alone. His friends were outside now, leaning against a massive 4x4, phones in hand. Ally had his hands in his pockets. “Sorry about them. They’re animals. Mostly harmless.”
“It’s okay.” She clutched the cups to her chest. A feeble fortification.
“The drawing,” he said, getting straight to the point. His voice was low, for her alone. “It’s really good. Seriously. You’ve got a hell of an eye.”
“Thank you.” The words were dust in her throat.
“Do you… draw a lot of rugby?” He asked it casually, but there was a keen edge underneath.
“No.” She shook her head, finally meeting his eyes. The grey was like quartz, clear and solid. “Just… movement. Physics. The shapes bodies make under pressure. Rugby is just a good source for that.”
He nodded slowly, as if she’d said something profoundly insightful. “The shapes bodies make under pressure,” he repeated. A slight, wry smile touched his lips. “Yeah. That’s one way to put it.” He paused. “Can I see more sometime? Not of me,” he added quickly, seeing her panic. “Just… your work. The other stuff.”
Roz’s world tilted. Alistair MacLeod wanted to see her art. It was incomprehensible. She felt a dizzying lurch between the desire to share it—to have someone, especially him, see it—and the primal urge to flee.
“It’s not… it’s just sketches. Studies. Nothing finished.”
“All the best stuff starts that way,” he said. He seemed utterly convinced.
Before she could form a reply, a horn blared outside. Euan was hanging out the passenger window. “MacLeod! We’ll be late for film review! Coach’ll have your guts for garters!”
Ally glanced over his shoulder, then back at her. He looked like he wanted to say something else. Instead, he just gave her that same nod. “Next time, then.”
He turned and loped towards the door, all effortless, athletic grace. As he pushed it open, the sunlight flared around him for a second, a blinding silhouette. Then he was gone, swallowed by the noise of the city and the rumble of the big engine.
Roz stood, holding the dirty cups, listening to the bell’s echo fade into silence.
Susan appeared beside her, taking the cups from her numb hands. “Nice lad, that Ally,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact. “Different from the others. Thinks more.”
Roz just nodded, her heart performing a clumsy, erratic rhythm against her ribs. She walked back to the safety of the counter, to her domain of beans and steam. But the border had been breached. The quiet order of her life had been irrevocably changed by a few lines of charcoal on a page, and by the man who understood the weight they carried.
Under the counter, her bag felt heavier. She didn’t take the sketchbook out. But she knew, with a certainty that was both thrilling and terrifying, that the next page she turned would be for him.
But she knew, with a certainty that was both thrilling and terrifying, that the next page she turned would be for him.
The thought lingered for three days. It hummed beneath the routine of grinding beans and steaming milk, a persistent low-frequency distraction. She found herself studying the way light fell across the room in the late afternoon, how it carved the customers into shapes of shadow and illumination, and she’d think, How would I capture that? and then, inevitably, Would he see it?
He returned on a Thursday. The lunch rush had bled away, leaving the shop in a state of peaceful exhaustion. Roz was restocking ceramic mugs, her arms full, when the door opened. She didn’t need to look. The shift in the atmosphere—a subtle injection of vibrant, contained energy—told her.
“You’re down a man,” Susan noted cheerfully from behind the counter. Roz carefully slotted a mug onto its shelf.
“Euan’s got a physio appointment. Hamish is probably still eating his lunch. A four-cheese toastie is a solemn commitment,” Ally said, his voice warm and close. Roz turned.
He was alone, dressed in casual jeans and a simple grey jumper that did nothing to disguise the athletic build beneath. He looked more like a postgraduate student than a sports icon. It was disarming.
“Hi,” he said, his gaze finding hers immediately.
“Hi.” She wiped her hands on her apron, a useless gesture.
“I’ll have a flat white, please, Susan. For here.” He paused, then looked back at Roz. “If you’re not too busy to… I don’t know, point me towards the least wobbly table?”
It wasn’t a command. It was an invitation, open-ended and low-pressure. Susan, with a wisdom that felt both gentle and brutally obvious, said, “Roz, take your break. I’ve got this.”
Roz felt herself nod. She untied her apron, her fingers fumbling with the knot. She led him to a small table tucked near the back, away from the window’s glare. It was her favourite spot, where the light was soft and diffused.
