Chapter 7: Post-Date Interrogation
The problem with an invite list, Roz decided, was that it was a physical manifestation of your own insignificance. A single A4 sheet of paper that could brutally highlight how small your world was. She sat at the cluttered desk, a mug of cold tea staining a textbook page, and chewed the end of her pen.
Thirty invites for the degree show preview. Thirty.
Family took five. Denny, obviously. A few tutors who’d actually remember her name. Three girls from the printmaking studio she sometimes shared solvent with. That was maybe twelve. The rest was a yawning void of professional contacts she didn’t have—gallery owners, critics, the kind of people who could actually change things. She’d scribbled ‘Ally MacLeod’ at the bottom in a moment of wild fantasy, then quickly scratched it out into an indecipherable blob. He’d be in training camp. It was a ridiculous thought.
“You’re doing the face again.” Denny announced, wandering in from the kitchen with a bowl of cereal. “The ‘my-life-is-a-desert-wasteland’ face. Is it the list?”
“It’s a census of my isolation,” Roz mumbled, dropping her forehead to the desk.
“Drama llama. Give it here.” Denny snatched the paper, scanning it. “Right. First problem: you’ve not put me down as ‘Denny, VIP, plus-one handsome stranger’. Second, where’s rugby husband?”
“He’s not my husband. And he’s away.”
“He’s due back in, what, nine days? The show’s in three weeks. He could come.” Denny’s eyes glittered. “Imagine him, all giant and scowling, standing in front of your little watercolour of a dead leaf. ‘This speaks to me of transience and the brutal poetry of the scrum.’ It’d be iconic.”
“He doesn’t scowl. And my work isn’t about dead leaves.”
“It’s a metaphor, Roz. Lighten up.” Denny flopped onto the sofa, crunching loudly. “Just invite him. The worst he can say is no. And if he says yes, you get to see him in a suit. That’s a scientific fact worth investigating.”
Roz snatched the list back. “I’ll think about it.”
“You’ll agonize. I know you.” Denny’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it, smirked, and then her expression shifted to something more deliberate. “Oop. Speaking of scientific investigation. What’s the protocol on sending shirtless selfies? Is that a pre-relationship tax, or post-?”
Roz’s head jerked up. “What?”
“Your man. He’s just uploaded a thirst trap to the group chat. The one with me and Cam. It’s for the lads, obviously. But the implication is clear.”
“He didn’t send it to me,” Roz said, and the words tasted oddly sour.
“Maybe he’s working up to it. Testing the waters with the friendly intermediaries.” Denny turned her screen. It was a mirror selfie in a stark, industrial gym. Ally was mid-movement, hefting a weight that looked like it could anchor a freighter. His back was to the camera, muscles corded and gleaming with sweat, the intricate tattoo of thorns and a compass spanning his shoulder blade. The caption read: Last heavy session. Brick by brick.
It was objectively a lot. A vast, sculpted landscape of effort. Roz felt her throat go dry.
“See?” Denny said, voice dropping. “He’s counting down. ‘Brick by brick’. That’s him building his way back to you. In a very, very literal sense.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Roz whispered, but she couldn’t look away from the photo. It wasn’t just the physique; it was the focused ferocity in the sliver of profile she could see. This was his other world, the one of pure, punishing discipline. And he’d shared a piece of it.
Her own phone, face-down on the desk, vibrated with a single, distinct buzz. A direct message.
Denny’s grin was wolfish. “Go on then.”
Heart hammering against her ribs, Roz flipped the phone over. The screen glowed with a new image. It was the same gym, the same mirror. But this one was taken a moment later. He’d turned slightly, catching his own reflection with the phone held up. He wasn’t smiling. His expression was raw, tired, his hair dark with sweat. He was looking directly into the lens, his gaze intense and unmistakably aimed at her. The caption was just two words.
For you.
The air left Roz’s lungs in a soft rush. This wasn’t for the lads. This was stripped of bravado. It was just him, in the grind, thinking of her. It was infinitely more powerful.
Denny, trying to peek, groaned. “What is it? Did he send you a meme?”
“No,” Roz managed, her thumb hovering over the screen. She felt wildly out of her depth. How did you respond to that? A heart emoji felt absurd. A compliment felt inadequate. She typed, deleted, typed again.
Finally, she sent: Brick by brick looks exhausting.
