Page 61 of Wild Scottish Rose

“He’s a good guy,” Owen offered. “Knew his lines. Kept his focus. Professional. And had the best stories.”

“Is that all it takes then? He needs to know famous people and he’s one of the gang now?” I asked, amused. I couldn’t help but feel some relief, hoping that now I could be more open with Owen about the Kelpies.

“It doesn’t hurt. Ewan was in the Star Wars movies.” Graham shrugged.

“Not the good ones,” Archie said, and he might as well have thrown a match on a puddle of petrol the way the lads erupted.

“Not the good ones? Are you kidding me?” Lachlan sputtered.

“Arguably,Return of the Jediis a cinematic masterpiece,”Archie said, downing his pint and holding it in the air for Graham.

“But the plot holes! The lack of attention to gravitational forces …” Munroe shook his head.

“Yeah, but that’s what also makes it so great. You can’t make movies like that these days, not without immediately being fact-checked on everything.” Warming to the discussion, Owen extracted himself from my arms and took a drink of his water. “Back then, you could just ride high on a great story and let the viewers sort out the details when it came to whether the science checked out or not.”

“It’s a space opera. Built for emotion, not for precision.” Archie nodded his thanks as Graham slid him another pint. I blinked around at this group as they bent their heads to argue Star Wars. Hadn’t we just been terrified of revealing the Kelpies to a filmmaker? And now they were sitting around drunkenly dissecting space operas and ranking films?

What kind of parallel universe was I in?

“Yeah, but Baby Yoda…” Agnes paused when all heads swiveled to look at her.

“His name is Grogu,” Graham said, in the same tone as if he was telling a two-year-old not to touch a hot stove. “That’s like calling every human baby—human baby—instead of by their name.”

“Is he not then? He looks like a baby Yoda, doesn’t he?” Agnes griped.

“He is, but that’s not his name. Listen, it’s not even…he’s not even in a movie, Agnes.”

“Empire Strikes Backis the greatest StarWars film of all time,” Munroe said, and Archie snapped his fingers, lifting his pint in a toast.

“There’s a good lad.”

“He’s not wrong,” Owen agreed.

“I can’t believe this,” Lachlan said. “You’re just going to ignore the movies that our mate, Ewan was in?”

“Oh, so he’s your mate now?” Agnes observed.

“He’s always been our mate. He’s Scottish, isn’t he?” Lachlan explained as though it made perfect sense that a famous actor would be his bestie simply by the default that he was Scottish.

“That does not make you mates,” Agnes argued.

“It does, Agnes. You don’t understand how lads work,” Lachlan argued.

Owen held his phone to his face, and I could see he was calling someone. When the caller answered, I gasped.

“Hey, man, how’s it going?”

“Is that—” Graham’s voice went up a level.

“Good, mate, good. Are you at the pub?” Ewan smiled when Owen turned the phone around to see everyone’s gaping looks.

“Yeah, bud. I’m in Loren Brae. It’s in Scotland,” Owen explained helpfully, and Ewan chuckled.

“I’ve heard of the place.”

“These guys claim that you’re one of their mates because you’re Scottish and therefore that makes you mates by default. The ladies disagree. Care to settle it so we can get back to our pints?”

“Hey, I didn’t disagree,” I said, throwing Agnes neatly under the bus.

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