My Favourite Part

15: happy birthday, dear...

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I trip over myself for a sec, but I don't break my stride towards the dining room.

If I stop, I'll look guilty. Although an innocent person wouldn't stay as silent as I am now, either.

I don't turn to answer immediately. I get us into the dining room and hold on to the wooden chair at the head of table for some... stability. Okay, think fast. Who could Eric be, who could Eric be?

I feel like I'm going to have an aneurysm, true, but looking at him, I can't even be mad at the poor man. He's clearly uncomfortable, wearing this plain, awkward expression that seems to say this is small talk, I am small-talking. I just wish he'd made his small talk about how shit the weather is, like every other bloody Londoner.

"Um, Eric who?" Mum asks. She sounds irritated, like she doesn't like that Jerome's in the loop of my life whilst she's never even met the man – that's better than her putting two and two together. I need to jump in before she does.

"Eric?" I say, scraping my chair against the floor when I sit down, loudly enough that nobody hears Jerome when he starts to try and explain who this 'Eric' is. "Oh, you must mean Erys!" Oh my God, I've never been so grateful for that damn dog.

"Yeah, Erys is good, heh. She's house-trained now, actually! Didn't take her long at all, she's a fast learner for a puppy!" I'm babbling like an idiot, but I'm hoping that if I jabber on for long enough, Jerome will realise we're talking about a dog, and Mum, Walt and August will forget that the name Eric was mentioned at all.

Mum purses her lips and gets me to shut up and look down without actually saying a word.

"So, you've met Erys too, then?"

"...I suppose." Jerome says, with the reticence of a reserved countryman, and whether he didn't give me away because he couldn't be bothered to, or because he could feel my eyes burning a hole in the side of his face, I've never been more grateful. Or thirsty. Is keeping secrets supposed to make you this thirsty? When I chug my glass of water like I've just escaped a desert, I realise that my glugging noise is the only noise being made at the table. Other than slushing sounds of me quenching my thirst, the room is so painfully quiet, I'd be grateful for a pin drop. 

Walt clears his throat, and I feel the relief run through me, thank God! That is, until he says,

"Let's say grace. 'Rome?" Oh... I didn't mean it literally.

The atmosphere takes a turn for awkward, and I know we're all thinking the same thinking: ...b-but we've never said grace before. It was his suggestion, but I'm pretty sure Walt feels the discomfort too - without meeting anybody else's eyes, he closes his eyes and bows his head, with Jerome following suit. Mum, August and I share a what the fuck is happening glance before squeezing our eyes closed when Jerome grunts, signalling the beginning of... whatever's going on here.

"Bless us, O God, as we sit together. Bless the food we eat today. Bless the hands that made the food. Bless us, O God, Amen."

I open one eye when he comes to the what I think is the of grace. That was... nice. He says it with a kind of rhythm, like it's a song, but without music, or nice lyrics. I guess we could get used to that. Will we have to get used to that?

Walt nods, and follows up the grace-song with a solemn 'Amen', but then the silence resumes, and I really don't know how much more of this bloody tension I can take. Bless us, O God, with something to talk about.

August has been puffing and squeezing her cheeks for the past minute, and I've seen that expression, the cross between mischief and curiosity, too many times before. I can feel it, I can feel it in my bones, that she's going to say something cheeky. Oh, Auggie.