The reply was almost immediate. It is. Your turn. What are you working on?
She glanced at the invite list, at the blank spaces representing her uncertain future. Then she looked at the photo, at the focused determination in his eyes. An impulse seized her. She stood, walked to the small canvas on her easel—the one with the gold wash from the other night. She took a picture, not of the whole thing, but a close-up of a corner where the gold met a deep, inky blue. A collision of warmth and depth.
She sent it with the caption: Building something too.
She put the phone down, face-up this time. Denny was watching her, all traces of teasing gone from her face.
“Okay,” Denny said softly. “That’s different.”
“What is?”
“The look on your face. It’s not just missing him anymore.” Denny nodded to the phone. “It’s knowing he’s missing you back. Properly. It changes the geometry.”
Roz picked up the invite list. She looked at the scratched-out blob at the bottom. Taking a deep breath, she smoothed the paper and wrote, in clear, deliberate letters: Alistair MacLeod.
She didn’t send it. Not yet. But it was there, on the page, a possibility made tangible. Her phone buzzed again.
Ally’s message read: Tell me what it’s called.
She looked at the canvas, at the gold fighting the blue. She typed her reply, the truth coming easier now. I don’t know yet. It’s just a feeling.
Those are the best ones, he wrote back. Keep going.
And she did. She picked up a brush, loaded it with a colour that was neither gold nor blue, but something in between. The invite list sat to the side, forgotten for now. The flat was quiet save for the scratch of Denny turning a page and the soft tap of Roz’s brush against the glass palette. But the silence felt different. It felt charged, like the moment between lightning and thunder, full of a promise that was slowly, brick by brick, crossing the distance.
That promise hummed in the silence for three days. Roz worked. She mixed pigments into the granular sweet-smelling paste of her oils, the rhythmic scraping of the palette knife a counterpoint to her thoughts. The canvas absorbed the gold and blue, and now held a suggestion of something new: a faint, stubborn line of earthy umber, cutting through like a horizon at dusk.
Her phone stayed quiet, save for a single message the morning after the photo. Ally: Camp’s gone quiet. Phones away. Last push. See you soon. The brevity felt like a door closing softly, leaving her in the echo of what they’d shared. She didn’t mind. It gave the promise space to settle, to become something she could almost touch.
Denny, of course, was a whirlwind of speculation. “A ‘last push’,” she said, perched on the arm of the sofa. “That’s code. Code for ‘I will return a sculpted god and sweep you off your feet’.”
“It’s code for rugby,” Roz said, not looking up from her sketchbook. She was attempting to draw the line of a jaw from memory. It kept coming out wrong.
“You’re drawing again. That’s new.”
“I always draw.”
“Not like that. That’s anatomical. You’re studying.” Denny leaned over, her shadow falling across the page. “Is that his chin? It’s very square.”
Roz slammed the book shut. “It’s a study in structure.”
“Uh-huh.” Denny’s phone chirped. She glanced at it, and her playful demeanor evaporated. “Oh. Cam says the team’s flying back tonight. Early. Surprise arrival.”
A jolt, pure and electric, shot through Roz’s chest. “Tonight?”
“That’s the gossip from the boy’s brigade.” Denny watched her face carefully. “You could be cool. Wait for him to text. Play it aloof.”
Roz looked down at her paint-stained sweats, at the charcoal smudged on her wrist. She thought of the shirtless photo, the raw look in his eyes. Aloof felt like a lie. The charge in the air wasn’t for aloofness. It was for something true.
“I’m not good at aloof,” she admitted quietly.
“I know.” Denny’s smile was genuine now. “So don’t be. Just be you. The one he sent that photo to.”
The afternoon bled away, each hour stretching and contracting with nervous energy. Roz cleaned brushes she’d already cleaned. She rearranged the invites on her desk, Ally’s name staring back at her. She didn’t send it. It felt like a thing to say in person, if she could find the courage. At half-seven, with the Edinburgh sky finally dimming to a deep, endless blue, she gave up.
She pulled on her boots and Ally’s jacket, the one she still hadn’t returned. The lining held his faint, clean scent. It was armor.
“Where are you going?” Denny called from the kitchen.
“For a walk. Just… air.”
“You’re wearing his jacket on a walk for air. Right. Well, if you happen to wander past the team’s private car park at the stadium, no you didn’t.”
