Cerys didn’t miss the stricken look Izabel gave Matt. “Let me just go check his apartment.”
“He’s a grown man, babe. He could have company.”
Izabel shook his head. “You know how he’s been recently, let me just go check.”
“Fine,” Matt said, leading Iz to the staircase. “We’ll meet the two of you downstairs.”
Jase and Cerys stepped into the elevator. “What’s the deal with Luke?” she asked.
Once he’d pressed the button, he pulled her to him. “Luke’s off the rails at the moment. Too much time on his hands, a bit more cash in his pocket. Dealing with some demons. He’s always been Matt’s best friend, but Matt and I have been working on our shit, getting closer, writing together. I don’t know. He’s a little lost right now.”
“That sounds awful. Hope he’s okay.”
When Matt and Izabel finally joined them, Cerys realised that as much as she cared about Jase, she already cared about his band too. Not just in a sound production way, but as people, as Jase’s extended family.
“He’s not there,” Matt said. “Left him a voicemail to remind him about today. We’ll see if he shows up.”
“Then we best get a wiggle on over to Nan’s,” Jase said. “For all we know, he might already be there.”
Getting a wiggle on meant banging on Ben’s door so Alex, Ben, and a cute brunette called Chaya could join them.
“I’ve performed piano in front of two thousand people at the Palace Theatre, but I’ve never felt this nervous,” Cerys said, certain her palm was sweating in Jase’s as they walked with Alex towards his nan’s house.
“You’ll be fine. She’ll love you. Boddington, her cat, won’t. He’s a dick and hates everyone. But Nan will. It’s not a big deal.”
“Nan’s making a big deal, though,” Alex warned from behind them. “We don’t all normally come on a Sunday.”
“What do you mean?” Cerys looked over her shoulder at him.
“Nan borrowed Cousin Allan’s pasting tables.” Alex said it with a sombre nod.
“Pasting tables?”
Jase squeezed her hand, which was reassuring until he muttered an expletive under his breath. “Pasting tables. Those long tables decorators use to apply wallpaper paste to wallpaper. Nan’s house is a shoebox. Her table sits four. But when she wants to do what she calls a ‘fancy do’, she . . .”
“She what, Jase?”
“She invites the whole family.”
“Whole family?”
“Yep. ‘Fancy do’ is the DEFCON One of her catering levels. Level five, also known as ‘the cheat tea’, is eating on your lap in front of the telly. The cheat part is not sitting at the table. The ‘quick tea’, level four, is eating at the kitchen table. A ‘nice tea’, level three, means sitting at the square table in the corner of the living room. It involves placemats. Level two is where it gets posher and involves tablecloths. It’s the ‘buffet’, a finger food affair with a home cooked ham, homemade pickled onions, and a trifle. And level one, the ‘fancy do’ is the pasting table, usually reserved for Christmas Day and funerals.”
“And meeting serious girlfriends, apparently,” Alex chipped in less than helpfully. “Mum took the four chairs from our table this morning.”
Cerys felt her stomach churn again. “So, how many will be there?”
“About twenty is my guess,” Ben supplied cheerfully. “The band, four—or five if Luke makes it—you, six; Iz, seven; Chaya, eight; Mum and Dad, ten; Uncle Allan with any number of his lot, and Gerry, that bloke Nan’s been seeing. But twenty is my guess, because you can squeeze ten people around a single pasting table, and she borrowed two.”
Cerys stopped walking and took a deep breath. “I’m going to hyperventilate.”
Jase rubbed her back. “You’re not. It’s fine.”
“I’ve only got flowers for your Nan, though. I should have got some for your mum, Alex.”
“In fairness, that bouquet you got for Nan is likely the biggest she’s ever seen. She’ll probably split it with Mum anyway because she won’t have enough vases.”
Cerys looked up at Jase. “Is it too much?”
Jase grinned. “Babe, I told you that when you were buying it. But you were the one who insisted on getting Chaya’s friend, Grace, at The Outhouse Florist to make her a custom bouquet when she’d have loved a bunch of carnations from the petrol station just as much.”
She placed her hand on her forehead. “I’ve got a fever. We should go home.”
Jase playfully smacked her hand away. “You do not have a fever. We aren’t going home. You’re going to meet my nan and she’s going to love you.”
Ben threw an arm around her shoulder. “She will. Because you could be the first to carry one of the great-grandchildren she wants more than a night with Daniel Craig.”
Her mouth dropped open as she stared at him. “Great-grandchildren?”
Jase laughed and looked at Ben. “Cerys does this thing when she’s nervous, repeats two or three of the words you just said. Adorable, really. Usually does it when she’s hanging out with Little Jase.”
Ben smiled. “She’s cute.”
“She’s still here,” Cerys said, indignantly. “And enough with the Little Jase.”
“Babe. You can never get enough Little Jase. You told me this morning when—”
“Jesus Christ. Please stop.”
Cerys stopped walking, Jase with her, as the others went on ahead.
“Great-grandchildren, huh?” she muttered.
Jase took the bouquet out of her hands and pulled her to him with his free arm, kissing the top of her head. “You want kids, Cerys?” he asked, quietly.
Smushed against his chest, she could barely breathe, but felt her heart rate lowering. “Yes. But probably not on the same timeline as your Nan.”
She felt his chest ripple with a chuckle. “Given she’s wanted great-grandkids since we turned of age, probably not. But it’s a good thing to know you and me would both like them in the future, though, yeah?”
Cerys lifted her gaze to his. There was such optimism in his eyes, it was easy to be buoyed by it. “It is.”
He kissed her, a soft, reassuring meeting of lips. “You’ll be fine today, I promise. It’s a big deal to Nan because I’ve never done this.”
“Brought a girl home?”
“Nah. Done that before. It’s the first time I’ve been in love with her, though, and Nan knows it.”
Her eyes widened as his words hit home. “Jase.”
“Don’t look at me like that, pretty girl, or Little Jase will get all curious about what’s going on. You know how much he hates getting left tucked inside my denim when your eyes go all misty.”
“You just said you’re ‘in love with her’ . . . with me.”
Jase rolled his eyes at her. “Did I, or did I not tell you that the next time I fall in love it would be with you?”
“To fall and fallen mean two different things.”