Chapter 3
Phil
“Iam an idiot.”
The words leave my mouth before I’ve even fully stepped into Alex’s workshop, carried on the smell of sawdust and varnish and the steady hum of tools that never seem to stop moving.
The space is familiar. Safe. Predictable.
Everything my brain needs right now and absolutely none of what it deserves.
Alex’s apprentice looks up from the workbench with poorly disguised interest, clearly hoping this will be more entertaining than sanding cabinet doors.
Alex himself doesn’t turn immediately. He finishes measuring a length of oak, makes a small pencil mark, and only then looks over his shoulder at me.
“That’s a broad statement,” he says calmly. “Care to narrow it down?”
I drop onto one of the stools along the wall and drag both hands through my hair. My head feels tight. Not painful. Just crowded, like too many thoughts are trying to occupy the same space at once.
“I asked Christina out.”
The words hang there.
Alex straightens slowly.
“You what?”
“I asked her to dinner.”
He blinks.
“Christina?”
“Yes.”
“The Christina?”
I close my eyes briefly. “Yes.”
“The woman who makes you panic and flee like prey?”
I let out a quiet, miserable sound. “Yes.”
He stares at me for exactly two seconds before laughter explodes out of him. Not polite laughter. Not sympathetic laughter. The full-body kind that forces him to brace himself against the workbench.
“It’s not funny,” I say, which only makes it worse.
“What,” he manages between breaths, “possessed you?”
That’s the problem. I don’t know.
I try to replay the moment outside the retirement home, to find the exact point where my brain failed me so completely.
I remember the way she’d been standing there, rain in her hair, calm and steady and entirely herself in a place I had always thought of as separate from the rest of my life.
She hadn’t been teasing me. Hadn’t been pushing. She’d just been there.
And I’d wanted more of that.
“I saw her at Grampy’s yesterday,” I say finally. “She was delivering flowers.”
Alex’s laughter fades.
“She was different,” I continue, struggling to explain something that isn’t easily explained. “Quieter. Not trying to make me react. Just… herself.”
And I’d realised, with a clarity that had terrified me, that the version of her I saw in the pub wasn’t the whole truth. That there were parts of her I hadn’t earned yet. Parts I wanted to see again.
“And you thought,” Alex says carefully, “that asking her out was a good idea?”
“At the time,” I admit.
He watches me for a long moment, his expression shifting from amusement to something closer to understanding.
“You can’t survive ten minutes in the pub with her,” he says. “How exactly are you planning to survive dinner?”
I drop my head into my hands.
“I’m not,” I say. “I need to fix it.”
He frowns. “Fix it how?”
“I just won’t text her.”
The plan had formed sometime around three in the morning, when sleep had refused to come and every possible version of the dinner had ended in humiliation.
If I didn’t text her, if I let the moment dissolve quietly, then eventually it would stop mattering.
She would lose interest. She would move on.
She would stop looking at me like I was someone worth waiting for.
Alex holds out his hand.
“Give me your phone.”
“No.”
“Phil.”
Reluctantly, I hand it over.
He types quickly.
My stomach drops.
“What did you do?”
He hands it back.
“You’re meeting her tomorrow. Bella Italia. Seven.”
I stare at the screen.
He’s already sent the message.
“You texted her?”
“You’re welcome.”
“What the hell, Alex?”
He folds his arms.
“You have two choices,” he says. “You take her to dinner like a functioning adult, or you humiliate yourself, her, and me by disappearing. And since Emma is her best friend, I will suffer the consequences. And I refuse to suffer the consequences.”
I want to argue.
I can’t.
Because beneath the panic, beneath the instinct to retreat, there’s something else. Something quieter. Something that had been there long before I asked her out.
“Do you like her?” he asks.
The question settles heavily between us.
I could lie.
I’ve been lying to myself for months.
But the truth has been waiting patiently for me to catch up.
“Yes,” I say quietly. “I think I do.”
The admission feels like stepping off solid ground.
Alex nods once.
“Right,” he says. “Then this is what’s going to happen.”
I don’t like the certainty in his voice.
“You’re going to take her to dinner,” he continues. “And before that, you’re meeting me at the Cricketers.”
I frown. “Why?”
“Because,” he says patiently, like he’s explaining something to a child, “you’re not capable of walking into that situation cold. You’ll panic, say something stupid, and spend the rest of your life regretting it.”
I don’t argue. Mostly because he’s right.
“So,” he goes on, “we’ll have one drink. One. Enough to take the edge off. Not enough to turn you into an idiot.”
I hesitate. “One drink.”
“One,” he repeats firmly. “Just enough for a bit extra courage.”
I nod.
It feels like a reasonable plan.
I don’t sleep much that night.
Every time I close my eyes, my brain replays the moment. The way she’d looked at me. The way she hadn’t laughed. Hadn’t pushed. Hadn’t made it easier for me to retreat into the familiar safety of avoidance.
She’d simply said yes.
By morning, exhaustion has settled into my body like weight. By afternoon, anticipation has taken its place. By evening, panic has fully taken over.
I arrive at the Cricketers early.
Too early.
The pub is quieter than usual, the absence of noise making it harder to disappear into the background. Every second stretches. Every thought circles the same unavoidable conclusion.
I am going to ruin this.
I sit at the bar and stare at nothing in particular.
My hands won’t stop shaking.
“One whisky,” I hear myself say.
The glass arrives quickly.
I stare at it for a moment, knowing exactly what Alex would say if he were here.
One drink.
With him.
Not alone.
I pick up the glass anyway.
The burn spreads through my chest, loosening something tight inside me. Not enough. Not yet.
“Another,” I say before I can stop myself.
The second goes down easier.
My thoughts slow. The panic recedes slightly, retreating to the edges of my awareness where it can’t control me completely.
This is manageable.
This is necessary.
This is temporary.
By the time Alex walks in, I’m sitting straighter, breathing easier, the world no longer pressing in on me quite so aggressively.
He spots me immediately and makes his way over, clapping a hand on my shoulder.
“There he is,” he says. “Ready?”
I nod, hoping the movement looks more natural than it feels.
“Yeah.”
He studies me for a moment.
Too closely.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
It’s technically true.
He signals the bartender.
“Two pints.”
I don’t stop him.
The beer arrives, and I force myself to drink it slowly, matching his pace, trying to appear normal.
He launches into advice immediately.
“Don’t overthink everything,” he says. “Just listen to her. Ask questions. Let it happen naturally.”
Naturally.
I nod like I understand how to do that.
He keeps talking, outlining strategies, warning signs, conversational lifelines. I absorb none of it. I’m too focused on maintaining the illusion that I am exactly as nervous as he expects me to be and no more.
The whisky settles heavily in my system, warm and stabilising and dangerous.
He doesn’t notice.
Or maybe he does, and chooses not to comment.
By the time he finishes his pint, my heart has started racing again, the alcohol and adrenaline mixing into something unstable.
He sets his glass down.
“Time,” he says.
The word lands like a verdict.
He stands, clapping my shoulder again.
“You’ll be fine,” he says. “Just don’t panic.”
I nod.
Because that’s the only response available to me.
He heads in the opposite direction, back toward Emma, toward certainty and ease and everything I’ve never been able to access so effortlessly.
I turn toward Bella Italia.
Each step feels heavier than the last.
And beneath the fragile calm created by whisky and beer, one undeniable truth waits patiently.
I am not ready for this.
But I’m going anyway.