Roz didn’t confirm or deny. The cool evening air hit her face as she stepped outside, a relief. She walked without a clear destination, her hands buried in the jacket’s deep pockets. Her feet, however, seemed to have a map of their own. They carried her away from the quiet streets of her flat, down the gentle slope, toward the looming, darkened shape of the stadium at the edge of the park.
It was absurd. He wouldn’t be there. The team would be dispersed, home to families and loved ones. She pictured him in his own minimalist flat across the city, exhausted, sleeping for a week. She rounded a corner onto the broad avenue that skirted the park grounds.
And stopped.
A lone figure was leaning against a sleek, dark car parked under a streetlamp. He was a silhouette at first, tall and broad, head bowed over his phone. He wore a simple grey t-shirt and jeans, a duffle bag at his feet. He looked up, as if sensing her stillness from fifty meters away.
The light caught the sharp angle of his cheekbone, the tired lines around his eyes. It was Ally.
He straightened up slowly. He didn’t wave. He just watched her approach, his expression unreadable across the distance.
Roz’s heart was a frantic animal in her ribs. Every instinct screamed to turn, to flee, to preserve the safe fantasy. But her feet moved forward. Brick by brick. The distance between them closed, the tap of her boots on the pavement the only sound.
She stopped a few feet away. The stadium’s shadow felt immense behind him. He looked older than in his photos, wearier. More real.
“You’re back,” she said, and her voice was barely a whisper.
“Early flight.” His voice was rough, edged with fatigue. His eyes traveled over her face, then down to the jacket she wore. A slow, deep breath left him. “You kept it.”
She nodded, unable to form words. The charged silence from her flat was here now, swirling around them in the evening mist.
“I got your picture,” he said. “The gold and the blue. It got me through two hellish days.”
“Your photo… it helped too.” She swallowed. “The brick by brick one.”
A faint, tired smile touched his mouth. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He pushed off from the car, closing the last of the space between them. He didn’t touch her. He just stood there, looking down, his presence a tangible warmth against the cool air. “I was about to text you. To see… if I could see you.”
“You are seeing me.”
“I am.” He reached out, then, but not for her. His fingers brushed the cuff of the jacket, his jacket, tracing the fabric near her wrist. A simple, deliberate point of contact. “Roz.”
The way he said her name unspooled something tight inside her. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. A landing.
“I have something for you,” she blurted out, her courage arriving in a sudden, clumsy rush. She fumbled in her other pocket, pulling out the folded exhibition invite. It was creased now, soft from handling. She held it out. “It’s for my degree show. You probably can’t come. And it’s fine if you don’t. But I wanted you to have it.”
He took the paper, his fingers careful. He unfolded it under the amber streetlight, his eyes scanning the printed details before settling on the handwritten name at the bottom. Alistair MacLeod. He stared at it for a long moment.
“You wrote my full name.”
“It’s formal. It’s an invite.”
He looked up, and the weariness in his eyes was now mixed with something intense, focused. “I’ll be there.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Roz.” He said it again, stopping her. “I’m looking at my name on your list. On something you made. I’ll be there.” He folded the invite carefully and tucked it into his jeans pocket, right over his heart. A simple, devastating gesture.
He finally lifted his gaze to hers fully. “Can I take you home?”
It wasn’t a line. It was an offering. She saw the long flight in the set of his shoulders, the deep exhaustion. He was asking for permission to extend this fragile, new thing between them for just a little longer.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
He opened the passenger door for her. As she slid in, the interior light illuminated the tight, faded script of the tattoo on his forearm she’d only seen in pictures. It was in Latin. Per Aspera. She knew enough to recognize it. Through hardships.
He shut her door, walked around the front. The engine purred to life, a low vibration. He didn’t ask for her address. He just drove, the car navigating the familiar streets toward her part of the city, as if he’d mapped the route in his head a hundred times. The promise wasn’t crossing the distance anymore. It was in the car with them, quiet and alive, finally breathing the same air.
The car’s interior smelled of clean leather and the faint, sharp scent of his aftershave. The silence wasn’t empty. It was thick with things unsaid, with the echo of the photo he’d sent, with the physical reality of him just inches away, his hands resting lightly on the steering wheel. Streetlights strobed across his profile, highlighting the new cut above his eyebrow, the dark stubble shading his jaw.
