Page 7 of You, As You Are

The woman in front of her –Molly? Mabel?– drew a travel mug from the pocket of her bright-purple backpack ready to carry on board. “Damn thing is leaking again,” she mumbled, tightening and loosening the lid on the mug before she climbed her way up the couple of steps onto the minibus.

Maisie figured it’d be easier to manoeuvre inside without her borrowed backpack, complete with extra straps and a pocket for every single item that she had thought to bring, being on her back. It weighed in one hand whilst the croissantwas gripped in her other as she began up the minibus’ steps.

“Does anyone have a tissue at hand?” Molly/Mabel called out at the top of the steps. “This useless thing is dripping tea everywh?—”

From behind her, someone ripped Maisie’s pastry out of her grasp. “Hey!”

“Ted!”A masculine boom.

Now, this would have all been fine; Maisiecouldhave caught herself on the thin handrail if it was on the side that shedidn’thold her backpack, or if she’d have spotted the pool of peppermint-scented tea on the linoleum stepbeforeher brand new boot found it first. She slipped before she even had a chance to do anything at all, and gravity took the reins. Molly/Mable startled at her yell as Maisie free-fell backwards towards the pavement.

Sothiswas how she was going to die? She’d thought that maybe it’d be the hike that ended her, but she hadn’t even made it onto the bus, first.

Heart exploding into a rhythm it might never have experienced before, Maisie braced for her body to smack the ground and for her head to really,reallyhurt. But she stopped falling, as if gravity had given one tug at her and given up. Her shoulder blades pushed down into something sturdy that came with giant hands under her arms and a cloud of warm breath on the back of her neck.

“Woah, hey—you alright?” A deep, Welsh-accented rumble.

Okay, so she might not have died from falling, but she could have from the gasp that emptied every sac of air in her lungs.

“You okay?” whoever he was that held her up asked again. His hands were still wrapped on her waist, under her arms with a grip that was definitely more purposeful than how any man had handled her in the last seven months, and her body had gone limp within them.

“Oh. Yes.Sorry.” Maisie levered forwards back onto her feet, grabbing the handrail like it was a life raft. “Sorry.” Avoiding the driver’s gaze, she twisted with both feet firmly planted on the step to put a face to the voice that had helped her and—holy macaroni.

She locked eyes with the mountain of a man, and her tongue swiftly tied. He could steal her breakfast out of her hand again and Maisie would do something insane like thank him. He looked older, mid-thirties if the creases at the corner of his eyes meant anything, jaw roughened by a dark beard. He’d held her up without struggle, which was enough to send a tickle of something down Maisie’s spine before embarrassment took its place. And she could see then exactlyhowhe’d not let her fall.

Those armsunder a brown, waxed jacket …

Aaaaaaandnow she was staring.

Mountain Man bent and picked up the discarded wrapping of what had been her croissant, and only then did she see it was a dog who’d stolen her breakfast.

“Ted,” Mountain Man muttered, disappointed. He looked at her and his green eyes were full of embarrassment. “Sorry about him.” He gestured down at the large, wiry brown dog with a comically long moustache from its snout.

People often say that dogs look like their owners, and these two looked as though one had perhaps been the other in a previous life. Ted, sitting proud, didn’t seem to care that his owner had just saved her from falling because he himself had nabbed her pastry in the process. Mountain Man’s brow was just as unimpressed.

Maisie let the unintelligible mutters from inside the bus pass her by.

“Excuse his aloofness. He doesn’t care for anything except treats.” The dog’s head snapped up and tilted at the magic word. “Including your breakfast, I assume.” Mountain Man held the clear wrapper as if he didn’t know whether to give it back to her,empty,or scrunch it into his own pocket. “Sorry,” he said. “I have supplies if you’re hungry, or I can buy you lunch when we stop on the walk.”

Maisie found enough sense to untie her tongue. His apology had mostly gone in through one of her ears and out of the other. She didn’t know what to say to such a face as his, one with a bump in his nose like it’d been broken once and creases on his forehead that may just be from how he was yet to stop frowning. Her reaction didn’t make any sense at all. Rough and rugged-looking had never been her type; her last boyfriend had worn gingham bow ties to work.

Gingham. Bow ties.

“It’s … okay.” Maisie managed to keep some semblance of brightness. “I have another in my backpack, so long as Teddoesn’t sneak his nose in.” She gave the dog a glance and swore that he raised an overgrown eyebrow at her in a challenge.

“I promise he won’t.”

Her gaze fell. “Is he … Is he wearing boots?”

Mountain Man shrugged and stuffed the plastic wrapping into his coat pocket. “Keeps his paws clean.”

“And silent,” Maisie said under her breath. Her heart rate had just about returned to normal. As normal as it could be when flustered because a man –this man –had saved her.

Whatever happened to feminism? To women saving themselves? Not even Maisie’s mass of red curls would’ve protected her head from that backwards fall, so she let all ideology of being a modern woman fly away from her mind as he stared at her.

“Moo Moo?”

No. Dear god, no. Not the ‘Moo Moo’.

---