“Relax. I’m just messing with you. I was a perfect gentleman. Right, Cerys?”
Cerys grinned. “Well, if you exclude the fact that you sat down at my table uninvited, then ate half of my birthday cake, then yes, you were.”
Ben frowned. “Why were you out on your birthday alone?”
“Wait, this needs drinks. What do you want, Cerys?” Jase asked, noting that Ben and Alex had full glasses.
“Wine, preferably white, preferably dry. If no wine, a beer, a pilsner of some sort.”
When he returned, he placed the wine in front of Cerys. “Probably not as nice as the stuff you were drinking earlier.”
Cerys looked up at him and smiled. “Thank you, Jason.”
Jason.
Hardly anybody ever called him that. His nan when he was in trouble. His teachers at school. For a second, he thought she might see him, all of him, but then he chased the thought away.
Nobody did.
Not his own family. Not Matt. Not Izabel.
Definitely not Izabel.
His stomach curdled at the thought of how he’d fucked that up.
But then he looked back at Cerys with her soft smile, and the pain that had pierced his chest dissipated.
“You were about to tell Ben why you were alone on your birthday.”
Cerys shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. My dad was a no-show.”
Alex scowled. “Did he have a good reason?”
“Didn’t even call her,” Jase said.
Alex slowly turned his pint glass. “Well, that’s some fucked-up shit.”
Jase saw Cerys’s shoulders lift and drop. “It’s complicated. And it’s very unprofessional of me to speak about him with you. Let’s just chalk that slip up to one too many drinks.”
“How come you’re Welsh and your dad’s American?” Ben asked.
Cerys turned to him. “Let’s not hold back on the personal questions there, Ben.”
“Okay. I’ll go first. Me and Alex are brothers. Our mum, Patricia, is named after our Nan’s brother, Patrick, who died in a mining accident when a pit collapsed. My mum’s sister, Jase and Matt’s mum, is alive but isn’t around. Our dad is a dickhead who, thankfully, spends half his time on an offshore rig in the Irish Sea. No one’s family ever makes total sense.”
Cerys turned her attention to him. “Your mum isn’t around?”
Jase shook his head. “She’s been gone so long that I only have vague memories of her, so you can lose that puppy-dog eyes thing you’ve got going on. Nan’s the best, even though she has me and Matt to deal with.”
Alex threw his arm over Jase’s shoulder. “And believe me, she’s had a lot to put up with.”
“Fine. My mum is Welsh. She was a backing singer back in the day, a great one, with a beautiful voice. Dad met her at a session, he was eleven years older. Wooed her, got her pregnant, then went back to the States. He’s been back in my life exactly thirty-five days since I moved here to connect with him and work with him for three months.” She shrugged and smiled, but Jase could feel the effort it took. “We’re just learning how to coexist.”
God, he’d been such a shitty individual, saying those things to her about her dad as she’d made her tea.
He wanted to reach for her hand, and felt compelled to offer her something. Anything. “Well, far be it for me to call your dad a dick,” Jase said. “But you can’t learn how to coexist if you don’t show up.”
“I have an idea,” Ben said, raising his glass. “The three of us will show up for Cerys’s birthday. And we’ll coexist over many more rounds until this birthday is properly celebrated. Happy birthday, Cerys.”
Two hours later, while Alex and Ben were at the bar chatting to a couple of girls, Jase watched as Cerys closed one eye and then the other. “You okay there?”
Cerys groaned. “The room is starting to spin.”
Jase eased out of the booth and offered her his hand. “In that case, we should get you bundled up and home.”
Once she was on her feet, she stumbled and placed both palms on his chest. “Oh, your chest is very solid.”
He bit back a grim smile. “You can thank my anger management strategies for that. I work out. A lot.”
“If I can speak freely, I’m not sure it works.”
Jase reached for her coat and held it while she slid her hands through the arms. “Yeah. Well, I’m an angry fucker, Cerys.” He buttoned her coat up and reached for her scarf. “And you are too cute to make me mad right now.”
She put her hands back on his chest. “You think I’m cute?”
Drunk, flirty Cerys was more than cute. But the beers he’d drunk made it hard to think of the right word. He tapped her on the tip of her nose. “Stop fishing for compliments, and let’s get your scarf on.”
He wound it around her neck, taking care to not get her earrings caught, then pulled on his own coat.
They said their goodbyes to Ben and Alex, but as he turned to follow Cerys out of the bar, Alex grabbed his arm. “Do not fuck her.”
Jase shrugged off his hand. “I’m not going to. Don’t you think we’d be in more shit if we got Baby Bexter pissed and then left her to find her own way home? Try explaining that to Bexter.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. Just . . . don’t ruin this for us.”
The beer buzz and unfamiliar feeling of happiness he’d felt only moments before began to dissipate. “I hear you. Later.” Jase marched after Cerys.
“Here,” he said, opening a car door for her, and then sliding in after her. “What’s your address?”
Cerys looked at him, and he could see the confusion in her eyes, before she did as he’d instructed.
“Why are you in this taxi?” she asked.
“I’m seeing you home.”
“But it’s really out of your way.”
Jase sighed and looked out of the window. “Yeah. And while the majority of cabbies are nice guys, some aren’t. I wasn’t going to let you get into a cab, half-cut from alcohol I paid for, so you could take your chances.”
Cerys put her hand on his leg. It shouldn’t have soothed him when she did that. “I don’t think we should . . . well, are you . . . were you hoping to come in?”
He shook his head. Why did everyone think he was trying to get into her pants? Couldn’t a guy just do a nice thing for someone? Sure, she was cute. But she was here in the States. And soon, he’d be back in Manchester. “No. Don’t go getting ideas.”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t.”
Cerys didn’t speak for the rest of the ride to her home.
And her silence burned him inside.
4
On Monday morning, as her alarm blasted, Cerys opened her eyes slowly, and sighed in relief to find the hangover that had lingered all day on Sunday completely gone. All that remained was the certainty that she’d upset Jase with something she vaguely remembered saying. No matter how hard she focused, the details were blurry.
They’d had fun, he’d made her laugh with his crass comments. There were signs that the angry, sullen singer was only a part of who Jase was.