Page 32 of You, As You Are

“Maybe we should attempt to find a table first?” she suggested.

“It’ll be round the side, sweetie, towards the back room. That’s where the quiz happens.”

“Okay … Well I’ll get us some drinks. What would you like?”

Maybe she could hunt for Iain too in the process. It might be the only chance she’d get.

With drinks orders mentally noted – easy enough for four G&Ts and two beers on tap – she squeezed her way around one side of the bar whilst Vera and the others headed to the back. With her flowy, bright-yellow dress, you’d think that enough people would see her as she tried to get past, cheeks blooming warmer with each ‘sorry, excuse me’ that was barely heard over the volume of rowdy chatter and folk singing. It wasn’t as if she could slip effortlessly between people like some kind of waif – which she refused to apologise for.

Finally, she got a place at the edge of the old walnut bar dotted with condensation rings and paper coasters. It was so stifling that she peeled her jacket off and ended up eavesdropping whilst trying not to bump into the patron beside her.

“Me and Ted are better off?—”

Ted?

That was Iain’s voice. Good, he was already here, so she just had to find him.

“—stay well away from me. I am not interested in Maisie Moss.”

Air shot into Maisie’s lungs, knots twisting in her stomach, insulted by the absolute certainty in Iain’s declaration. She’d been rejected before; in fact she was used to it, the inferior feeling people put on her; but she’d never been written off as an option so boldly like that with tens of people all around. Never before she’d actually made a move to proposition a man for a date.

Why was he even talking about her in the first place? Maisie tried not to jump to any conclusions as whatever conversation Iain held silenced. She didn’t knowwhyhe’d said what he’d said, but given that he hardly knew her, the reason was probably the same that any other man would have in this beer-stained room:

She was too much.

Too much bounce in the step she always tried to be confident with.

Too muchbodythat was so hard to apparently love.

Too much overthinking and making tiny details her best friends.

All her life she’d put her personality out there first so no one would change their minds on her later. Did Iain assume that she’d been trying to date him? Why would he think that when none of the reasons for why they’d ended up sharing space twice had actually beenherfault?

Slowly, she drew her chin towards her shoulder, hoping that the dim, humming lights of the corner of the bar would help her fade away.

Iain had his back completely to her, wearing a chequered fleece in various shades of grey, sat at a table tucked up against a panelled wall with two other men. All three of them were burly, too big for their chairs with bulks of muscle – men that Maisie would stay away from if she were back home purely because she wouldn’t know what to do with them.

She couldn’t be certain, but the two she’d never seen beforelookedlike rugby players; one with shaven down, coiled hair and a mischievous slant in his dark-lipped smile, the other with hair not unlike Iain’s except for blonde. The tattoos down his arm were so dark against the stark white of his skin.

Then there was Iain. She couldn’t even see his face while he took a sip of his pint, but she expected he’d be wearing that perpetual frown to accompany his declaration of how he wasn’t interested in her. Her chest ached while the flicker of hope she’d been holding onto faded away.

“Cooey! Iain, dear.” Vera’s high-pitched voice parting the sea of patrons was like a damn caricature of itself.

“Shit,”Maisie spluttered.

Abandoning her spot at the bar, she tried to intercept the incoming whirlwind. Iain didn’t need to know she’d been here behind him, though she’d like to see the look on his face when he realised she might’ve heard him loud and clear – but she was too late.

“Mrs Moss.” He stood from his seat to let Vera give him a sideways, grandmotherly hug. Which was strange in itself, to see the man with such a blunt tongue bend like a gentle, willowy giant around the old woman with a broken wrist. “Nice to see you tonight.”

Vera pulled back with her hands on his arms. “I thought maybe she might have gotten lost, but it looks like she found you.”

“She?”

“Hi,” Maisie said flatly, outing herself.

The look on his face as Iain’s head whipped around was exactly as she’d hoped. His green eyes flashed, dots connecting within them one by one; Vera’s ‘looks like she found you’joined with the realisation she’d stood behind him, and the likelihood that he hadn’t forgotten what he’d so fervently declared ten seconds ago doubled.

Iain’s throat bobbed. “Maisie.”

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