Page 101 of Scotlander

‘And that’s not Scottish?’ She looked perplexed.

‘No. We’re a dour and bleak people. Just like the landscape.’

He vaguely heard a mutter of dissent from behind him but was too busy stumbling through the worst wooing scene of his life, so he ignored it.

‘Finn.’ Willa shook her head at him. ‘It’s ridiculously beautiful where you live.’

‘Aye. It is that,’ he said, but also no. It was having her there with him that made it beautiful. Without her, the sun didn’t shine as bright. The moon looked sad. The stars barely managed to twinkle. It had begun raining the day she left and hadn’t stopped since.

Conversation at a standstill, Willa stepped in closer to the glass as more passengers strode past, intent on getting through to customs and on with their lives.

They held their hands to the thick, bullet-proof glass and stared at one another, their expressions shifting from shocked to elated to disbelieving that they had found one another here of all places, in the land of in-between.

‘Are you—’ they both said at the same time.

‘Why didn’t you—’ they began again.

‘You go.’ A third attempt also gone wrong-ended in a stalemate.

Finn ended it by pretending to zip his lips shut and pointing at her.

‘I’m worried. With all of these foreign feelings crashing around inside of you – do you think we should call for help?’

He laughed and pointed at a nearby defibrillator. ‘We can use that.’

She knocked on the glass, then said, ‘I think this means they’re going to have to use it.’

He turned around and saw a semi-circle of people had gathered behind him, openly listening to their conversation, which, to be fair, was being shouted at top volume.

They waved. His cheeks grew hot. This day was not going at all according to plan. And yet . . . what day ever really did?

Maybe this was what life with Willa was going to be like. Regularly finding himself on brand new emotional frontiers. Trying things he would’ve previously scoffed at. Scottish males weren’t exactly equipped for public displays of emotion except at football matches and yet . . . here he was, baring his soul in public because when she had gone, he’d felt broken.

‘You went away,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘I did.’

‘I hated it.’

‘You did?’

‘Very, very much.’

She scrunched her fingers against the glass as if trying to weave hers between his. ‘Say that again.’

He smiled and gave extra attention to the Rs as he repeated himself. ‘I don’t know what I did wrong, but I thought I was doing the right thing by giving you space instead of running you down and pinning you to Balcraigie like I wanted to. It wasnae my place to tell you where you belonged. But then, not having you here felt like dying inside so I thought I’d fly over and do some sort of grand-gesture thing in the vain hope that you’d decide our wee, poorly lit nook of Scotland was more alluring than the bright lights of Hollywood.’

‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ Willa said softly. ‘I should’ve stayed. Listened. Told you how I really felt.’

The lead weight he’d been carrying round in his chest lifted, finally allowing a fraction of hope to pump through his veins.

‘What were you going to do?’ she asked. ‘When you got to LA?’

‘The grand gesture?’

‘Yes. The grand gesture.’

‘Ach, no. It was ridiculous.’