Page 104 of Next Time I Fall (Excess All Areas 2)

“No, it’s cute.”

Jase glared but couldn’t keep his face straight. “Cost me thirty quid to send it all because the candle was heavy.”

Now, Matt was really laughing. Like, full on holding his stomach, laughing, and it felt shockingly ... good.

“Arsehole,” he muttered.

Once he’d composed himself, Matt strummed on his bass. “Want to tell me about the lyrics you wrote?”

Jase grabbed his notebook from his bag. “It’s more thoughts than anything. That’s how I tend to do it.” He flicked to the page. “It’s about wanting to tell someone that you love them. And waiting to hear it back from them.”

“Yeah. I like it. Kinda know that feeling too. I was shitting bricks when I told Iz.”

“Why? She’s loved you for fucking ever.”

Matt paused. “Yeah. But there’s always that risk that they don’t love you as much as you love them.”

When his heart lurched, he knew why. He worried that Cerys’s feelings wouldn’t be as strong as his own. “Why do you think I sent Cerys a candle with my fucking initial on it? But I think the theme of the song is more hopeful than that. It’s the anticipation of the moment. And how you’re already showing the person how much you love them before you put the words to it. It’s a journey. You meet someone. And slowly, you like spending time with them. And then, they become the default for everything. If you want to go out or stay home and everything in between, it’s them you want to do it with. And before you know it, you’re capable of shit you never knew you were.”

“You’re sending them candles with your initial?” This time, Matt wasn’t laughing, he was serious.

“Yeah. Because slowly, your lives are mingling, and your energies are mixing, and the sum of the two is something way more spectacular than you could ever add up to on your own. And it’s not that you aren’t independent and happy and capable when you are single. But there’s an alchemy that happens when you’re not, when you find the other person whose atoms line up with yours. The words,I love you, are the chemical reaction that cements it all.”

“Mr. Wiggins would love the fact all that chemistry he tried to teach you in school didn’t go to waste.”

“Yeah. Shocker, right?”

“I love it, Jase. There’s something very lyrical about it. You’re really fucking good at this when you let yourself be.”

Matt’s words made his chest expand. Praise was something he’d not heard a lot of in his life, and it was a bit of a marvel how even the slightest off-hand comment made him feel like a giant. “Thanks.”

Luke silently flopped down onto the sofa next to them, looking decidedly dishevelled.

“Maybe when we’re done here, you and I could spend some more time working on this together. Flesh it out. I know we don’t need new songs right now, seeing we just nailed the album down. But it might be better than trying to write outside of that pressure cooker environment. See what we come up with,” Matt said.

“I’d like that.”

“What about you, Luke? Want to join us? I think it would be pretty awesome to work songs out as a group.”

Luke slumped back in the sofa. “Not with the hard-on you two have for each other right now.”

Jase grimaced. “What the fuck, man? That’s my brother.”

Luke shrugged. “You two are all up in each other’s space now you worked out some shit in Detroit. Looks like a songwriting match made in heaven.”

Matt leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees. “Fuck, Luke. You’ve always been an intrinsic part of the process.”

The stagehand approached them. “Matt, the band needs to head onstage now. One minute countdown.”

Luke was up and on his feet towards the stage before they could speak to him further.

“Fuck, I didn’t think about how all this would affect him,” Matt said.

“You think he feels pushed out?”

“I don’t know, but I think we should keep an eye on him.”

But for the following ninety minutes, Jase pushed Luke from his thoughts.

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