Page 9 of You, As You Are

“Vera talks about you,” he said. “A lot.”

Her trousers rustled as she shifted. “She does?”

A deep sort of grunt was what she received in return. More like a wordless rumble. It wasn’t rude, but a sound that made her suspect the man who her entire side was pressed up against was very much a ‘keeps to himself’ kind of guy.

Iain faced forwards as the bus rattled out of town, being driven like a sports car instead of the metal tin it actually was. Was he going to say anything else? Maybe tell her what hernainsaid about her since he’d apparently heard a lot? How could she go about prodding him gently?

“Good things, I hope.”

His eyes flicked to her. “That depends on your definition of ‘good’.”

Coming from anyone else, Maisie would’ve expected an impish grin and a meaningful look, but that statement from Iain only filled her with dread. “I’m scared to even ask, now.”

“You could say that everyone here knows you broke up with your boyfriend seven months ago.”

Well wasn’t that just fantastic. It wasn’t her work or her jewellery business that hernaingossiped about, it was her dating history.

“This is terrible,” Maisie uttered. She rubbed at her face before remembering that her eyelashes were coated in mascara and ripped her hand away.

“You’re from London.” Was that a question to steer the conversation away from her horrid dating life, or the start of Iain telling her everything else that he knew about her? “What’s that like?”

A question, then.

“Have you ever been?” Her gaze wandered up to his hair which was considerably shorter and more salt-and-peppery on the sides than it was on top. Her earlier guess that he was in his mid-thirties seemed more correct.

“Once,” he said. “Wasn’t my cup of tea. I guess if you live there, you must see it differently.”

“It’s everything that you’d imagine. Loud. Busy.” But it was home. It was all she’d ever really known.

“Is that why you’ve moved here instead?”

Maisie checked to see how many seats ahead of her Vera and Ronnie were. They were far enough out of earshot, but she couldn’t trust that Molly/Mabel across from Iain, or any of the other grey heads around her, wouldn’t relay her answer back to them.

“Not completely. The short version of the story is that I’m a web designer.” Maisie stuck to the script that she’d prepared for anyone who asked. “I design websites for e-commerce, smaller businesses and such. I’m completely remote and fancied a change of scenery. Which is why I’m able to move here and be closer toNain.”

Iain didn’t respond; she didn’t expect him to. His hand stayed dropped down by his side where she assumed he stroked Ted.

The minibus chugged along under the shaded cover of trees from the woodland around them. The elders of the groupchatted amongst themselves while Maisie still had trouble stopping herself from yawning with the early start to her Saturday. At least they hadn’t started singing yet. There was always a chance with Vera being on board.

A particularly sharp bend in the road slung her against Iain with a squeak. Her backpack toppled over into his lap, and judging by the stifled, pained noise that came from him, the metal water bottle in the side pocket hit him somewhere most unfortunate.

“Shi—I’m so sor?—”

Her luck ran out when another bend in the road taken too quickly flung Iain into her and her into the window. They were pressed side to side tightly enough for Maisie to recognise how he shifted his hips in the narrow seat. Internally, she grimaced and grabbed her backpack from his lap.

Iain’s eyes stayed closed as his breaths held more of a rumble. Should she ask if he was alright? Was it too early into their acquaintance to be concerned for the wellbeing of whatever he had going on beneath his trousers that her filled-to-the-brim water bottle had hit?

Yes. Definitely. It definitely was.

Maisie wrapped her arms around the backpack and hugged it against her chest, hoping to hide behind it for the rest of the journey.

But she could only bare the hiding for a minute, hoping instead that conversation might quell the awkwardness. “Do you know where we’re hiking today?”

“From Borth back to Aber. Should only take a couple of hours.”

“Borth … That’s another beach town, isn’t it?”

Iain made that same affirmative noise as earlier. If she held her phone out and recorded those grunts of replies, then maybe Google Translate could interpret them for her.

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