Page 2 of A Scot on the Rocks

Daniel glanced at the bottle. “It was one of the more expensive flights.”

She should have known. It wasn’t arrogance, just the lazy certainty that a woman who worked with whisky would be impressed by a man who spent money on it.

Olivia lifted her water glass. “That’s a compelling reason.”

The date went on, according to her phone, for another thirty-two minutes, during which Daniel told her about his ten step skincare routine, his preferred kind of linen shirt, the unfortunate lack of sophistication among the men in his office, and a hiking trip he’d taken in Vermont where the trail had been “basically vertical,” a claim slightly weakened by his admission that the resort shuttle had carried him most of the way. He never asked what she liked to do beyond the question that had begun the evening, and when she answered, he nodded as though sensory analysis were a hobby one pursued between Pilates and shopping.

“So you can tell what a whisky is by smelling it?” he asked at last, one hand resting beside the check.

“Sometimes.”

“That must be useful at parties.”

“It’s saved me from many bad ones.”

He laughed, but his eyes had already drifted toward his phone. “You’re funny.”

Olivia let the compliment pass over her like rain on a good raincoat. A date like this was why women took up pottery.

Outside, Boston had turned cold enough to make her shiver. The bar sat on a quiet side street in the South End, where old brick held the day’s chill and the streetlamps laid pale circles over pavement slick from the earlier rain.

Olivia tucked her hands into her coat pockets and started toward the T, though it was mild enough that she decided to walk the first few blocks. She needed air, needed the city’s ordinary smells, damp stone and exhaust and bread cooling in a bakery after closing, anything to push Daniel’s cologne out of her nose. She also needed to accept that she’d wasted a new tube of mascara on a man who’d used the word mouthfeel with sincerity.

Whatever happened to men who could fix engines, climb mountains, play electric guitar, or wrestle bears? Fine, maybe not bears. But something. Rock stars. Action heroes. Men who didn’t describe their skincare routines before the appetizers arrived. She wasn’t asking for a man who could shoot their dinner. All she wanted was someone who could look at something that was broken and reach for a tool before providing an explanation, someone comfortable enough in his own skin not to turn dinner into a lecture, and someone who’d hand a woman the map because she knew where they were going.

Her phone rang before she reached Tremont Street. The name on the screen made her smile despite the lackluster date.

“Hi, Grandma.”

“Did he order your whisky?”

Olivia stopped beneath a streetlamp and looked up at the dark windows above the shops. “He ordered a flight.”

“For you?”

“For both of us.”

“Did he choose yours?”

“He did.”

There was a silence on the line, rich with the disapproval of a woman who’d spent sixty years identifying bad decisions by smell. “The pox-faced cabbage.”

Olivia laughed, the sound warming her chest more effectively than the whisky had. She could see the pub in her mind as they talked. The long dark bar, the brass rail worn bright beneath thousands of shoes, bottles glowing behind the shelves, and Grandma Bennett standing beneath the chalkboard specials with one hand on her hip, gray hair pinned back and apron pockets full of bottle openers, receipts, peppermints, and secrets.

When she was five, her parents had been in Egypt on one of their yearly trips abroad, when their hotel had been bombed by terrorists. Her dad’s mom had shown up, hugged her tight, and taken Olivia to live with her.

She’d grown up in South Boston, in the apartment above the bar, doing homework at the bar when the kitchen table was crowded and learning the bottles by smell before she was tall enough to reach them. She’d known the regulars by their footsteps on the stairs, the neighborhood cops by how they took their coffee, and the men who were trouble by how politely they spoke when other people were listening.

“He said peat gives whisky its character,” Olivia said.

“Did he now?”

“He also said real enthusiasts don’t add water.”

A snort sounded across the line. “May his ale go flat and his socks stay wet.”

“That seems harsh.”