Page 190 of Men in Shorts

Just wanted to reach out and say I hope everything’s ok with your family. Also I had a lovely time last night!

Perry listenedas his phone spoke his message back to him. Was the exclamation mark too much?

No, his first date with Jamie deserved that punctuation.

“Ready to send it?” Siri asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, it’s sent.”

Now that Perry thought about it, perhaps his two sentences should have been separate texts. Was it crass to inquire after Jamie’s family emergency in the same electronic breath as their dinner at Zio Mario’s?Hope none of your kin are mortally injured, and oh, by the way, wasn’t the linguine carbonara to die for?

Anyway, too late now.

Perry sipped his tea and squinted through his kitchen window into the painfully bright Sunday morning. These days, his eyes couldn’t discern much scenery, but his memory filled in the gaps: the quiet, tree-lined street in Glasgow’s West End, the towers of the ancient university forming a calendar-worthy backdrop.

Still, his thoughts were planted here, beside the kitchen sink, where they’d had their first kiss, an instant before Jamie’s phone rang, his sister bearing terrible news of—well, what, exactly, Perry hadn’t a clue.

Though he could no longer read faces from more than a few inches away, he’d learned to better hear emotions in voices. With some people, it was like tuning into a distant radio station, sifting through static to find a clear sound.

But Jamie’s expressive voice, so vital to his job, contained a thousand pictures’ worth of feelings. During that brief call with his sister, it had held a deep love mixed with something darker. Hate? Fear? Yes.

Perry finished his tea, then changed into his workout clothes, purposely leaving his phone in the kitchen.

Halfway through a hundred press-ups, he returned to the device to see whether Jamie needed support.

No reply yet. He sent another message, in case his intent hadn’t been clear in the first one.

Perry

Would love to see you again when things calm down on your end

Too pushy, perhaps. He sent a pair of quick follow-ups.

Perry

We can just hang out

Or whatever

Christ, he sounded like a teenager instead of a thirty-two-year-old. But it had been ages since someone made himfeellike a teenager, with that electric sensation round the edges of his face and stomach, like he might explode with laughter or boak his guts out.

Last night had been nothing like his other first dates since the big breakup. With those men, he’d minimized his vision loss and pretended he could see more than he actually could. Predictably, such attempts had left him alone, frustrated, and bewildered.

But with Jamie, he’d been real.They’dbeen real.

So why did their connection now seem so fragile?

* * *

“Thanks very much.”Jamie gave the applauding crowd a smile that made his cheeks feel taut. The locals adored his version of “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio, whose lyrics Jamie had adapted to skewer Glasgow’s own notorious villains.

He’d worked on that song for weeks, debuting it on his twenty-fifth birthday almost two years ago. After today, he’d dare not play it again, but at least its final performance had been a belter.

“My hour here’s over,” he told his audience, “so I’m gonnae pack up and shift to another spot. Those are the rules, mind.” With his toe he nudged his open guitar case forward a few inches, enough to drop a hint.

As pound coins plunked into the case like the world’s friendliest hailstones, Jamie unplugged his amp from the inverter and set both on his trolley. Then he straightened up to sip from his water bottle, stretch his stiff back, and have a look about.

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