It could have been worse, he supposed. He wasn’t even sure how he’d managed to end up dating somebody like Thuy in the first place. He wasn’t a bad bloke. He was smart enough to make a decent living—he’d taken over the writing of his grandfather’s potboiler detective novels, a very successful series that had been in print for more than fifty years and seemed like it still had steam as long as Aonghas didn’t make a bollocks of it—and he was generally considered good company. He was funny and had a lot of stories to tell, most of them involving being raised by his grandfather in the old castle on Càidh Island, their family castle and family island with their family name, an otherwise unpopulated rock in Loch Ròg, on the west side of the isle in the remote Outer Hebrides. His stories of being six and motoring from Càidh Island across storm-whipped waters so he could get to the Carloway Primary School—he was one of fewer than forty students on the rolls—or the time his grandfather knocked himself unconscious in the cellar and Aonghas had to wait two hours for him to come around, made him seem like an exotic creature to his friends.
Aonghas was in his early thirties, and until he met Thuy, he’d been the only one of his friends who wasn’t in a stable, committed relationship, despite their repeated attempts to set him up. Sure, he was a little plush around the belly, but he had the kind of big frame that carried it well; if he’d been a little less lazy, he would have done well out on the fishing boats. He had an easy way of talking, and women seemed to like him. But he really couldn’t believe Thuy was his girlfriend. She was athletic, gorgeous, and smart as hell: she’d just missed qualifying for the Olympics in the two hundred-meter freestyle, and had worked for a couple of years as a model before deciding to go to medical school. She was also unbelievably nice and thoughtful, the kind of woman who spent her free time volunteering at animal shelters and never passed a homeless person without dropping some money in their cup. All that, and she liked to cook. He was pretty sure it was a miracle she was his girlfriend. He knew the truth, which was that not being a bad bloke wasn’t really enough to justify having a woman like Thuy fall in love with him. Still, who was he to question the vagaries of the human heart? Or, as his grandfather had put it: “Don’t be such an ass. If the lass loves you, she loves you. Take what little gifts this life has to offer.”
He met Thuy when she came to Stornoway for vacation. She’d walked into the Kenneth Street coffee shop he liked to write in. Three mornings in a row she’d come through the door with a backpack and hiking gear, and three mornings in a row he’d been sitting at a table in the back, hacking away at the newest Harry Thorton mystery, each word he wrote enriching his bank account ever so slightly. Finally, on the fourth morning, Aonghas worked up the courage to talk to her. It was the wrong time of year for tourists, and she would have stood out even if she hadn’t been Vietnamese and ridiculously good-looking. Aonghas didn’t admit it to her until they’d been dating for nearly six months, but he’d been surprised when she’d spoken to him and didn’t have an accent. She was as Scottish as he was. They’d talked for a while about what she was doing there—she was in medical school and had a vacation and wanted to do some hiking—and he’d suggested a nice walk and a couple of places she might like to eat, and then he’d given her his phone number. They’d gone hiking together the next day and had hit it off.
They had five more days together before she headed back, but he’d already had a trip to Edinburgh planned for three weeks later, and ended up staying at her place. Somehow, it worked out. Even with writing the Harry Thorton books and motoring over to Càidh Island to check in on his grandfather every couple of days, Aonghas had enough free time that it was easy to take the one-hour flight to Edinburgh every other weekend. And here and there, when she could, she’d sneak away to the Isle of Lewis for a few days: she preferred coming to him, she said, and he believed her. She seemed to love the island as much as he did, and arranged to do her residency in Stornoway when she graduated. Two months, Aonghas thought. Two months and he’d get to see her every day, wake up with her every morning.
And with any luck, he thought, as he saw Thuy’s plane come bursting through the clouds that hung over the ocean, two months from now would be the beginning of always.
He fingered the box in his pocket. He’d brought the ring with him the last time he’d gone to Edinburgh, two weeks ago, but it hadn’t felt right, and he’d finally realized why he was hesitating: she’d never met his grandfather. Even though they’d been together for a year, Aonghas had never taken Thuy out to Càidh Island. At first, he’d hesitated because he wasn’t sure it was serious, and then he’d hesitated precisely because it was serious. Padruig could be intimidating, and while Aonghas didn’t want it to be true, he knew that if Padruig disapproved of Thuy, it would signal the death knell of the relationship. So there was a lot riding on this weekend. And he had to admit, he was scared shitless at what would happen when Padruig and Thuy came together.
The drive to the coast on the other side of the isle took only an hour, and he’d never seen Thuy so excited.
“You think he’ll like me?”
He pulled her bag out from the backseat and then picked up his own bag, shutting the door of the Range Rover with his hip. “He doesn’t really like anybody, Thuy. God, I’ve told you enough stories about how cranky he is. He can be a bit of a cunt at times.”