Chapter 2: The Bar and the Story of the Date
The bar, called The Gilded Anchor, was all warm wood and low, brass-trimmed light. It hummed with the comfortable roar of a Friday night crowd, a symphony of laughter, clinking glass, and the low thrum of a jazz trio in the corner. Alasdair wove through the press of bodies, catching snippets of conversation—office gossip, a disastrous first date, a heated debate about football. He spotted Cameron at their usual spot, a small, slightly sticky table near the back, already nursing a pint of something dark.
“You’re late,” Cameron said, not looking up from his phone. “I’ve already been accosted by a woman who wanted to read my aura. She said I had ‘turbulent energy.’ I told her it was just indigestion.”
“Sorry. Client call ran long.” Alasdair shrugged off his jacket and flagged down a passing server, ordering a whisky. He settled into the curved wooden booth, the noise wrapping around them like a blanket.
Cameron put his phone down. He was a bear of a man, a civil engineer with perpetually ink-stained fingers and a skepticism that bordered on artistic. “So? You’ve been cryptic all week. Spill. The wedding weepy girl. Did you see her again or did she ghost you after the alleyway declaration?”
Alasdair took a moment, swirling the amber liquid in his glass when it arrived. The ice clinked. He could still see her, a vivid afterimage against the clutter of the bar: the dark green of her coat, the way she’d focused on the grey painting like it was a puzzle to be solved.
“I saw her. Last Saturday. We went to that terrible modern art gallery.”
Cameron’s eyebrows shot up. “You took a first date to the Temple of Despair? Bold strategy.”
“It was her idea. Well, my idea, but she agreed.” He took a sip, the whisky burning a pleasant path down his throat. “It wasn’t a disaster.”
“High praise.”
“No, it was… good. Really good. She’s…” Alasdair searched for the right word. The easy ones came first. “She’s sweet. And delicate. Like if you spoke too loudly, she might just… dissolve.”
Cameron leaned back, assessing him. “Delicate. Right. And what does delicate Roz do?”
“She’s an illustrator. A bloody good one, I think. She sees things. Notices the… debris.” He recounted her painting idea, the wedding from under the table. He found himself describing not just her words, but the precision with which she’d said them, the quiet passion that had momentarily eclipsed her shyness.
“Sounds more insightful than delicate,” Cameron grunted. “Sweet and delicate is for desserts, Alasdair. Not for complicated women who want to paint monster folktales.”
“I know, I know.” Alasdair ran a hand through his hair. “It’s just… there’s this fragility there. One minute she’s giving this blistering critique of an artist’s pretension, the next she’s panicking because she agreed to see me again. It’s like she’s all sharp, brilliant edges, but she’s wrapped them in tissue paper.”
“And you’re worried you’re going to tear the paper.”
“Aren’t I?” The question hung between them, honest and bare. “You know me, Cam. I’m not… I don’t do complicated. I do pleasant. I do fun. This feels like holding a bird that’s broken its wing. I don’t know where to put my hands without hurting it.”
Cameron took a long pull from his pint, setting it down with a definitive thud. “Listen to yourself. ‘Holding a bird.’ Christ. You’re not rescuing a stray. You went on a date with a beautiful, clearly clever girl who gets nervous. Welcome to the world of actual people, not the curated profiles you’re used to swiping through.”
“She’s not just nervous. It’s deeper than that.”
“So what? Since when did Alasdair MacLeod, conqueror of difficult clients and rogue planning committees, become afraid of a bit of depth?” Cameron leaned forward, his voice cutting through the jazz. “You like her. She’s gorgeous, she’s interesting, and she didn’t run screaming when you word-vomited your compliment in that alley. She said ‘terrible together.’ That’s a pact, man. That’s someone showing you their cracked edges and saying ‘here, I trust you not to be a dick about them.’”
The server passed by again, dropping off a bowl of roasted peanuts. Alasdair grabbed a handful, the salt sharp on his tongue. Cameron’s words, blunt as always, scraped away the sentimental veneer he’d draped over the evening. Sweet. Delicate. They were patronizing, safe words. Cameron was right. Roz was a person, not a porcelain figurine.
“She’s just so young,” Alasdair muttered, a last defense.
“She’s an adult. A student, which means her life is about thinking and feeling things intensely. You could use a bit of that. Your life has been floor plans and whisky for two years straight.” Cameron softened slightly. “Look, all I’m saying is, this is the first time I’ve heard you talk about a woman like this since Anna. And you’re not even talking about her looks, really. You’re talking about the way her mind works. That’s new. That’s good.”