“You’re hurt,” she said, the words out before she could stop them.
He touched the small plaster above his eye almost absently. “Part of the job description. Doesn’t count.”
“It counts to me.”
He glanced at her then, a quick, searching look, before returning his eyes to the road. A muscle in his jaw flexed. That simple statement seemed to land on him with more weight than she’d intended. They drove another block, the purr of the engine the only sound.
“I’m starving,” he said finally, his voice breaking the quiet. “I haven’t eaten anything that wasn’t plain chicken or oats in three weeks.” He gestured vaguely toward the windscreen. “I was gonna get a pizza from SoDough, you know, fancy.” He smiled, a tired, genuine crack in his exhaustion. “Takeaway. Join me? Pizza and beer?”
The normalcy of it, after the intensity of the last hour, was a lifeline. “Yes please,” she said, the relief audible in her own voice.
“We can pick it up and have it back at mine, if you want,” he said, then immediately shook his head. “Or yours. Whichever. I’m not thinking straight. Mine’s a sterile box. Yours has… life.”
“Mine is a mess.”
“I like your mess.” He said it plainly, without flirtation. A simple fact. “Your flat. It has the gold and the blue in it.”
He already knew the way. He navigated the turn toward the trendy street where the pizza place was, a place she knew was always packed, always loud. Her shyness prickled at the edges. Being seen with him in a crowd felt like a different kind of exposure.
As if reading her mind, he parallel-parked with an effortless efficiency. He killed the engine and turned to her. The dim light from the dash softened the harsh lines of his fatigue. “We run in, I grab the order, we run out. Five minutes. You can wait here if you want.”
“No.” She unclipped her seatbelt. “I’m coming.”
The burst of noise from the restaurant was a wall of warmth and chatter. He didn’t take her hand, but he moved close, his shoulder brushing hers as he shouldered a path through the crowd waiting at the bar. He was a lodestone; people subtly made space without even looking up.
“Ally! Back from the wars?” The guy behind the counter, flour-dusted and grinning, slapped the marble. “The usual? Double pepperoni, nduja, extra chilli honey?”
“Yeah, Mark. And a margherita. Plus whatever sourdough bread thing you’ve got tonight.”
“You got it, big man.” Mark’s eyes flickered to Roz, curious, but he just nodded. “Five minutes.”
They retreated to a slightly quieter spot by the condiment fridge. Ally leaned against the wall, his eyes closing for just a second. Up close, under the harsh restaurant lights, she saw the deep bruise-like shadows under his eyes, the weariness etched into his skin. This wasn’t just post-training tiredness. This was a deep, systemic depletion.
“You need to sleep for a year,” she said softly.
He opened his eyes. They were a clear, tired grey. “Later. This is better.”
Mark called his name. Ally collected the large, steaming boxes and a paper bag, handling the transaction with a few quiet words. The smell of charred crust and savoury tomato was overwhelming. Her stomach growled.
Back in the car, the aroma filled the space, rich and promising. He drove the short distance to her flat, carrying the food up the narrow stairwell behind her. The familiarity of her own door, the sound of Denny’s music playing softly from within, was a grounding contrast to the surreal evening.
Denny emerged from the kitchen as they entered, her eyes widening comically at the sight of Ally filling the doorway, pizza boxes in hand. She recovered in a millisecond.
“A delivery man of exceptional quality,” she announced. “I’m Denny. I’ve heard… things. Mainly about bricks.” She winked at Roz. “I am suddenly recalled to a prior engagement in my bedroom. A very loud, headphone-required engagement. You won’t see me for hours.” She grabbed a bottle of water and vanished.
Ally’s mouth quirked. “She’s… something.”
“She’s my best friend.” Roz took the boxes from him and carried them to the low table in the living area. “Sit. Please. You look like you might fall over.”
He did, sinking onto her sofa with a quiet groan she felt more than heard. It was too small for him; his knees angled upward. He looked around, taking in the sketches pinned to the walls, the piles of books, the half-finished canvas on the easel with its horizon of umber. His gaze was slow, appreciative.
She fetched plates and two cold beers from the fridge, sitting cross-legged on the floor opposite him. He opened the boxes, the steam blooming between them. He served her a slice of the margherita first, then took two of the pepperoni for himself. They ate in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds the crackle of crust, the distant thump of Denny’s music.
