Page 85 of You, As You Are

She was here in Wales for a purpose, and so far that purpose wasn’t working.

She’d left everyone behind only to find herself still lost. Like the tide lapping in and out upon the rocks, a part of her wanted to keep on moving, but she didn’t have an end in sight. No home base to anchor herself to. For the last few nights, she’d wanted everything to be as it was three months ago, before everything had changed.

“What are you doing out here, Daffy?”

“Shit—” Maisie slapped her hand to her chest and nearly broke her neck spinning to find the source of that voice. “Iain …”

Ten yards back, Ted strained his lead to get to her and Iain let him go. He galloped full pelt, and Maisie had a lightning strike of fear that she would end up in the sand until Ted ground to a halt on the concrete paving.

“Hi baby!” She tried to catch him as he wiggled around her, but he wouldn’t stay still enough for more than an awkwardly placed pat.

“You spoil him,” Iain chided, bemusement in his voice behind her.

“Someone should,” Maisie rebuffed. Eventually Ted settled with his head in her lap, grains of sand falling from his doggymoustache to her corduroy overalls. They were embroidered with fairy mushrooms today, one of her favourite pairs.

In those few seconds, Iain had moved. He stood above her, his eyes pinched as though she were a sign too far away that he tried to read. It was rather off-putting this time to be under his study with such a great distance between them. Seriously, how did a person come to be built like him?

“I haven’t heard from you this week,” he said, his voice like a gentle nudge.

Maisie’s lack of communication hadn’t been on purpose. Though maybe it had, a little.

Iain came to her calmly, which is more than what she could say for how she’d stormed away from him on Saturday night. She’d felt flirty and maybe that was the alcohol’s fault, but one mere suggestion that he could ever like her and he’d flipped.

She’d had all night and the resulting days to think about why he’d closed himself off, how reminding him that his engagement had failed had come so casually. Maisie already knew that he believed it was his fault, and inadvertently, she supposed, she’d made that point hit home. But there was another reason, too.“Not just that,”he’d said. She just hadn’t learned what it was quite yet.

“Things have been busy with work.Nainkeeps asking me to do things with her too.” She sighed and tipped her head back to see him, hoping Iain might know an answer to one of her multiple problems. “How do I politely tell her that she can’t just show up and demand for me to do something with her whenever she likes?”

So much guilt coursed through her veins for wanting to know such a thing. She should be glad that she was lucky enough to still have her grandmother around, one whowantedto spend time with her. But the timings just weren’t fair anymore.

Iain angled his head like the answer was written on her lips, his beard scratching the collar of his coat. “Have you thought about how maybe she just wants to make up for lost time?”

“More so that she’s making up for time we’re losing,” Maisie muttered.

“Don’t think like that.” Iain’s tone firmed, his presence looming behind her. “If she wasn’t well, she would tell you. And I don’t think that woman is going anywhere just yet.”

“We’ve taken more boxes of stuff to the charity shops this week. Ronnie is glued to her side. What else am I supposed to think?”

Iain exhaled, and the next thing she knew he was sitting beside her, dangling his own legs off the wall. He didn’t need to say anything, Maisie didn’t need him to, either.

Somewhere in the last weeks she’d become content in their silence. When he’d helped package her products for her online orders – other than to ask for instructions – he’d let her be whilst she’d tried to manifest her cramps and pain away.

This moment, sitting here together at the endlessness like the start of the world, felt no different.

How could shenotbe content when the view was this spectacular even on its gloomiest days? It’d be brighter when spring was more fully underway; in April and May when the evenings were longer, when the skies made the ocean tide a more teal shade of blue.

“How is your friend’s bakery doing?” Iain’s quiet question, reverent of the view, was a fraction startling in the silence.

“As good as she hoped,” Maisie answered, wiping flyaway curls from her face. “They’ve sold out every day this week. Now that the kitchen’s running, Faye’ll have the doughnuts and pastries being made constantly. Bash is going back to London this weekend, so she’ll have more work to do without him.”

“He was very protective of you all.”

That opinion explained a lot of the tension Maisie felt Bash giving off that night at the bar.

“We’ve known each other for a decade. He’s really good to all of us. You didn’t meet Freddy, but he’s just the same.”

“So you’ve always just been … friends?” Iain sounded like he spoke through his back teeth.

Yes, they had – a decade’s worth of friendship. They’d been on holidays and even lived together at the end of university at one point, and—Wait, was that…

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