The name, unspoken for so long, lay on the table between the glasses. Anna had been pleasant. Anna had been fun. And Anna had left with a text message after eighteen months because she found him “emotionally convenient.” The memory was a dull ache, a familiar bruise.
The band launched into a smoother, slower number. A couple at a nearby table got up to dance in the limited space, smiling, wrapped up in each other.
“What do I do?” Alasdair asked, the question almost lost in the music.
“You stop describing her like she’s a fragile ecosystem. You text her. You plan another date. Something active, where she can’t overthink. And you stop trying to diagnose her. Just… be there. See what happens.”
Alasdair nodded slowly, the noise of the bar receding for a moment. He’d been so busy worrying about her fragility, he hadn’t considered his own. The fear of causing damage was just a polished version of the fear of getting damaged. Cameron saw it. He always did.
“Another?” Cameron asked, tipping his empty glass.
“No. I’m good.” He pulled out his phone, its screen bright in the dim light. He opened his messages, to the thread with Roz. The last exchange was their logistical texts about the gallery. He typed, deleted, then typed again, ignoring Cameron’s knowing smirk.
Cameron says I described you as a delicate bird. I apologise. He’s rightly told me I’m an idiot. Are you free next Friday? I was thinking of something involving noise and competition. Ten-pin bowling. It’s impossible to be delicate while wearing rented shoes.
He hit send. The whoosh sound was final. He put the phone face down, feeling a jolt of something that was part fear, part exhilaration.
“Bowling?” Cameron said, having blatantly read the screen over his shoulder. “You’re taking an artist bowling.”
“You said active. Impossible to overthink in a bowling alley. It’s all crashes and synthetic food and terrible music. No shadows. No debris.”
“Genius,” Cameron deadpanned. “Or a disaster. I can’t decide.”
The phone vibrated against the wooden table. A single, solid pulse. Alasdair flipped it over.
Roz: I throw like I have no bones. But I’m weirdly good at the scoring machine. What time?
He showed the screen to Cameron, who grinned and raised his fresh pint in a mock toast.
“See?” Cameron said. “Not a bird. A woman who admits she has no bones. That’s my kind of honesty.”
Alasdair smiled, a real one, feeling the tightness in his shoulders begin to unwind. He typed back a time, a place. The conversation moved on to work, to Cameron’s turbulent energy, to the dismal state of their football team. But underneath the easy banter, a new current ran. He wasn’t just planning a date. He was stepping away from the safe, pleasant shore into deeper, more uncertain water. And for the first time in a long time, the thought of swimming didn’t terrify him. It felt, against all odds, like coming up for air.
It felt, against all odds, like coming up for air.
Across the city, in a flat that smelled of spilled turpentine and cheap jasmine incense, Roz was slicing a final, delicate curve from a sheet of thick watercolour paper. Her desk was a landscape of precise chaos: tiny trees, a paper bridge, a fox no larger than a thumbnail, all waiting to be assembled into a diorama inside a hollowed-out book. Her back ached from hunching, but the focus was a relief, a silent space where her mind couldn’t spin.
“So,” said Ellie, narrowing her eyes from her perch on the battered sofa. She was painting her toenails a violent shade of magenta. “The guy from the wedding? The tall one with the dark hair? He seemed nice. I mean, he was fit, definitely. And I saw you dance with him.” She blew on her toes. “Is he kind?”
The blade in Roz’s hand stilled. The question, so blunt and essential, cut through the quiet. It wasn’t is he cute or what does he do. It was the core of it. She thought of the alley, the cold air and his warm confession, his obvious terror. She thought of him in the gallery, listening, actually listening, to her rant about the grey painting.
“I don’t know,” Roz said, her voice quiet. It was the truest answer. “He’s… careful. He apologises for things that don’t need an apology. Like he’s worried he’s taking up too much space.”
“That’s a start,” Ellie mused. “Better than a lad who hogs all the oxygen. What’s the damage, then? Architect, right? Probably drives a boring car. Wears a lot of grey.”
“He wears a lot of navy. And charcoal.” Roz surprised herself by remembering. She set down her knife and picked up the tiny fox, its fur painted in a hundred fine strokes. “He asked me to go bowling.”
