Chapter 6 Maya
Maya
He wears a cable-knit jumper under a waxed Barbour, the kind of thing that should look affected, but somehow doesn’t.
Maybe it’s the weathered jawline or the way he moves through space without apology.
There’s no sign of the city-boy arrogance you expect from an American tech billionaire.
If anything, he stands too still, watching the revolving doors.
He notices me, and all at once, I’m a specimen pinned to black velvet, every flaw magnified.
“You’re early,” I say, and it feels like a dare.
Heath’s mouth quirks, but his eyes stay serious as he replies, “I’d rather wait twenty minutes than keep you waiting for one.”
If I wanted, I could interpret that line in a hundred ways: creepy, old-fashioned, or maybe just sweet.
The part of me that’s been alone for too long wants to pick the sweet one for once.
Instead, I put on my coat and gesture toward the street.
“You’re lucky. I’m only strict about punctuality after a second date. ”
He walks beside me down the hill, matching my pace and letting me lead with my quick steps.
For someone who could easily dominate a conversation, he seems comfortable with silence, letting it linger between us like the mist over the Grassmarket.
My mind fills the quiet with possible conversation starters and endings—folklore, history, even murder.
My true crime podcasts are piling up. Maybe I have a romantic death wish, or maybe it’s just the third gin and tonic from the train, but I want to see where this goes.
The restaurant, when we reach it, is a little warren of exposed stone and touchscreen wine lists.
It’s both trendier and more intimate than I expected from Heath.
Our table is bracketed by a tartan curtain, and the low-watt candelight makes him look years younger.
His gray temples are almost a party trick.
We order wine, and for a while neither of us speaks, content to let the night fill in the blanks.
When the first round of small plates arrives, he breaks the silence with a single, accurate question.
“So, what are you really doing in Edinburgh? ‘Research’ seems a little thin for you.”
I roll a roasted carrot between my fingers.
“My family thinks I’m here to write a new travelogue.
My mother has this dream of me becoming the next Rick Steves, minus the khakis.
In reality, I was supposed to see the Galloway lighthouse just west of here.
There’s a ghost story attached to it—natch—a whole shipwreck narrative. I’m trying to reconstruct the truth.”
He watches me carefully, eyes unreadable. “Why that place?”
“Because it’s overlooked,” I say, the answer automatic. Then softer, “Because someone should remember it.”
Heath touches the rim of his glass, turning it a fraction. “You know, I have a thing for lighthouses too,” he admits.
I bark out a laugh, though part of me is nervous he’s playing to impress. “No, you don’t. That’s a guy on a dating app pretending to be deep.” My skepticism slips out sharper than I intend, betraying how much I want to believe him, and how much I fear being fooled.
He holds up his phone and, with a few quick swipes, shows me photos of lighthouses from all over—Maine, Sardinia, an old Art Deco tower in Venezuela. Each one is labeled with its location, like a personal trophy wall. “Can’t help it,” he says, looking a little embarrassed. “I’m fascinated by them.”
“Did you want someone to rescue you?” I blurt before I can stop myself.
Heath’s gaze turns inward, the kind of pause that means he’s actually thinking. “Not until recently,” he says. “But sometimes you don’t notice how far out you are until you look back at the shore.”
We eat quietly, and for a while I drift, caught up in the details of our meal: clotted cream on blood-orange slices, scallops with dill, the way his thumb moves along the spoon.
He listens as I tell stories about New York—my mother trying to set me up with every hedge-fund manager, my habit of running until I can’t breathe, the time I lost Blair’s dog in Prospect Park and almost gave it away before she found me.
He laughs easily, his voice low and a bit hesitant, like he’s not used to laughing.
He makes me want to keep surprising him.
But then the conversation turns, as it always seems to do. I find myself asking what he’s not telling me.
“Why do you really follow me?” I say. “I mean, you said you saw me on TV, but that’s not the whole story. Is it?”
He straightens his fork on the linen, then looks at me squarely. “I Googled you. After seeing you in New York and then again on that interview, I looked up your columns and your travel guides. I read your old blog—do you remember the post about the ghost in the Vienna subway?”
I flush, mortified. “Dear god. Nobody was supposed to read that. That was college.”
Heath's smile doesn't quite reach his eyes.
There's a tension visible in the taut line of his jaw.
"Your writing moves me. The way you made yourself vulnerable, admitted when you were wrong or scared.
Most travel writers treat cities like conquests, but you.
.." He pauses, searching for words. "You let places change you.
" Something shifts in his expression as his voice lowers to nearly a whisper.
“Plus, there's this persistent feeling we've crossed paths before. "
I fiddle with my napkin, my face hot with confusion.
His compliment stirs something vulnerable and raw inside me.
Part of me wants to recoil, mapping this honest declaration onto all the dateless creeps who have ever believed they were owed my attention; distrust is an instinct.
But Heath’s tone is reverent, almost embarrassed by his own longing, and it reaches that soft, unguarded part of me I work hard to keep protected.
It softens me, against my better judgment, and I feel a conflicted gratitude rise up from beneath my doubts.
“That’s…nice,” I manage, and immediately want to die.
He must sense my retreat, because he leans back, giving me space. “Sorry if that’s weird. I just—I’m not good at pretending to be less than I am,” he confesses.
Suddenly, I want to ask him everything: about any potential ex-wives, about the money he claims not to care about, about the scars I glimpsed on the webbing of his hand beneath the tattoos. But I keep my mouth shut, unwilling to tip the balance of the night.