He sat, the chair creaking under his weight. She sat across from him, her hands folded in her lap like a schoolgirl.
“So,” he began. “Art student.”
“Masters,” she clarified, the word barely audible. “At ECA.”
“Right. And you specialise in… drawing giant rugby oafs from telly?”
A tiny, unexpected laugh escaped her. “No. Not specifically. It’s a mixed-media focus. The human form in contemporary spaces. Mostly.”
“Mostly,” he repeated, smiling. “I’m flattered to be an exception.”
Susan brought his coffee over, giving Roz a discreet, encouraging look that made her want to sink through the floor.
When she left, Ally stirred his drink slowly. “I looked you up,” he admitted, bluntly. “After the other day. Roslyn McLeod. Your degree show got a mention in The Scotsman last year. ‘A compelling exploration of vulnerability in motion.’ That’s what it said.”
Roz stared at him. The world seemed to shrink to the space between them, the grains of wood on the tabletop, the soft curl of steam from his cup. He’d Googled her. The idea was absurd.
“You… you looked me up?”
“Aye. Was that weird?” He didn’t seem embarrassed. Curious, maybe. “You drew me with… understanding. Not like a fan. Like a scientist. It got me thinking.”
“I told you. It was about the physics.” Her defence was automatic, but weaker now.
“Aye, the physics.” He took a sip, watching her over the rim. “That’s the thing. I did a degree in sports science, not… God knows what my mates told you. Door science, probably.” He rolled his eyes, a charming, self-deprecating gesture. “So I think about physics too. Levers, forces, kinetics. But you saw the shape of it. The consequence. That’s different.”
Roz’s mind snagged on the correction. Sports science. It made perfect sense. It connected the man who could deconstruct a scrum to the man who wanted to deconstruct her sketch. A thread of genuine common interest, thin but strong, pulled taut between them.
“It’s just observation,” she said, but her voice was stronger now. “You can learn a lot about a person by how they occupy space. How they react to pressure. A rugby pitch is just a… a staged arena for it. All those rituals, the collisions. It’s very raw data.”
He leaned back, a slow, spreading grin on his face. “Raw data. I love that. Coach calls it ‘heart’ and ‘grit’. You call it raw data.” He shook his head, amused. “Can I see it? The raw data from the other day? The sketchbook?”
The request hung in the air. The safe thing was to refuse, to cite privacy, to retreat. She looked at his hands, wrapped around the coffee cup. Competent. Scarred. Gentle. She thought of the care in his eyes when he’d looked at the drawing, the absence of ego.
Without a word, she got up, retrieved her bag from behind the counter, and sat back down. She unzipped it, pulled out the black leather-bound book, and slid it across the table.
He opened it with a reverence that made her throat tight. He didn’t flick through. He started at the beginning, where she’d been practicing the folds of Susan’s apron. He studied a page of hands, another of patrons seen from the back, silhouettes against the window. He took his time. The silence wasn’t awkward; it was full. The clatter of the shop faded.
Then he reached the page. He stopped. His expression grew still, intensely focused. “This is it,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. He traced a line in the air above the paper, following the arc of the drawn body. “See, this angle… the broadcast missed this. You invented it. But you invented it right. This is exactly where my centre of mass was.”
He looked up, his grey eyes alight. “This is brilliant, Roz. Seriously. It’s more than art.”
“It’s just lines,” she whispered, but her heart was pounding.
“It’s truth.” He closed the book carefully, his hand resting on the cover. “Do you ever draw from life? Not from a screen.”
“Sometimes. In life drawing classes. Or in the park.”
“You should come draw at training.”
The sentence dropped between them, simple and seismic.
“What?”
“A training session. Not a match. It’s slower, more repetitive. You could see the mechanics. The raw data without the crowd noise.” He said it as if it were the most logical thing in the world. “I could get you a pass. You could sit on the sidelines.”
The idea was so vast, so terrifyingly outside the boundaries of her world, that for a moment she couldn’t formulate a thought. The noise, the men, the exposure. Him.
“I… couldn’t. That’s for… press. Or family.”
“It’s for whoever I say it’s for,” he said, with a quiet confidence that brooked no argument. Then his tone softened. “Think about it. No pressure. Just an offer.” He pushed the sketchbook back towards her. “Thank you for showing me. You’re really talented.”
