Page 109 of One Day Like This (Excess All Areas 1)

Matt winked. “I’ll be back in an hour, and we can recreate it.”

Finally, Izabel smiled. “I’ll hold you to that.”

After a frantic five-minute shower and a quick jog, he pushed open the gate to his nan’s to find her watching for him from the living room window. She gestured to him to be quiet and then opened the door to let him in.

“What, in the name of baby Jesus, happened yesterday?” Her words came out on a whispered hiss. “Look at my bannister.”

Matt looked over at the railing up the stairs with spindles broken at jagged angles. Anger was crystal clear in every splintered piece of wood.

“Nan. Jesus. I’ll get it fixed.”

“Do you think I actually give a shit about that? Wood is easy to fix. I just buy new spindles, paint them white, and my staircase is back to normal. Fixing whatever happened ... He was broken. Completely beside himself. Half cut. Said a whole bunch of stuff that made no sense. He’d lost Ben. You’d blown up the band. Luke hit you. What the hell happened, Matt?”

“Is he still here?”

“No. I’m whispering because I feel like it—of course he’s here. Asleep on the bedroom floor because he didn’t make it to the bed before he tired himself out. Haven’t seen him do that since those tantrums he’d throw when I used to make him wear a coat when he was four. I felt like I might get more sense out of you.”

Matt moved past her and flopped into the armchair near the gas fireplace she never used. “They found out about me and Izabel.”

She sat down on the couch. “I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but even I figured that out.”

He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. “Fuck. It’s a mess. We knew this would happen. That everything would explode. And I just wanted Izabel to get her concert for the shelter. So, we decided to wait to tell them. We were going to tell them today, but then Izabel’s ex just happened to be at the concert, and the next thing I know he’s spouting shit about the wedding. And Luke starts to put the pieces together ...”

“And Jase.”

Matt shook his head, focusing on the narrow channel in the laminate flooring that Jase had accidentally created using a Stanley knife while building a castle for Year Seven history.

“What do you want me to tell you, Nan? We fought. Nothing new there. But I deliberately hurt him. I threw it back at him that the fight was because he didn’t want me to have Izabel. You want the details? When they ... well, when they were together, she called out my name. Jeez. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. He tried to persuade her to go with him instead of staying with me. But then he says it’s not about her, and that I don’t have a fucking clue about what’s important to him. And the hurt on his face, in hindsight, is killing me.”

“If you’d realised his hurt, would you have let her go?”

Matt shook his head. “No, Nan. I’d have let her choose if I’d have thought for one second she reciprocated his feelings.”

“You’d have let Izabel go?”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to be Izabel’s second choice. But I already knew where Iz’s heart was. Shit, Nan. She told me at the wedding that I was her choice. I couldn’t say no to her then, and I wouldn’t say no to her now. I love her. It would have broken me into a million pieces to let her go. But losing the band is fractionally less painful.”

“Well, then,” Jase’s gruff tone filtered toward them from the stairs. “You understand how I felt, because I lost them both too ... to my own brother.”

Matt didn’t turn, but he heard the fifth and third stair creak as Jase stepped on them. His nan looked at Jase, and Matt felt how stricken she was. “Jase, let me have a proper look at that face of yours, get it cleaned up, and then we can all sit down and talk this through,” she said.

“No offence, Nan, but you need to stop. There isn’t any fixing this,” Jase said, walking towards the front door.

“You’re right. I hoped I’d done a better job with the you than I did with your mum. You’ve let me down, lads. Gone are the days when I could give you a smack on the back of your legs and make you sit at the bottom of the stairs for five minutes to cool down. You’re grown men. It’s time for me to stop trying to fix this, because I’m tired, and time for the two of you to figure out how to solve this once and for all. Especially now the band is doing so well.”

Jase turned around and Matt could finally see what had affected his nan. While Matt’s eye was swollen and bruised, both of Jase’s eyes were blackened and his nose a mess.

“Yeah. Well. Matt fucked it up for all of us. So if you want to yell, yell at him.”

Jase put his hand on the door to leave.

“Wait,” Matt said, finding his feet. “Jase. I’ve had nightmares that this was how it would end, and I just wanted Izabel to get the funds for the shelter before we blew everything apart.”

“Yeah. Well. Mission accomplished. Gig played. Funds raised. Pat on the back for you for being such a charitable little fella.”

Matt took a step toward him. “And I’m sorry for the comments I made about you and Izabel. It was out of order and by the sounds of it, unnecessary.”

“Fuck off, Matt.”

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