Ellie snorted, then laughed, a full-throated sound that made their tabby cat stir from a cushion. “Bowling! That’s either brilliantly unpretentious or deeply tragic. You’ll look like a child wearing those shoes. Your feet will swim.”
“I know.” But Roz felt a flicker of something—amusement, perhaps. It was so wildly outside the realm of anything she’d expected. No quiet bar, no pressure-filled dinner. Just crashing pins and garish lights. A place to be loud. Her phone, face-down on the desk, buzzed.
She didn’t grab for it. She made herself finish placing the fox in its paper grove, securing it with a dot of glue.
“That’s him,” Ellie sang. “Aren’t you going to look? The anticipation is killing me.”
Roz wiped her fingers on a rag, leaving faint streaks of ochre. She flipped the phone. A second message from Alasdair, following up his first. A time, a place. A smiley face wearing sunglasses. It was dorky. It was endearing. Her heart did a quick, inconvenient thump against her ribs.
I throw like I have no bones.
She’d sent that. She cringed, replaying it. Why did she always default to confessing a physical inadequacy? But he’d replied instantly, telling her it was the best thing he’d read all day.
“Well?” Ellie prompted.
“He’s kind,” Roz said, the words leaving her before she could filter them. She looked at the message, then at her intricate, silent paper world. They were opposites: this controlled, miniature universe and the chaotic, loud reality of a bowling alley with a man she barely knew. The thought was terrifying. It also felt, strangely, like a challenge.
She typed back a simple See you then, and placed the phone in a drawer, shutting it away. The action was deliberate. If she left it out, she’d stare at it, dissect the exchange, drown in the possibilities.
“Good,” Ellie said, satisfied. She capped her nail polish. “Now, what are you going to wear? Something you can move in. Not that you’ll be doing any actual athletic moving, by the sound of it.”
Roz picked up her blade again, the metal cool and familiar in her grip. She had a week. A week to build her little worlds here, in the quiet, and to prepare to step into a much bigger, noisier one. The fear was a low hum in her veins, but underneath it, for the first time, was a thread of pure, undiluted curiosity.
The curiosity, thin and bright as a filament, began to glow brighter than the fear. It lit up the quiet corners of her flat in a new way. The week unspooled, a strange tapestry of ordinary hours threaded with this invisible, buzzing anticipation.
She threw herself into her work. A paper forest grew on her desk, inhabited by silent creatures she painted with a single-hair brush. Her fingers, stained with pigment, moved with surety here. This was a world she controlled. Thursday evening arrived, and the forest was complete, sealed inside the book’s covers. She closed it. The silence afterward felt different.
It felt like waiting.
“Right,” Ellie announced, storming into the bedroom Roz used as a studio. She held two mugs of tea, steam curling into the chill air. “Enough with the silent, obsessive crafting. We are strategizing. It’s bowling, not a ball. But you still need a plan.”
Roz accepted the mug, warming her hands. “The plan is to throw a ball at some pins. And miss.”
“The plan,” Ellie corrected, perching on the edge of the desk, “is to look like you accidentally look amazing. To be comfortable enough to possibly enjoy yourself. To not freeze like a startled deer if his arm brushes yours.” She took a loud sip. “It’s about layers. Psychological and physical.”
Roz laughed, a short, surprised sound. It loosened something in her chest. She looked at her wardrobe, a jumble of dark fabrics and muted prints. Assembling an outfit was a puzzle she usually enjoyed, a quiet composition of texture and colour. It was practical magic. You could put on a version of yourself that felt brave.
She began to think about it. Maybe her black jeans, the ones that were soft from years of wear but still held their shape. They were reliable. And that green off-the-shoulder jumper, the one the colour of moss in deep shade. It was a pop of colour, a slight reveal, but the wool was thick and comforting.
“Not the black jeans again,” Ellie groaned, reading her mind. “They’re your security blanket with pockets.”
“They’re perfect,” Roz said, her voice firming. She pulled them from the drawer, folding them over her arm. The green jumper was buried in another pile. She unearthed it, held it up. The colour was richer than she remembered. “They’re me. But a slightly more… assembled me.”
“Fine. The jumper’s good. It says ‘I have an artistic soul but I am also aware of my collarbones.’ Strategic.” Ellie nodded approval. “Shoes? Not those giant clown-shoe bowling abominations. What do you wear there and back?”