He finished his coffee and stood up. The spell broke, and the ordinary sounds of the coffee shop rushed back in. He pulled his jacket on.
“I’ll be in for a coffee next week. Maybe you’ll have some new data for me.”
He left with a nod to Susan and a final, lingering glance at Roz. The bell chimed. She sat, her hand on the warm leather of her sketchbook. The page he’d studied felt charged, as if his attention had left a permanent impression.
Sports science, her mind replayed. You should come draw at training.
The next page wouldn’t just be for him. It might, she realised with a dizzying lurch of possibility, be drawn from him.
The bell’s chime seemed to echo in the empty space he left behind. Roz’s fingers tightened on the sketchbook. The leather cover was warm from his hands. Drawn from him. The thought wasn’t just possibility now; it was an invitation, hanging in the air between the tables like the lingering scent of his coffee.
She floated through the next hour in a daze, wiping surfaces that were already clean, rearranging muffins in the display case into unnaturally perfect rows. Her mind was a reel of moments: the line of his jaw as he studied her work, the quiet intensity in his voice when he said ‘It’s truth,’ the casual, world-altering offer of a sideline pass.
The lunch prep began, and the mundane rhythm of slicing tomatoes and washing lettuce greens finally anchored her. Susan moved beside her, a steady, humming presence.
“He stayed a while,” Susan said casually, not looking up from the bread she was buttering.
“Yeah.”
“Bought just the one coffee. For here. Usually they’re in and out.”
Roz felt Susan’s gaze slide toward her. She kept her eyes on her knife, focusing on the even, translucent slices of cucumber.
“He likes you,” Susan said, her tone matter-of-fact, like she was noting a change in the weather.
Roz shook her head, a sharp, automatic jerk. “No. He’s Ally Fraser.” The name was a complete argument, a wall of impossibility.
Susan smiled again, a small, knowing curve of her lips. “Maybe so.”
Roz put her head down and busied herself with stacking the slices, her movements becoming unnecessarily precise. The silence stretched, filled only with the crunch of Susan tearing lettuce. The words fought their way up, a fragile, defeated murmur. “He’s probably got a girlfriend. A model. Or an influencer. Or something.”
Susan paused, wiping her hands on her apron. She looked thoughtful, her eyes distant for a moment. “I’m not sure he does,” she murmured. “He’s a nice lad. My aunt lives next door to his parents, well, the family home. Remembers Ally when he was a pupil at Boroughmuir.”
Roz glanced up, caught.
“She says he was always the same. Polite. Carried her shopping in once when her back was acting up. Came home covered in mud from the pitch, straight A’s in his pocket, and would still stop to chat over the garden fence.” Susan picked up her knife again, a soft finality in her voice. “Just a person, Roz. From down the road.”
The simplicity of it was a shock. Boroughmuir. A local boy. A neighbour’s nephew. It dismantled the monolithic celebrity she’d built in her head, brick by terrifying brick. It made him more real, and somehow, that was infinitely more dangerous.
The afternoon sun shifted, painting long gold bars across the wooden floor. The door opened and closed, customers came and went, and Roz moved through her tasks. But something had settled. The dizzying lurch had crystallized into a low, steady hum in her veins.
When her shift ended, she walked out into the crisp Edinburgh air, her bag slung over her shoulder. The sketchbook inside felt heavier, significant. She didn’t go straight home. She walked down to the Links, where the wide green space was dotted with people and dogs. She found a bench facing an empty rugby pitch, the posts standing like silent sentinels against the grey sky.
She took out her book and a pencil. Her hand hovered over a fresh page.
She didn’t draw the posts, or the field. She drew the imprint of a conversation. The curve of a coffee cup seen from the side. The suggestion of a broad shoulder in a grey jumper, not defined by muscle, but by the space it occupied. The abstract, resonant idea of a threshold—a door held open.
It wasn’t him. Not literally. It was the shape his absence had left in the air of the coffee shop. The raw data of a possibility.
She closed the book as the streetlights flickered on, a pale orange against the deepening blue. The hum in her veins had become a decision, quiet and firm. She would go. She would draw from him.
She stood, slinging her bag over her shoulder, and walked toward home, the city lights blurring into a soft, promising glow. The chapter of watching from a distance was over. The next one, whatever it was, began on a sideline.