Page 154 of You, As You Are

Moving in?She couldn’t believe this. Afterweeksof trying to find the right quiet moment to ask Vera if she was sick, the truth of all their worries was that her boyfriend was moving in with her. If she’d known that before, then she would never have needed to move her entire life to Wales at all.

Vera’s brows puckered. “What else should there be?”

“Oh my god.Nain, we thought you were sick!”

“Sick?”Vera looked aghast. “Why would you think that?”

“First you fell?—”

Vera tutted. “Oh, you can blame Ronnie for that. It was an accident. The man had slippery fingers.” Something that Maisiestilldidn’t want to know the ins and outs of.

“Every time that any one of us has called since you fell, you’ve been cryptic,” she said, twisting her position so her legs tucked under the bed. “We were all worried that you were ill or something else was seriously wrong.”

“Oh, Maisie, I’m sorry that I’ve made you all worry.”

The apology tugged on Maisie’s heart strings, and when hernainreached out and cradled her cheek, she crumbled. The last few days had been entirely too overwhelming, and now to find out that being here hadn’t been necessary at all …

“You came all of the way out here for me?” Vera asked, stroking her thumb across Maisie’s round cheek.

“Yes! I left my home and my friends because I love you,Nain, and I thought that you needed me.” The words ripped right out of her without a care for how this had turned into a scene from a soap opera for all the other silently listening women in their beds.

Tilting her head with sadness in her eyes, Vera opened her arms. “Sweetheart, come here.”

Pushing the chair back, Maisie folded down onto the bed and curled within her tiny grandma’s arms. Careful of Vera’s fragile state, she laid her head on her chest and folded her arm across her waist. Ronnie must have sneaked in her bottle of white lily perfume, because that familiar scent softly permeated from the hospital-issued gown.

“I will always need you,” Vera murmured where her lips pressed a kiss to Maisie’s hair, “but not like you might think. I suppose I was a little elusive. Ronnie offered to move in after I fell so that we could be there for one another if something happened again. I think that I was worried what you would all think of it.”

“Us?” Why would they be worried about that? Ronnie had been in Vera’s life for over a decade – it was about time that they lived together permanently.

“You know I loved yourtaidvery much for a very long time.” Vera ran her delicate hand over Maisie’s curls again. “Ronald thought you all might feel as though he was trying to takeTaid’splace.”

Maisie’s eyes stung. “We don’t think that at all. You could have told us he was moving in, and we wouldn’t have worried.”

“I’m sorry, Moo Moo.”

It was okay. Maisie supposed that the reasonwhyshe was here didn’t really matter anymore – she wasn’t the same person as she was when she’d arrived. That woman was so afraid to be rejected for her needs that she wouldn’t give herself a chance tofind the person who embraced her wholly. She didn’t know how to speak up for her own boundaries. And she wanted desperately just to go back home.

That all changed when she came here. She changed because a brilliant man who didn’t know how to love himself knew how to love her. He showed her that what she wanted in love wasn’t too much to ask for – she wasn’tworkor a chore. She was justherand he was justhim,and who they were together was beautiful. A powerful, uncomplicated force that she would never ever find again.

Vera tilted up Maisie’s chin with the edge of her finger, eyes searching hers. “Why do you still have tears?” she asked as she wiped them away.

Maisie sniffled. “Iain …”

“What’s happened, honey?”

Tension built up and up within her chest. “We … we were never dating,Nain. We lied.”

When her grandmother’s features fell, so did the solid lump of shame lodged in Maisie’s throat.

“But w-why?”

She felt a little pathetic when she sniffled back her silent tears and said, “Because you all wouldn’t leave us alone. We felt like you were pushing us to get together and neither of us wanted that.”

“We were only trying to help you both. Iain has been so miserable for all the months that we’ve known him. And you are an incredible, bubbly person. We thought that you could be a good influence on each other. You could open him up, and he could help you trust that there are good and decent men in the world. We wanted you to be friends. But when you said that he had asked you on a date, we got perhaps a little excited.”

Maisie exhaled a broken sound. “Well your meddling worked a little too much.” Because she couldn’t stop thinking about him:where he was or what he was doing, if he’d taken Ted for a walk along the shore today. Every tiny little detail of their time together was stored in her memory like records she could take out, set on a turntable, and replay. She couldn’t move around her flat andnotsee the way that he had tidied for her whilst she was sick, moved her sweaty hair away from her skin, and stayed to help with her work when he had no reason to. She couldn’t stand outside of Vera’s door when she went to feed Mister Roberts without feeling the ghost of his hand upon her spine.

She couldn’t look out at the rain and forget the heartbreaking worry on Iain’s face when he’d run through the downpour to find her.

---