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One
If I told you what actually happened last summer, you wouldn’t believe me: which is why, when they asked me about it, I made it all up.
“Oh, you know, it was the distance, really,” I said in my one-and-only statement to the press (If you can callThe Heather Bay Gazette“the press”, anyway…), when I landed at Glasgow airport and found Scarlett Scott, the Highlands’ answer to Lois Lane, standing there waiting for me, like she was in some kind of rom-com, only without the ‘rom’ bit. And not much of the ‘com’ either, if we’re being honest.
“Hollywood, the Highlands,” I went on, leaning fully into my self-appointed role as Home-Loving Lexie. “They’re so different. And I guess I missed home too much to want to stay in California forever. Now get out of my way, Scarlett, I’ve been on a plane for 12 hours; I need to pee.”
Scarlett didn’t believe me, naturally (About the distance, I mean, not about the need-to-pee. That bit reallywastrue, although I still don’t think she should’ve put it into her article…), which was fair enough — I wouldn’t have believed me either.No one walks out on Jett Carter — Jett freakingCarter— just because she’s a little bit homesick. Andas ifLexie Steele, three-time winner of the Miss Western Highlands pageant, and the girl voted most likely to run off with a movie star in High School, would seriously prefer a moldy old cottage in Wester Ross to a mansion in the Bird Streets.Seriously, though.
So, like I say, I made it all up. Even that thing about High School, because, look, this is Scotland: we don’t evenhaveyear books here. If wedid, though, I would definitely have been voted most likely to end up with Jett; and the knowledge that Ididn’t, and actually ended up coming home to work two separate dead-end jobs just to pay the bills, makes my heart break all over again every time I think about it. Which is why I don’t think about it. And also why I keep pretending everything isawesome, to make myself feel better.
Fake it until you make it, and all that.
“I love it here,” I said through gritted teeth, during the 2-minute “interview” that secured me the role of chief — and, indeed,only— barmaid at The Crown, on Heather Bay High Street. “You know what they say: you can take the girl out of the Highlands, but you can’t take the Highlands out of the girl.”
“Och, yer arse,” said Big Ian, the landlord, who had opened our meeting by asking if it was true that Jett was the highest-paid actor in the world now, and if I could lend him a fiver, if so. “What a load o’ pish.”
Then he handed me an apron (I don’t know why, I’m a barmaid, not a chef), and asked if I could start right away.
“Don’t you want to check my references first?” I asked, pulling out the hastily cobbled-together resume my friend Summer had described as “a great first attempt at creative writing” when I sent it to her the night before.
“Naw,” said Ian, waving it away. “This is The Crown, Lexie. If ye can pull a pint, ye can do the job. There is one thing, though…”
He looked at me eagerly, and my stomach churned with sudden anxiety. Or possibly just from the smells drifting out from the kitchen, it was hard to tell. Ian’s wife, Mo, isn’t much of a cook.
“Can ye say the line?” asked Ian, suddenly shy. “The one from that mime thingummy-gig?”
“Meme,” I said dully. “It’s ameme, not a mime. I’m ameme.”
“Aye.” Ian nodded. “So, can ye? I’ll pay ye 50p extra per hour. It’s just, it would really help bring in the punters if they thought they might get to meet the ‘boak-breathed bawbag’ girl. I was thinking ye could say it every time someone came in?”
We both glanced at the double doors of the bar, which hadn’t opened once in the time I’d been there. I could see Ian’s problem, to be fair. At the same time, though, I was pretty sure I knew who the boak-breathed bawbag was in this situation, and it wasn’t me.
For once.
“Sorry, Ian,” I said, standing up and slinging my bag over my shoulder, like someone who had so many options she didn’t need his stupid job, anyway. “But I’m trying to get away from the whole ‘Bawbag’ thing. Reinvent myself, you know?”
“Fair enough,” said Ian, shrugging. “We can go with the ‘Dumped by Jett Carter’ angle, if ye prefer. That’s a good one as well. We can definitely work wi’ that.”
My shoulders sagged in defeat. When I’d said I wanted to reinvent myself, I’d meant as somethingotherthan Jett Carter’s ex-girlfriend,orthe unwitting star of a viral TikTok meme that had made me an instant anti-hero. I wanted to just be Lexie: whoever she turned out to be.
I also needed a job, though. Ideally before my next electricity bill was due. So it didn’t look like I had much of a choice.
“You can keep the extra 50p per hour,” I said at last. “But no one mentions Jett, and no one says the word ‘bawbag’. Deal?”
“I cannae guarantee the last one,” said Ian thoughtfully. “This is Old Jimmy’s local, ye know. But I don’t think Jimmy even knows what TikTok is, so if hedoessay it, it probably willnae be anything personal. So, aye, it’s a deal.”
He held out his hand, and I shook it reluctantly, even though I knew perfectly well that Jimmy the farmer has his own TikTok account. Well, his sheep Edna does, anyway. But I was out of options. The Crown was my last chance saloon: and the fact that it wasliterallya saloon — and with a real ‘last chance’ kind of vibe, too — wasn’t lost on me.
I started work that afternoon. By the time I helped Ian and Mo close up, nine hours later, I’d been asked about my relationship with the word’s best-known movie star at least 52 times (Which was strange, because we’d only had about 6 customers), and every single person who’d come in — including Ian himself — had asked me to say the line that made me a TikTok sensation, shortly before I found myself single again.
“I’m managing a small boutique wine bar by the coast,” I told my friend Summer over Facetime that night. “Very classy. Really exclusive, you know?”
“Like Soho House?” asked Summer excitedly.
“Yeah,” I said slowly, thinking of The Crown’s crumbling paintwork and ‘old man pub’ vibe. “A bit like that.”
“And are you doing that as well as the fish and chip shop job?” said Summer, confused. “Or did you quit that one?”
