Off-Season Arrangement

Let me tell you about the most boring stretch of my life before this happened. I was thirty-four, working as a supply chain planner in Saltmarsh, which meant I spent eight hours a day staring at spreadsheets and asking freight companies where my pallets had gone. Exciting stuff, right? Some days the highlight was a vending machine decision.

And the town itself didn't help. Saltmarsh in late autumn is a ghost of itself. Half the chip shops shut, the funfair wrapped in tarps, gulls screaming at nothing. I'd lived there six years and my routine had hardened like cement. Gym on Tuesdays. Tesco on Fridays. Same chicken, same sauces.

So when my aunt Denisa called me in October and said she'd found me a date, I laughed at her.

"You're thirty-four, Magnus, and you act fifty," she said. "Her name is Lyla. She runs the recording studio in the old Odeon. I did her taxes. She's lovely, she's thirty-one, and she said yes, which is more than I can say for you."

"Because it's weird! Aunties don't set up dates. That stopped being a thing about a hundred years ago!"

"Well, it's un-stopped. Saturday. Don't be a baby about it."

So I said yes, mostly to get her off the phone. But also, if I'm honest with myself, because anything was better than another Saturday of spreadsheets and microwave curry. Was I nervous? Absolutely. I hadn't been on a first date in two years. What do you even wear? What do you even say? I settled on a decent jumper and a prayer.

Saturday came, grey and windy. And here was surprise number one: she picked me up. An old green Volvo with a dent in the wing and a guitar case across the back seat. She leaned out the window and waved like she was hailing a cab.

"You must be Magnus! Get in, it's freezing."

She was thirty-one, short dark hair, big coat, huge grin. She looked like someone who laughed a lot and I decided in about four seconds that I liked her.

"You look nervous," she said as we pulled off.

"Wouldn't you be? My aunt set this up. I keep waiting for the part where this is a prank."

"Denisa's great. She did my tax return and talked me out of buying a boat I couldn't afford. Best thirty quid I ever spent on an accountant."

"She doesn't even do accounts, she does payroll."

"Same muscles, different gym," she shrugged, and I laughed harder than I meant to.

We drove out to the seafront and just sat in the car with the engine off, watching the grey water slap the wall. It should have been awkward. It wasn't, which surprised me more than anything.

"Okay, confession," she said. "I know a first date is normally dinner or a film or whatever. But I want to show you something. Is that alright?"

"Better than dinner, honestly. I talk too much when I'm chewing."

"Perfect, because I don't talk at all until I've had a coffee."

She drove us to the old Odeon, this faded art deco building on the high street that I'd walked past a hundred times without once thinking about what was inside. She unlocked a side door and led me through a dim lobby with the ticket booth still standing, dusty and strange.

"Wait, you own this?"

"Lease it. The cinema part died years ago. But come see the good bit."

The good bit turned out to be the old live room, and it stopped me in the doorway. High ceiling, worn velvet curtains along one wall, deep red gone dark with age, and a grand piano sitting in the middle like it owned the place. Racks of old equipment, mixing desks with hundreds of little knobs, microphones in cases like sleeping birds.

"This is where I live, basically," she said, spreading her arms. "Former cinema, best acoustics in the county. Want the tour?"

"Yes. What's this one?" I asked, poking at a machine with big reels.

"Careful. That's a tape machine from the sixties and it's worth more than your car. Bands come from two counties over to record on it. There's something about tape, you can't fake it."

She showed me everything, talking with her whole body, and I just kept thinking how unfair it was that I'd lived here six years and never knew this room existed. She sat down at the grand piano at one point and played four bars of something, then stopped herself.

"Sorry, I do that. Anyway."

"Anyway what?"

She went quiet then, which was the first quiet moment she'd had all evening. She fished an envelope out of her coat pocket. Actual paper, typed on, folded once.

"Okay. So. This is going to sound strange, and you can absolutely say no to it, and I need you to read it before you answer anything. Alright?"

"What is it?"

"Just read it, Magnus."

I unfolded it. It was typed, short, and my hands felt weird holding it. It said:

Dear Magnus, if you're reading this, the date went well enough that I'm being brave. I have a private wish I've never told anyone. I would like, very much, to see you wearing some of my clothes. Not as a joke. It's something I find lovely and I think you might find you like it too. If the answer is no, we laugh about this in a week and I cook you dinner as an apology. If the answer is maybe, we talk about it properly. If the answer is yes, we set rules first and go slowly. Whatever you choose, I like you already. Lyla.

I read it twice. I could feel my face doing something.

"This is a lot," I said.

"I know."

"You typed this up in advance? On actual paper?"

"I typed it three weeks ago and chickened out twice. This is my third attempt."

I sat down on the piano bench because my legs wanted to. What did I feel? Nervous, obviously. But underneath that, something I hadn't felt in years, which was that someone had looked at me and wanted something specific and had the guts to ask. Nobody had surprised me since... well, I couldn't actually remember when.

"It's not a no," I said slowly. "But I've got questions. Big ones."

"Ask everything."

"How far does this go? Like, what are we actually