Star Gazing (Bonus Scenes Matt & Jules, Jack)

CHAPTER 1 Colored Stars

a/n  I didn't originally post this with the Christmas part of the story, because I am unsure how I feel about it.  However, in thinking about it, I realized that many of the chapters I was hesitant about in the Rock Stars series, became reader favorites (the Ken chapter, the road trip)  So here it is, whether I like it or not. 

CHAPTER 1

The whir of the kitchen appliance drowned out the male shouts over the football game drifting from the den area, as well as the high pitched voices of five children, playing with, and fighting over their new toys.  It was a mystery to Jules how a such a small motor could make this kind of racket.  When the sound stopped, her head throbbed a little less fervidly, but Candi revved it up again, and Jules sent an unconscious glare down the galley style kitchen.  The contraption was her sister-in-law's new Christmas toy, and it was currently grating cheese as fast as the blocked chunks were fed down the plastic spout.

“You seriously don't have one of these?”  Candi asked, unplugging the cord, upon dropping in the last of the cheese.

“No,”  Jules negated, and couldn't help but sarcastically retort, “And now I'm sure I don't want one.”

“Why?”  Candi frowned.  Maybe rearing two boys, along with a girl, had rendered her sister-in-law impervious to noise levels.

“Because I think it just broke the sound barrier!”  Jules never let up chopping at the pecans on the cutting board before her.

“The sound barrier?”  Matt materialized behind her, just in time to tease, “How fast was it traveling?”

Jules' resisted the instinct to turn and brandish the butcher knife, but she did scoff an amused, “Ha ha.”  In their teen days, she would have high fived him for taking advantage of her momentary mental lapse of physics, to burn her with his own joke.  Now she enjoyed the arm encircling her waist, and the brief tug of her backside against him, before he moved on to the fridge, extracting three beers.

The game in the den area had Marc and Dan shouting, and Matt quickly rejoined them to add his own excited vocalization to the touchdown celebration.

“So, are they coming, or not?  What was the final verdict?”  Jules asked of her parents, concerning their New Year's Day plans tomorrow.

Candi was sprinkling the cheese over three pans of enchiladas, and she kept her eyes on what she was doing.  “Your mom and dad?  Not.  They decided to fly to New York with some friends or something.”

Jules nodded without speaking.  Her parents, Rob and Gwen Breaux, had been around for Christmas ever since grand-kids had come onto the scene, beginning with Marc and Candi's offspring.  In some weird way, to Jules, this absolved them of all the Christmas holidays that they had missed during her and Marc's childhood. 

Ever since Jackson and Meagan, Matt and Jules always spent Christmas in Los Angeles.  Christmas Eve was always at Matt's father's house.  They alternated actually sleeping over between there, and the Laurel Canyon house, where Christmas Day was spent.  Matt's mother's tradition seemed to be flying to Dallas for Thanksgiving week, and Christmas shopping with Jules and the kids.  Matt's mother seemed to love walking the mall with her grand-kids, letting them pick out their own gift.  She would then grill Jules, about what Matt wanted for Christmas, and still end up buying him, as well as Jules, socks, teeshirts, slippers, and pajamas.

This year, Jules had passed on the Christmas shopping, letting Mrs. Loren, and her own mother, take the kids to the new shopping mall nearby, while she took a nap.  Gwen had also flown into Dallas for Thanksgiving, and babied Jules through her ordeal, in a way that she never had, even when Jules was a child.  It had been an enormous comfort to have her mother go to the effort.