“Boots. My scuffed leather ones.” It was coming together in her mind, a cohesive image. She could see it. She could almost feel the soft jeans, the drape of the wool. It was a costume for the role of ‘a person on a normal date.’ It felt like enough.
“Hair up or down?” Ellie asked, now fully invested.
“Down, I think.” It was a shield, too, a curtain to hide behind if needed.
“Good. Less ‘trying,’ more ‘I just happened to have beautiful hair.’” Ellie finished her tea. “Now, mental strategy. Ask him questions. People love talking about themselves. It takes the pressure off you. And for God’s sake, if you throw a gutter ball, laugh. Don’t internally combust.”
“I’ll try for external combustion instead. More dramatic.”
“See? That’s the spirit.” Ellie grinned. “He’s just a guy, Roz. A tall, slightly awkward, apparently-kind guy who liked your painting idea about wedding debris. That’s weirdly specific. He’s probably nervous too.”
That was the thought she clung to later, alone in the flat after Ellie had left. She laid the clothes on her bed: jeans, jumper, a simple black vest underneath. The boots sat on the floor like quiet sentinels. The ensemble looked calm, ready. It did not look like a cry for help. It looked like a choice.
Friday arrived with a steady, grey drizzle. The day moved with the sluggishness of a fever dream. She attended a lecture on colour theory, her notes a chaotic swirl of lines and doodles—a bowling pin, a woolly jumper, a question mark. She ate toast for lunch without tasting it. The hum in her veins had tuned itself to a new frequency, a mix of dread and electric hope.
By six p.m., the flat was too quiet. She turned on the radio, some generic pop station, just for noise. She dressed slowly, methodically. The clothes felt right. The green jumper did something to her eyes, made them look less uncertain. She applied a minimal sweep of mascara, then immediately rubbed a little off.
She stared at her reflection. A young woman with long brown hair and blue eyes, peering out from a fortress of wool and denim. She looked exactly like herself, just… concentrated. She took a deep, shaking breath.
“It’s just bowling,” she told the mirror. Her reflection didn’t look convinced.
Her phone buzzed on the bed. A message from Alasdair.
Running five minutes late. Architect emergency involving a weeping client and a misplaced load-bearing column. Truly. See you soon.
A laugh burst out of her, tight and relieved. He was flustered too. The perfection of it, this small shared malfunction, made her shoulders drop an inch. She typed back.
No bones here, remember? I can’t throw without you anyway.
She hit send, grabbed her coat, and switched off the light. The narrative was already in motion. There was no more planning to do. The only thing left was to go out into the damp, glittering evening and meet it.
The only thing left was to go out into the damp, glittering evening and meet it.
The bowling alley was a cathedral of noise. The air vibrated with the cacophony of crashing pins, synthesized dance music from a decade ago, and the shrieks of a birthday party three lanes down. The smell was a unique cocktail of stale fries, industrial cleaner, and the faint, sweet funk of a thousand pairs of rented shoes. Roz stood just inside the doors, feeling the sound physically press against her skin.
Alasdair was already there, leaning against the chipped Formica counter. He was fumbling with his wallet, looking out of place in his well-cut navy sweater and faintly horrified by the cheerful employee offering him size elevens. He turned and saw her. His expression shifted, the tension melting into a warm, relieved smile that reached his eyes. It was a good smile. It made her feel seen, not spotted.
“You made it,” he called over the din. He held up the garish red and blue shoes like a trophy. “My dignity is already in question.”
“Mine never stood a chance,” she said, approaching. Her voice felt small but it carried to him. She collected her own shoes, the leather clammy and worn soft by countless strangers. They found a lane at the far end, a marginally quieter pocket. The scoring screen flickered to life, casting a sickly blue glow on their faces.
“Right,” Alasdair said, rolling up his sleeves. “You mentioned a lack of bones. Is this a medical condition I should know about? A narrative device? I need to calibrate my expectations.”
“It’s an observational truth.” She sat to put on the shoes, the laces stiff and unwieldy. “My arm doesn’t so much throw as… relinquish its grip. The ball just falls. It’s a tragedy in three acts.”
He laughed, a real, unguarded sound that was better than the music. “I’ll consider it performance art, then. Our own private gallery.” He stood, surveying the ball return. He selected a serious-looking black one, hefting it with a confidence that suggested latent athleticism. His first roll was clean, powerful. Eight pins spun away.
“Show-off,” she muttered, smiling.
