Author's Note: Thanks again to everyone who takes the time to review! :) And for the record - the bowling mishaps in this chapter have all actually happened to me or a family member and are incredibly embarrassing and amusing at the same time.
Jake's stomach was churning uncomfortably, and he tightened his grip on Dad's hand as they entered the bowling alley. He hoped that Grace was nice and that she would like him, but all he could remember was the myriad of stories about evil stepmothers.
Jake spotted her stand up in the café area, recognising her from the photo he'd studied. Dad saw her at the same time, and made his way straight over. He kissed her on the cheek before pulling Jake around in front of him.
"Jake, this is Grace," Dad introduced. "Grace, this is Jake."
Feeling the reassuring weight of his dad's hands on his shoulders, Jake remembered all the lectures he'd had on manners from his mum and dad, and shyly stuck his hand out.
"Pleased to meet you," he said, determined to sound confident. Grace had a naturally serious face, but that wasn't really unusual in his weird family [Mum, Liam and Dad could all be pretty serious, Dad the most of course] so Jake decided to ignore it.
"Pleased to meet you too," she said, shaking his hand. Grace smiled at him, and Jake felt a little relieved to see that she was a little nervous too. Her handshake was everything Dad said a handshake should be: warm, firm, but not too hard, and not yucky and clammy. As they released each other's hands, Jake quickly tugged his Leukaemia Cap (as he and Dad had dubbed it. It was also called the Lampard Cap) back to make sure it covered his head properly. His hair hadn't grown back fully and evenly, there were still these weird patches, and his ears looked funny so he was determined to keep it covered as much as possible.
"Well, shall we go get our shoes?" Neil suggested before the pause became awkward. Jake breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. Taking his dad's hand again, the three of them walked up to the counter and sorted out their shoes.
Jake tried to watch Grace without being weird and staring at her. Jake couldn't really call her pretty, but she was…he'd read in a book that people could be referred to as striking, and that seemed to fit even if he wasn't entirely sure what it meant.
"Who goes first?" Dad asked as they reached their lane and started pulling shoes on.
"Age order!" Jake claimed immediately. "Youngest to oldest, so you're last."
Grace laughed, and Dad looked uncomfortable. "I'm actually older than your dad," she admitted shyly.
Oops. "Really?" Jake said, somewhat sceptically as he looked between them. She didn't look it. Jake thought she looked a bit younger than Mum, not as many lines on her face.
"Really really," Grace affirmed.
"How old are you?"
"Jake, you never ask a lady her age," Dad hissed disapprovingly, looking embarrassed.
"Don't be silly, Neil," Grace dismissed Dad's concerns. That was good. Jake had never understood that whole 'don't as a lady how old she is' thing. How was it offensive to ask a simple question? "I've just turned forty-one, Jake. Pretty old, aren't I?"
"A little more than four times older than me," he said, trying to be polite and knowing this was a mine-field. "But you don't look three years older than him," Jake said, critically looking at his father.
"Thanks, son," Neil said sarcastically as Grace grinned.
"I haven't actually bowled before," Grace told them both somewhat shyly. "So you might need to give me a few pointers."
"That's all right!" Jake said with a grin.
"Yeah, it'll give him a chance of beating someone," Neil teased, grinning as Jake punched him in the shoulder.
"Ignore him," Jake asked firmly, turning back to Grace. "All right, first what we need to do is all of us need to get the balls. So you want one which your fingers fit in comfortably, and can slide out. Otherwise it might get stuck, like that time we went bowling with Aunty Sarah and them and Angus got his fingers stuck and we had to borrow butter from the restaurant there to get them out."
"That's awful!" Grace said through laughter. Jake grinned and nodded. Some five minutes later, they arrived back at their lane, having selected balls (and having had no mishaps along the way).
"Okay, so you hold the bowling ball like this," Jake said, demonstrating as he held his green ball against his chest.
"Jake, how about you show her as you take your first bowl?" Neil suggested. Jake nodded, and went up to the lane.
"And then you bring your arm down slowly," Jake instructed seriously, "as you run forward then you let it go."
As Jake watched his ball head, wobbling, towards the pins, Neil leaned over to speak into her ear.
"He's missed a few steps, like aiming it…" Neil's voice had a joking tone. "But otherwise he's right. Just look at the arrows in the lane and try to aim for the middle."
Grace watched Neil enviously as he stood and took his turn, smoothly sliding the dark blue ball down to knock down seven pins and then two pins on the second bowl – to Jake's disappointment. [He'd only managed to get six down].
"Remember what I said," Jake told her bossily after Neil began to turn back. "It's easy!"
Grace smiled at him gratefully, picked her ball up and went forward. She felt extremely self-conscious as she tried to move smoothly in the run-up, certain she looked like an idiot. Still, her orange ball didn't wobble that much more than Jake's and she managed to knock down five of the pins.
"Good work," Neil congratulated her.
"You sure you haven't done this before?" Jake asked suspiciously.
"Never in my life," she replied honestly, picking her ball up as it returned to the top of their lane.
She promptly proved her statement on the next frame. Grace felt heartened by her earlier relative success (success being defined as remaining upright - the floor and shoes were incredibly slippery) and decided to try and bowl faster. Releasing the ball, she frowned in momentary puzzlement when she didn't see it travel down the lane. Turning, her face flushed as she saw the ball slowly rolling backwards towards the Manson boys.
Neil burst into uproarious laughter at the confused look on her face. Jake, reprieved of an obligation to be polite and not laugh, quickly succumbed to his own laughter, falling into his father.
"How on earth did that happen?" Grace asked in honest embarrassment and confusion, quickly scooping up the ball.