“This,” he said after swallowing a large bite, his eyes closing in something near reverence, “is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
She laughed, a small, happy sound. “It’s pizza.”
“You don’t understand.” He took a long pull of beer. “For three weeks, food is fuel. Calculated grams. This is… an experience. It’s chaos. It’s perfect.” He ate with a focused intensity, and she watched, fascinated. This was another side of his discipline: the ability to fully, completely appreciate a release from it.
He finished his second slice and leaned back, studying her. “Tell me about the show. The one on the invite.”
She picked at her crust. “It’s just the master’s preview. Thirty pieces. They judge you. Potential buyers circle. It’s… clinical.”
“It’s your work on a wall,” he stated. “That’s not clinical. That’s your heart on a wall. That’s braver than anything I do.”
She shook her head. “You get hit by men the size of lorries.”
“And I have fifteen brothers on the pitch to pick me up. You’re up there alone.” He pointed his beer bottle at her half-finished canvas. “That’s you. Alone. Putting that out there. That’s courage, Roz.”
Hearing him say her name again, in that rough, sure voice, unstitched something. She looked down, her vision blurring. The kindness, the seeing of it, was worse than any teasing or pressure. It found the cracks.
“Hey.” His voice was softer. She heard him move, the creak of the sofa, and then he was on the floor too, sitting beside her, his back against the sofa. Not touching, just closer. The heat from his body radiated toward her. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine,” she whispered, wiping hastily at her eyes. “I’m just tired too.”
“Liar.” He said it gently. He picked up the margherita box and offered it to her. “Eat. Please.”
She took another slice. They sat side-by-side in the quiet, eating, the cardboard box balanced between them like a shared secret. The charged energy from the car had mellowed into a deep, humming calm. This was a different kind of intensity. The intimacy of shared fatigue, of simple food, of sitting on a worn rug in a pool of lamplight.
He told her about the camp, not the rugby, but the absurdities—the rookie who’d put deep heat in his jockstrap, the chef who’d tried to make ‘performance brownies’ that tasted of dirt. His descriptions were dry, witty. She found herself laughing, the sound strange and free in her own ears.
She told him about the panic of the invite list, about Denny’s relentless teasing. She imitated Denny’s voice: “Rugby husband! The wall of muscle!” He laughed, a real, full-bodied sound that transformed his face, erasing the exhaustion for a second.
“She’s not wrong,” he said, still smiling. “About the wall part. The husband part…” He let the sentence hang, his smile fading into something more thoughtful. He looked at her, and the air changed again, became charged once more but with a new, potent current. The pizza was gone. The beers were empty. The world had shrunk to this room.
He reached out, slowly, giving her every chance to move away. His fingers, calloused and strong, brushed a strand of hair that had come loose from behind her ear. He didn’t tuck it back. He just let his fingertips trace the line of her jaw, a touch so feather-light it was almost imagination.
She stopped breathing.
His eyes searched hers, asking a silent, urgent question. Every atom in her body screamed the answer. She leaned into his touch, a millimeter, the smallest concession.
It was all the permission he needed.
He closed the distance, his hand cradling the side of her face, his thumb stroking her cheekbone. His other arm came around her, drawing her in against the solid, unyielding wall of his chest. He smelled of sweat, of travel, of soap, and of the night air. He hesitated, his lips a breath from hers, letting the tension build until it was a live wire between them.
Then he kissed her.
It wasn’t tentative. It was a claiming, a release, a long-awaited answer. It was heat and surety and a barely-contained hunger held in check by something infinitely careful. His mouth moved over hers, and she kissed him back, her hands coming up to clutch at the soft cotton of his t-shirt, anchoring herself to the reality of him. The world—the flat, the city, the silent clock—fell away.
When he finally pulled back, it was only far enough to rest his forehead against hers. His breath was ragged, matching her own. His eyes were closed.
“Roz,” he murmured, her name a prayer, a confirmation.
She didn’t trust her voice. She simply slid her hands up to his shoulders, feeling the incredible, solid strength of him, and pulled him back to her. The second kiss was slower, deeper, an exploration. It was the gold and the blue colliding, the earthy umber cutting through, a feeling finally named. It was the end of the countdown, and the terrifying, exhilarating beginning of everything else.