Page 68 of You, As You Are

She found the closest thing that she had to a spare vase in her kitchen (a pint glass) and set the roses within some water. It didn’t matter that the bunch was modest; six short stems tied with some paper and twine.Rosesweren’t the cheapest of flowers at this time of year, not for the quality of the wide, open ones she stared at on her counter. Iain had obviously gone out of his way to find them.

“What happened to you?” Maisie muttered to herself. He’d said that he’d been burned by romance before, and yet he’d brought her – hisfakegirlfriend – an ultimate symbol of love.

In her living room, Ted sniffed around the edges of the furniture, finding interest in her round, fluffy sofa cushion as though it were a giant tennis ball. She caught Iain staring atthe vase of wildflowers on her coffee table with a frown before his eyes wandered around the room. The sage walls, bright pink sofa, and colourful art prints probably made him cringe inside.

“The desk is still standing, then,” he noted when he clocked her standing there, observing.

“I appreciate your ability in following pictures to build it.” He grunted in return and Maisie smiled to herself. “Tea?”

“Thanks.”

Iain’s footsteps followed her retraced ones to the kitchen. Maisie moved aside the packet of blueberry muffins on the counter to pull two mugs down from the cupboard.

“I was thinking that maybe we could get to know one another better,” she said, dropping a tea bag into each cup. Iain’s eyes burned where he leaned in her doorway, but his lips didn’t move, silently demanding an explanation. “I can’t get caught out by something as simple as not knowing how old you are.”

“Thirty-five.”

“Twenty-nine,” Maisie volleyed. “That’s a start. What about?—”

“Why don’t we just avoid being too personal around the others?” Iain suggested rather brazenly.

“You at least need to knowsomethings about me.Nainwill see right through this plan otherwise.”

With one of his tolerant sighs, Iain acquiesced. “Fine. What’s your favourite colour?”

That one question was the bane of every talking stage Maisie had ever had. “Do you really think my favourite colour is what the elders of Aberystwyth will be focussed on?” She poured water from the kettle she’d boiled just before they’d arrived, adding, “It’s violet, by the way. Or mango-yellow.”

Ted came wandering in to scope out her kitchen too, and Maisie thought that she might need to doggy-proof her lower cabinet doors, given the rate at which he stole her food. It’dhappenedonce, but that once was a trickier snatch than her freely accessible cupboards.

“No one is going to know that we were together today,” Iain said a moment later.

The whole point of this plan was to beseentogether.How would that happen if none of the meddling elders knew they were hiding here in her flat? Luckily, Maisie had already thought that part of the plan through.

“I already toldNainthat you were coming,” she said, letting the tea bags steep. “That’s enough bait for her to show up unannounced.”

Nose scrunching, Iain shook his head. “She wouldn’t. Not today.”

Maisie looked at him sideways. “Don’t underestimate her, Iain. Do you want milk?”

He went to her fridge of his own accord and handed her the carton. “Green,” he said as she poured, remembering how he’d taken his tea when helping her move.

“Green?”

“My favourite colour.”

“Oh.” That might’ve been the easiest piece of information he’d ever offered up about himself willingly, and not so surprising. He’d worn a scratchy looking jumper of that colour today with dark-wash jeans, a centimetre of black t-shirt peeking out of the collar.

One eyebrow formed an arc on Iain’s face. “Did you think it would be grey?”

“I had a feeling. Wait, let me get a notebook. If we’re doing this, I need to write it all down.”

Iain groaned and pressed himself against the cabinets for her to bustle by.

Comfortable on opposite ends of her sofa with Ted sprawled on the rug between them, they covered a lot in half an hour’s discussion, but Maisie found that she’d done a lot of the talking.

“What else?” she asked, tapping her pencil against her notepad. Thetapsfilled the silence of her flat, except for Ted’s snoring and her occasional sniffles that were coming on.

Half of Iain’s face was highlighted by the window behind them, his body twisting to face her as he rested his arm along the back. His woolly sleeve stretched snugly over every muscular ridge from his shoulder to his bicep, and Maisie had to force herself to remember that it wasn’t usual to be attracted to half an arm.

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