Instead, I steer the conversation back to Galloway—to its moors, faded castles, and the wind that never lets up, even in the middle of July.
I tell him about my itinerary and the careful schedule I’ve built: sourcing local legend, tracing ship manifests, maybe, if I’m lucky, banging out a chapter or two in the lighthouse keeper’s cottage that now doubles as a tiny rental.
He is attentive in a way that feels old-world, making mental notes and asking sharp, specific questions: “Do you get lonely on these trips?” “Are you ever scared, out there by yourself?”
Usually, I would lie, deflecting with bravado. But tonight I admit, feeling momentarily exposed: “Sometimes. But the alternative is never leaving New York, and I can’t imagine a death more boring.” I brace myself after admitting so much, heart thumping uncomfortably.
“Me either,” he says. “I think that’s why I like you.”
A comfortable silence settles over the table. For a moment, it feels like the room is outside of time, just the two of us in the soft light. Outside, headlights cut through the fog beyond the window. His hand rests on the table, palm open.
I am the one who crosses the distance, letting my fingers brush his. His skin is fever-warm. Up close, I see the half-moon scars sewn across his knuckles—tiny white threads like the lace on my grandmother’s tablecloth.
“Honestly,” I say, “I probably shouldn’t be here.”
Heath looks down, not withdrawing. “Why not?”
“I barely know you. All the signs say you’re a walking red flag. My mother would faint if she knew I was eating tapas with a stranger who knows my college blog.”
He smiles. “What do you want to do? Leave?”
I shake my head. “No. I want to know how your story ends.”
He thinks about it, then nods, as if he’s accepting a challenge. Outside, the first real rain of the night starts, pouring down the glass. The city blurs, all the neon and streetlights blending together. I think to myself, it’s impossibly, almost comically, perfect.
We split a custard tart and walk out into the rain together, coats too thin, umbrella forgotten.
We move down the cobbled street, wet shoes slapping the stones, and for once I don’t walk ahead.
He doesn’t offer to walk me home, maybe sensing that I’d hate the implication, so instead we stand under the awning of a shuttered bookshop and huddle out of the wind.
Heath tucks his hands into his pockets. “How early are you leaving tomorrow?”
I tell him eight, and he asks, “Coffee first?”
I nod, and relief blooms in his face. It’s in the unclenching of his jaw, the slow, private smile that starts at the corner of his mouth and catches in the crease under his left eye.
The realization that he likes me, really likes me, sweeps through me with a sudden, almost juvenile delight.
A sense of reassurance unfurls; he is not going to disappear.
But when I lie awake in the flat white silence of my room, I can’t stop thinking about the way Heath said my name, as if it belonged to him a little.
My emotional defenses feel off-balance; after all my caution, what I want most is to see him again in the morning.
Wanting this feels both exhilarating and terrifying, as if I’m caught between fear and hope.
At six-fifty-eight, he is already outside the hotel, holding two espressos in compostable cups. He looks nervous, out of place, checking his watch every few seconds. When I arrive, wind-snapped hair and all, he hands me the coffee with a formal, almost courtly precision.
“Would you mind if I came with you to Galloway?” he asks, his voice casual but his eyes anything but.
I consider saying something flippant, but find myself nodding instead. "I would love that," I say, and mean it.
We march down the Royal Mile to his hotel, where he grabs a hastily packed duffel.
At Waverley station, Heath buys a ticket on his phone while I pretend not to watch how his fingers tremble slightly.
The train is nearly empty when we board.
We settle into seats facing each other, knees almost touching across the narrow table.
"I've never done anything like this," he admits, looking out at the platform.
"Impulsively followed a woman you barely know to the Scottish countryside?"
"Something like that." His smile is crooked, uncertain.
The train starts moving. His hand finds mine across the table, holding it so gently it’s as if he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
We don’t talk much as Edinburgh fades behind us, and I’m surprised by how the silence feels—never awkward, just full of energy.
Even from across the table, he radiates warmth, and for a moment, I feel both scared and safe, not like a child, but like someone who is truly seen and chosen.
As we head west, the landscape rolls by in shades of purple and gold, with endless heather and rain-filled streams. I try to focus on the view, but I notice every small movement of his thumb on my hand, every glance he gives the carriage when he thinks I’m not watching.
My mind tries to keep up with my body, which is already imagining late-night talks, crooked smiles, and a future that feels both scary and possible.
Somewhere near Linlithgow, Heath digs in his bag and produces a battered Moleskine, edges flecked with blue post-its and crumbs.
The notebook is thickened with receipts, plane tickets, and a single pressed flower.
He flips to a blank page, then hands me the pen.
There is no preamble, no “will you,” just the expectation that I will know what to do.
“Log it,” he says. “Where are we. Who are you with? Like the lighthouse keepers did.”
There is something so endearingly earnest about this, so utterly unselfconscious, that for a moment I can’t breathe. “You’re joking.”
He shakes his head. “Obsession runs in the blood,” he says. “I want to remember every time I was afraid and did it anyway.”
So I write: 8:37am, 12 November, Waverley to Stranraer, in love with the idea of lighthouses and maybe something else. The windows are beaded in rain, and I can see only a suggestion of who he was, who I am willing to become in response.
I pass the notebook back. He reads with an almost religious solemnity, then scrolls down the page and adds: “She’s braver than she thinks. Her hands are cold, but she doesn’t let go.”
I want to say something smart, but all I can taste is the espresso and the feverish tang of new possibility.