“Beginner’s luck,” he said, but he looked pleased.
Her turn. The ball was shockingly heavy, a universe of polished inertia. She cradled it awkwardly, walked the prescribed steps, and did exactly as promised. Her arm performed its boneless relinquishment. The ball hit the floor with a dead thud and began a slow, despairing roll toward the gutter, which it found with definitive sincerity.
She turned back to him, shrugging. “Act One.”
“A powerful statement,” he said, nodding gravely. “The futility of force. I’m intrigued.”
They fell into a rhythm. His turns were competent, focused. Hers were experiments in physics. One ball veered wildly left into the adjacent lane, prompting an alarmed yelp from a teenager. Another crept down the center so slowly it seemed to defy friction, eventually toppling a single, surprised pin.
“A strike!” she announced, throwing her hands up.
“A moral victory,” he agreed.
Between frames, they talked. It was easier with the constant activity, a distraction to look at instead of each other. He told her about the weeping client, a woman convinced her new extension was summoning drafts from a spiritual plane. Roz described Ellie’s strategic briefing on bowling attire. They navigated the conversation like people crossing a stream, jumping from stone to stone.
“So the paper forest is complete?” he asked, sipping a watery beer.
“Sealed in the book. It’s done.” She paused. “It feels strange when something’s finished. Like you’ve abandoned a world.”
“I know that feeling. Walking away from a building site once the keys are handed over. It’s not yours anymore. It has to live its own life, with all its drafts and creaks.” He looked at her. “You could always start another one.”
“I already have.” The admission slipped out. “This one’s… darker. A bog. With things just beneath the peat.”
He didn’t smile. He considered it. “Inspired by the Highlands?”
“Inspired by the feeling of sinking,” she said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. It was too much. She stood quickly for her turn, missing his quiet, attentive expression.
This time, she didn’t think. She just moved. The ball felt lighter. Her arm, for once, coordinated. It sailed down the lane with a purpose, not speed, and connected with a solid, satisfying crack. Seven pins fell.
She spun, eyes wide. “I have bones!”
“You do!” he cheered, genuinely delighted. “You found them!”
The game dissolved after that. They stopped keeping proper score. He tried to bowl left-handed. She attempted a ridiculous run-up. The synthetic world of neon and noise faded into a blurry backdrop. The conversation deepened in the spaces between throws, losing its careful choreography.
He told her about growing up in a remote house where the silence was a physical presence, and how he’d fled to the noise of Glasgow to study. She spoke about the oppressive quiet of her own childhood home, a different kind of silence, one full of unspoken words. They were not the same, but they recognized the shapes in each other.
“The wedding,” she said later, as they sat lacing their own shoes back on. The spell of the lane was breaking. “That thing I said. About being terrible together. I don’t know why I said that.”
He finished tying his shoe, taking his time. “It felt true in the moment. Maybe because it was the most interesting possibility. Pleasant is easy.” He met her gaze. “I’m tired of easy, Roz.”
The drive home was quiet, but the quiet was different now. It was charged, not empty. He pulled up outside her flat, the engine idling. Streetlight filtered through the drizzle, painting liquid gold on the dashboard.
“I’d like to see the bog world sometime,” he said, his hands resting on the steering wheel. “When it’s ready. No pressure. Just… I’d like to see what you make.”
She nodded, her throat tight. “Okay. I’d like that too.”
She hesitated, then unbuckled her seatbelt. The moment stretched, elastic and fragile. A simple goodbye felt inadequate. A kiss felt like a precipice. She moved, just an inch, and her hand brushed against his on the gearshift. A static shock, tiny and sharp, jumped between them. They both flinched, then laughed, the tension snapping.
“Goodnight, Alasdair.”
“Goodnight, Roz.”
She slipped out into the damp air and walked to her door without looking back. Inside, she leaned against the closed door, listening to the soft sound of his car pulling away. The ghost of the static shock still tingled on her skin. Her flat was dark, still smelling of paper and glue. It felt smaller.
On her desk, the closed book containing the forest sat. Next to it, a fresh, blank book waited. She ran a finger over its empty cover. The dread was gone. In its place was a vast, unsettling, and thrilling sense of space. He was tired of easy. So was she.
She opened the new book to the first page. It was not blank, but a thick, textured sheet the colour of storm clouds. A perfect ground for peat. She picked up a pencil, and in the quiet, she began to sketch the first dark, tentative line.