A Double Booking to Remember

Nick had spent the whole week counting paper clips, more or less. Not literally, though honestly it felt close. He was the manager of the ranger station at Lochan Brae, a small operation in the Highlands with three staff, a fuel shed, and a wall of maps nobody updated as often as they should. In nine days he was transferring to a bigger station down in Perthshire, and in the meantime his replacement was already shadowing him, taking notes on everything from the radio protocol to which floorboard in the office squeaked. It meant Nick had nothing left to do. Nothing left to own, really. Just a checklist and a lot of standing around feeling like a ghost in his own job.

On Wednesday he had reorganized the boot room without being asked, which was the sort of thing a man did when he was restless and single and knew it. The volunteer he'd briefly dated, a cheerful woman named Beth who'd left the park two years back, would have laughed at him for that. She'd have said something like, Nick, you alphabetize when you're sad. She wasn't wrong. They'd ended things over tea in the station kitchen, both of them agreeing it was easier this way, and she'd moved to Manchester and he'd stayed, and now the only person who texted him regularly was his mum.

So when Friday came around and he found himself with a free evening and no plans, he did something out of character. He booked a table at the Drovers Rest, which was the one genuinely nice place within forty minutes of the station. Not the pub with the pool table where the forestry guys drank. The other one. The one with linen napkins and a menu that changed and a chef who had, according to village rumor, once worked in Edinburgh. Nick had lived here four years and never eaten there. It seemed like the kind of thing a man should do before his life got packed into boxes.

The booking was for seven thirty. He shaved, which was already unusual, and put on the one decent shirt he owned, the dark green one his sister had bought him two Christmases ago. Then he drove the eleven minutes along the loch road, windows down even though it was cold, because the light on the water in October was something he was going to miss and he knew it.

The Drovers Rest was in an old stone building with low ceilings and candles in jam jars, which was apparently the fashionable way to do candles now. Nick gave his name to the host, a young woman with a clipboard and a first name tag that said MORVEN.

"Nicholas Frame, party of one, seven thirty," he said.

She frowned at the clipboard. She looked at it for a while, longer than a person should look at a clipboard.

"Right, so," she said. "We've a bit of a problem, I think. We've got you down, and we've also got another gentleman down for this same table at seven thirty. Party of one as well. I think when we took the second booking somebody just clicked the wrong slot."

"Ah," said Nick. He looked past her into the dining room. There was only one small table for two unoccupied, up near the window, and it was occupied. A man sat there, alone, looking at the menu with the concentration of somebody reading a contract. He was broad through the shoulders in a way that suggested work rather than gym, with dark hair going silver early at the temples and forearms that had, even from across the room, a certain weathered look to them.

"Would you mind waiting at the bar for twenty minutes? We could squeeze you in after," Morven offered.

Nick considered it. He had nowhere to be. He also considered the alternative, which was standing at the bar nursing a beer as if waiting for a bus, and then eating dinner alone at a two-top twenty minutes later anyway.

"Or," Morven said, and here she lowered her voice like she was proposing something slightly illegal, "you could share. The other gentleman hasn't ordered yet. Some folk don't mind."

Nick looked at the man again. The man looked up from the menu at that exact moment, caught him looking, and raised his eyebrows in a way that was either go away or come here. Genuinely could have been either one.

"Let me just," Nick said, and before he could think better of it, he walked over to the table.

"Evening," he said. "So, slight problem. I think we've been double booked. I'm Nicholas, I had this table at seven thirty."

The man closed the menu. Up close he was better looking than the distance had suggested, which Nick hadn't thought was mathematically possible. His eyes were a grey green, and there was a small white scar through one eyebrow.

"Dillon," he said. "And same. Seven thirty, party of one, though apparently the party system has failed us both." He grinned. He had a nice grin, a bit crooked. "They offered me the bar. I said I'd rather eat than stand. What about you?"

"They offered me the same," Nick said. "I was coming over to see if you'd rather share, since the alternative is twenty minutes of pretending to read the specials board."

"Share," Dillon said immediately, and pulled out the other chair with his foot, which Nick felt was a good sign about a person. "I've eaten alone in hotel restaurants ten nights running this month. I'll warn you now, I've got opinions about bread."

"Strong opinions or reasonable ones?"

"Yes," said Dillon, and this made Nick laugh in a way that surprised him, a proper laugh, the kind he hadn't done much of since the transfer paperwork had started.

Morven came back with two glasses of water and a look of visible relief at the diplomatic solution. "So, drinks for both of you?" she asked.

"Ale for me," Nick said. "The local one, whatever it's called."

"The Black Isle one?"

"That's the one."

"And I'll have the same, actually," Dillon said. "And some of that sourdough, if you're doing it. Two portions, since we're a party of two now, apparently."

"You're a party of two," Morven agreed, writing it down like it was official, and off she went.

They sat there a second in the slightly strange silence of two men who'd just agreed to have dinner together for administrative reasons. Nick picked up the menu. It was good paper stock. He was stalling and he knew it.

"So what brings you to the area?" he asked, because it was the obvious question and Nick had learned, living in a village of three hundred people, that obvious questions worked fine.

"Work, mostly. I'm a farrier. I shoe horses." Dillon said it easily, like it wasn't a job most people had never met somebody doing. "There's a yard over by Inverness way that's taken me on two days a week, and a load of hobby horses scattered around the glen that nobody else wants to climb under. I moved up in March. Still finding my feet."

"A farrier," Nick repeated. "That's a proper trade, that. I manage a ranger station up the loch. Less impressive. I mostly do paperwork and unblock sinks."

"Every job's got its sinks," Dillon said solemnly, and then the ale arrived and they clinked glasses in a way that Nick would not have predicted when he woke up that morning.

The bread came, and it was very good, and Dillon had been right to have thoughts about it, though his thought turned out to be that it was excellent and the butter was under-salted, which Nick said was a controversial take and Dillon said was simply the truth and they were off. Nick found himself talking more than he usually did on a first anything, about the transfer, about the loch in winter, about the fact that the bakery in the village closed at two in the afternoon like it was daring you to want bread after lunch. Dillon listened properly, asked actual questions, and told a story about a Shetland pony that had bitten him on the shoulder that morning that made Nick put his glass down because laughing while drinking was a known hazard.

Somewhere between the starters and the main course decision, Nick realized he'd stopped thinking about Perthshire entirely, and that his knee was about four inches from Dillon's under the table, and that he was in no hurry whatsoever to move it.

The mains arrived and were very good too, Nick had the lamb and Dillon had the fish, and at some point Morven brought them a second round without being asked, which Nick suspected was her way of apologizing for the booking chaos. Dillon tore the last of the sourdough in half and pushed the bigger piece across the table without comment, which Nick also noted.

"So go on then," Nick said. "You said you had thoughts about bread. You've only given me the butter verdict so far. I feel like there's more."

"There is more." Dillon wiped his hands on his napkin like he was settling in for a lecture. "This isn't it, mind. This is good. But I brought a loaf from your village bakery this morning, because I'd heard about it, and I want to register a complaint."

"A complaint? That place is a village institution."

"It's dense," Dillon said. "It's dense like a building material. I had a slice this morning and I'm fairly sure I heard my jaw complain. And I don't think it was finished baking. There was a bit near the crust that was still, and I mean this literally, dough."

Nick put his fork down. "You're joking. Mrs. Gillies has been baking