Keren shrugged as Patsy caught her eye. “Seriously. You have to be certifiable to live here.”
“Let me get my head round this: Scott, Zack and Alex are brothers. Rayah and Jake are their cousins?” Patsy said. “Sorrell is…”
“Zack’s girlfriend,” Keren said. “Why don’t you think you’re Scott’s type?”
Patsy smiled at her. “Because he was talking about someone else all evening. His mind is definitely elsewhere. However, this bar has more man candy in it than the whole of Manchester on a Saturday night. Must be something in the water here that grows them strong.”
“Poor girl,” Keren said, turning to watch Scott and Oliver as they warmed up.
Patsy looked at her confused.
“The woman Scott was talking about.” She wasn’t going to ask. She didn’t want to know.
Patsy smiled, amused and took a sip of her drink.
There was a loud cheer as Scott and Oliver started to play, their acoustic guitars linked up to the amps. It wasn’t unknown for Scott to do the occasional set on his own, if the mood took him. There were sometimes Blue’s Nights on a Thursday or occasionally Northern Soul music in the one of the rooms upstairs where they would put talcum powder on the floor to help people dance. Scott tried to help out local bands by having regular showcase nights as well.
All it would take was for someone to put on social media that Scott was playing and the bar would fill up to the max. At this point, the only drinks available were water, bottled beers or wine, as the bar staff would be rushed off their feet, coping with demand, although Abby would get the four pitch pitcher jugs out and use those.
They started with an eighties’ pop classic done acoustic rock style, Oliver harmonising with Scott’s vocals and then went into classic sixties’ territory. Scott’s missing tooth didn’t seem to be troubling him, although Keren had decided that she’d definitely be having words with him later about not following up his treatment.
He’d let lose his dark hair and had stripped down to a sleeveless t-shirt, thick tattooed biceps exposed and making single females in the bar swoon, or so Keren figured. She wasn’t one of them.
Definitely not.
For the third number, Scott took over, Oliver simply adding to the music. His voice was gravel, thick and rough, the sweetness of the choirboy long since gone. He sung about a girl, the one who’d got away and didn’t know he’d existed. Keren watched the crowd, most spellbound by his voice and then she looked at him.
Scott’s eyes were directly on her, watching her face. He gave no acknowledgement that she’d seen him, simply carrying on with gaze fixed.
“Pass me the margs,” Rayah said, reaching over in a way that suggested she was going to knock everybody’s drink over. “I need a top up.”
“I haven’t heard Scott sing this song before,” Keren said, grabbing Sorrell’s glass before it met a calamitous end.
Rayah shrugged. “He’s probably been sitting in his beer cellar searching the internet for obscure singer songwriters who can’t find a woman to love them.”
“That’s quiet poetic, Ray,” Sorrell said. “I’m not sure how true it is though.”
“No, he’s probably been sitting in his beer cellar watching porn,” Keren said, just as the tempo changed and Scott’s gaze fell on the crowd, the performer taking the place of the man she’d never quite understood.
4
The euphoria from performing had left Scott with a strange hangover. He’d watched Keren as he’d sang, his date not taking his attention in the same way, despite her being gorgeous and interesting. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t agreed to second night out, then a third, which might’ve resulted in something other than a good fuck.
Having women in his bed wasn’t an issue. He’d learned as a teenager that playing guitar and singing was one of the best aphrodisiacs available to man. At university he’d studied alongside talented kids who had gone on to be acclaimed classical musicians. He’d learned the theory with them, played a range of instruments and displayed a talent that his teachers commented on, but it was playing in the bands that gave him his kicks.
And a never-empty bed.
Jake was the womaniser of the family, but only because he and his brothers knew how to be less obvious about it. Scott wasn’t a bastard; his father would’ve buried him in a field if he’d ever treated a woman badly. Scott had never had that intention anyway, always making it absolutely clear that any relationships had an end date.
He didn’t want to cause heartbreak, because he knew exactly how shit that was, when you thought someone could be into you and then you found out about them tearing you to shreds, spitting you out like the pith of an orange.
Outside the weather was grey. The sky was heavy with clouds but he doubted it was going to rain. Winter had been hard; long and cold. The heavy snow they’d had in December and January was still thawing, meaning that the local rivers and streams were higher than average and the paths of the peaks sodden and harder to walk in. The underground rivers through the caves had swollen too, and there had already been one rescue mission where they’d had to dive to bring back a caver who’d gotten badly lost in the labyrinth beneath the hills.
Alex, his younger brother, was off shift for four days, and he and Scott had agreed to take Oliver on a climb up Yonder Scout, traversing the west face. They wanted to see what his skill level was like and get to know him a little more, if he was going to be part of the Search and Rescue team.
He pulled on the clothes he kept for climbing, looking forward to getting outdoors in the fresh air and actually getting up something other than a climbing wall. The cold winter had seen his bar takings go up steeply, people looking for something to do in the evenings when it was too cold to venture far. He’d had bands on, acoustic sets, comedy nights, open mic stuff, whatever he could think of to provide more than just a place to buy alcohol. During the day there was the community centre and the sports club that served as hubs for the community; the evenings there were the pubs and restaurants, but nothing with any soul. And he was all about the soul.
“Hey,” Alex was already in the bar, having his own key in case of emergencies. “I’m assuming we’re doing this properly? Saving the stunt climbing for summer.”
