Chapter 300
Lillian, looking surprisingly beautiful in a stunning white dress and hair perfectly styled, hung on to Ethan’s arm through the speeches, toasts and sit-down, three-course meal, looking so happy it was almost indecent. Ethan simply looked floored, drunk on ecstasy, and Paul completed the happiness by spending the entire speech obeying tradition, and ripping the piss out of the obliviously cheerful groom, much to the glee of his new in-laws. (Lillian’s sister appeared to be taking notes.)
Darren had been taken up to the high table with the wedding party for the speeches and toasts and glanced Jayden’s way for the first one. When Jayden bit his lip and then nodded, Darren smiled and downed the flute of champagne before putting it aside and very clearly filling a glass with water for the next one. Jayden’s heart swelled and felt overly large and achy.
He came down for the meal itself, though, sliding into the seat beside Jayden and exchanging dull, upper-middle-class pleasantries with assorted relatives of Lillian’s before helping himself to another (small) glass of wine and sliding his fingers into Jayden’s.
“You didn’t stop staring at me for the entire time,” he said lowly.
“Because you were so utterly amazing, it hurt,” Jayden replied, equally lowly, and smiled at the waitress who brought their starters. Tiny starters. Jayden rolled his eyes at the posh food, and decided that he might have to sneak out of the hotel later and find a chippie or something.
Darren hummed, squeezing Jayden’s fingers again, before letting go and picking up his salad fork.
“Are you friend of Ethan’s, then?” one woman at their table asked.
“Yes,” Darren said.
“We went to school with him,” Jayden clarified helpfully.
“And you’re, ah…” she indicated their hands delicately, even though they had separated.
“Darren’s my partner, yes,” Jayden said, politely but shortly, and Darren gave him a sideways glance.
“I see,” said the woman, and then Darren seemed to brush her off, turning back to Jayden.
“So what did you think?” he asked.
“I told you.”
“About the music,” Darren said tartly and flicked him on the forehead. “Flirt.”
“Oh, that was pretty good too.”
Darren snorted; Jayden laughed, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek, and fighting to contain himself from doing more, right there. “You were amazing and you know it,” he murmured and curled his fingers into Darren’s sleeve. “And I’ll prove it later. Do some, um. Appreciation.”
Darren grinned, looking supremely pleased with himself, and Jayden let go to focus on the small-portioned food. It wasn’t a particularly long meal, and felt shorter thanks to the space between courses being filled with more speeches—one from the bride’s brother, another from her father, and one from Ethan’s father, surprisingly, who told the entire room about how convinced ‘Kathleen and I’ were that ‘our Ether’ (at which Darren and Paul simultaneously snorted, and Ethan went a very strange shade of purple) was ‘one of them gay types’ (at which Jayden snorted and went purple) and so ‘young Lilly here’ had come as a ‘comp-er-letesurprise, my dear friends!’
“So that’s where Ethan gets it,” Darren murmured lowly in Jayden’s ear, and Jayden stifled a laugh.
By the time dessert was served, Jayden was tempted just to put the ice cream in his lap to ward off the inevitable. Darren was just too stunning in that suit, and had been too world-shatteringly beautiful and talented at that piano, and Jayden was beginning to physically hurt with the need. Darren kept giving him—and his lap—sideways looks and smirking, and Jayden wanted to hit him, right before dragging him off and just…just…just fucking him in a corner somewhere. Maybe not even an actual room, just…behind an oversized plastic plant or something.
And then Paul doomed him, by at the end of the meal, standing up with a final glass of champagne. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he boomed. “We would like to take you into the knees-up part of the party now, and please raise a glass to our pianist, Darren Peace. Oi, stand up,” he ordered, and Darren rose grudgingly from his seat, nodding awkwardly at the crowd who raised glasses to him, looking somehow young and awkward and putting his hands in his pockets for lack of something better to do with them. “Darren has had the pleasure of our company for probably a decade now, or somewhere around it, and the minute Ethan said he was getting hitched, Daz and I got plotting, didn’t we, Daz?”
Ethan looked alarmed. Lillian, by contrast, looked delighted. Darren just smirked knowingly.
“When Lillian learned her loving but daft then-boyfriend had a trained pianist for a best friend, she wanted some stuff playing. Some of it you heard. But she also wanted a live performance for her first dance as a married woman and sadly, Lillian did have a stipulation. Something a little bit unusual.”
Ethan looked very alarmed. Lillian, by contrast, looked delighted and puzzled at the same time. Darren’s smirk grew wider, and Jayden found himself starting to smile, all without knowing the joke.