“What’s that used for?” I pointed at the buildings.
“I used to rent the cottage, but now it’s just a storeroom.”
He opened the door to the shed and we walked in. The small room was dominated by a brass pot, and then behind that, rows and rows of bottles with handwritten labels. I felt uneasy in the small space, but tried to push that feeling away.
I walked up to one of the bottles and picked it up. “Do you drink all of this?” I asked.
“No,” he chuckled. “It’s not for me. I supply The Reservoir.”
“The what?”
“It’s a little restaurant. It’s where I’m playing my gig tonight. I also supply the hotel.”
“Ohhhh, so that’s how you know Selma?” I asked.
“Um . . . Sort of.” He sounded sheepish once again. A coy quiver in his voice.
“She’s pretty,” I said, but I don’t know why.
He shrugged. “I guess.” As if he hadn’t noticed!
“You seem to know a lot of people in town . . .sort of.” I hadn’t meant for that “sort of” to come out in such a strange tone. But it had.
“Small town. Small dating pool,” he finally said after a while.
“So you’ve dated a lot of women in town then?” Why was I asking this? I sounded like some jealous wife, which I wasn’t. Obviously.
“Not that many, but if you do go on a date here and decide not to go on another one, it’s awkward, because you’ll defo bump into them again.”
There was that cute “defo” again.
I thought about that for a while. “I guess you can’t just swipe left on them or unfriend and block them.”
I turned my attention back to the bottles of gin.
“Want to taste some?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m not drinking at the moment,” I replied.
“Why?”
“It was just something that Kyle thought would be good for extra content, you know?”
“No, I don’t know.” He looked at me with a blank expression.
I took a deep breath and started. “Well, there is this #NoWineOClock-Challenge. You know?”
He shook his head.
“It’s this thing that people are doing, it’s a really popular hashtag at the moment. You take photos of yourself before, during and after one year of no drinking. It’s something a lot of influencers are doing. You can get a lot of new followers from that. There is a whole community of people online doing it.”
“Wait!” He held his hand up. “Let me get something straight. Do you have a problem with alcohol?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Ever had a problem with it?”
“Nope.”