"Your face," Neil choked unhelpfully, face reddening. She'd never seen him laugh like that before, so openly and spontaneously, and his amusement was infectious despite her embarrassment.
"Thanks for the support," she said in mock-offence, smiling and giggling self-consciously. Wiping tears from his eyes, Neil waved his hand.
"Go on, try again," he said encouragingly.
Bowling had been a great idea, Neil decided, twenty minutes later. There was an activity to keep from having to concentrate on making conversation, but there was enough time for everyone to talk between turns. Neil had deliberately concentrated on bowling in as silly a manner as possible; to keep the atmosphere light and take the attention off Grace's earlier...misadventure (how had she ended up having the ball move backwards?).
It seemed to be working. The two people he loved most in the world had lost a fair bit of their initial shyness, but they were still a little awkward with each other. Fortunately for his peace of mind, they seemed to be getting along well, and he hadn't gotten any please help me! signals from either of them.
"So, let's look at the scoreboard, and oh, look who's won!" Neil announced. His competitive side hadn't been fully suppressed, and he couldn't help but rub it into his son's face a little. "Oh, look, it's Dad on 108 points! Well ahead of Jake on 95 points, and Grace, 84 points isn't a bad show at all for your first time!"
"Let's play again," Jake grimaced at the scoreboard. "Grace and I will show you who's boss! Won't we?"
"Absolutely," Grace's own competitiveness emerged as she narrowed her eyes at Neil. "I think I'm getting the hang of it now."
Neil chuckled and headed up to the counter.
Grace looked over to see Jake's serious blue eyes regarding her. Every time she looked at him, it gave her a bit of a jolt because however much he acted, sounded or looked like Neil, she knew that his blue eyes came from Neil's ex-wife. As the silence stretched on, she felt she ought to say something to reassure him.
"This is a little weird, hey?" she said with a crooked smile.
"Yeah," Jake nodded. He wasn't really sure what to say, so he settled for rolling his bowling ball in the return chute. "So I guess you're going to be my new mum."
He was surprised Dad hadn't mentioned it at all. When Mum had introduced Liam, she'd excitedly told him beforehand that she hoped Liam would be his new dad. During their first meeting Liam had made a similar comment, and Jake thought that was probably the main reason he didn't like Liam as he might otherwise have done. Liam was pretty cool after all: he had a big house, he was cool, he drove a nice car, but Liam also tried too hard to be his dad. Grace hadn't done that yet though.
He watched Grace carefully, but she just looked surprised before frowning.
"Why would you think that?" she asked gently.
"Because you're Dad's new girlfriend," Jake replied, barely holding back from saying that he wasn't stupid. Honestly. Adults.
"You already have a mum, Jake," Grace said, shaking her head. "I know that nobody can ever replace her, and neither your Dad nor I would want to change that even if we could. I would like to be your friend though."
Jake studied her closely, but she met his gaze calmly. She seemed honest, and Jake had to admit that he liked the way she spoke to him – she didn't talk down to him like a lot of adults did, and she didn't treat him like a little kid like Liam did sometimes. She spoke to him like Dad spoke to him (when he wasn't in trouble, that is).
"I'd like that," he said finally, and smiled shyly at her. Grace smiled back.
"But," Jake figured this was a good time to test her. "On one condition."
"Oh yeah?" Grace raised an eyebrow.
"This is very important," he said seriously, frowning deeply. "What football team do you support?"
The faintest hints of a smile appeared around Grace's mouth. "I've never really got into football, I'm afraid," she said apologetically.
"Well, you'll just have to support mine and Dad's team then," Jake decided with a nod. A thought struck him. "You do know who Frank Lampard is though, right?"
"His was the goal disallowed against Germany, wasn't it?" she asked cautiously. "I remember seeing that."
"That's right!" in his relief, Jake had pulled off his cap and shown her the signature before he realised that he'd exposed his hair. "Dad got me his signature, see?"
"Cool," Grace nodded, admiring the signature before handing the cap back.
Jake immediately jammed it on his head, but it seemed he didn't need to have worried. Grace hadn't stared at his hair, she hadn't looked horrified, she'd just ignored it. As Dad came back, Jake decided he quite liked her.
"Reverse age order this time!" she announced with a wink at Jake. "I'll need the help!"
By the end of their second game it became very apparent that Jake was beginning to tire: he didn't take as long a run-up, and he dropped the ball more than threw it. Neil had warned her, but it was still slightly shocking to be confronted with a ten year old boy who was tired out by two-and-a-half hours of bowling.
"All right," Neil said as Jake bowled his last ball. "Shall we make a move?"
Jake simply nodded. As they cleared up their area, he clung to his father's hand.
"It was really nice to meet you, Jake," Grace said gently as they got outside. "Thank you both for a great afternoon."
"Even if you lost," Neil teased light-heartedly. Jake smiled half-heartedly at his dad's joke as Grace rolled her eyes.
It had been a fun afternoon. It was nice to have some 'family' time with Dad – while he'd spent more time one on one with him, Dad had been a lot more relaxed with Grace there. And she'd been nice, and listened to him, and laughed at his jokes, all without seeming like she was trying too hard to be his friend.
"It was a little weird at first," Jake admitted to her with a shy smile. "But, you know, good weird."
Grace's face lit up, and she and Dad exchanged a look. "I'm really glad, Jake," she said warmly, offering her hand to shake.
Jake grinned and shook her hand firmly. "I'll see you soon?"
"I'd like that," Grace replied to the half-question with a smile. She looked up to Dad. "I'll see you on Monday, Neil."
"Yeah, drive safe," Dad leant in and kissed her on the cheek in farewell before they moved away.