Page 53 of You Complicate Me

“I didn’t sleep either,” Ruthie announced. “I heard Wild Kingdom noises all night.”

Grace, who’d just taken a big drink, promptly spewed a mouthful of orange juice in Gage’s direction.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he grumbled, grabbing a stack of napkins to mop up the mess.

“Sorry,” she choked out.

Not one to ever pick up on a social cue, Brad asked, “What do you mean by Wild Kingdom noises?”

Grace did a mental face-palm, but outwardly schooled her features into a mask of indifference, so as not to draw any more attention to herself, or to Nick, who looked altogether too pleased with himself.

“I mean Wild Kingdom noises,” Ruthie repeated. “You know, like wild animals humping. Like a television special about horny monkeys.”

Nick’s smirk grew, and Grace leveled a scowl on him to let him know she was rethinking her earlier decision not to stab him with her fork.

“At least someone got lucky last night, because God knows I didn’t,” Michael groused quietly, which drew a sharp gasp from Sadie. Grace glanced over at Nick, who didn’t seem to have heard Michael’s comment. But Gage sure had, she noticed with no small amount of alarm.

An angry vein popped up in his forehead as Gage leaned forward in his seat, and in a low voice that Grace had never before heard him use, said, “Start showing her some god damned respect, asshole, or I’ll drag you outside by the hair and beat the ever-lovin’ fuck out of you.”

Grace’s breath caught. “Gage,” she whispered.

Michael blinked at Gage like he’d never seen him before, but regained his composure quickly. Kind of.

His chair shrieked as Michael shoved away from the table. “I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, man, but I’m over it.” With that, he stood up and tossed a few bills on the table to cover the cost of the breakfast he’d barely touched. “I’m going back to the hotel.”

When Sadie started to stand up, he waved her off. “Stay. I need some time alone anyway.”

Then he was gone.

A full minute of tense silence passed. Nick reached over and give Sadie’s hand a squeeze. “You okay?” he asked her.

She nodded, but still looked pale and shaky when she shifted her gaze to Gage. “That wasn’t necessary,” she said in a voice so quiet Grace had to strain to hear her. “The pancakes…saying that to him. You probably shouldn’t have done it. But…thank you.”

In the silence that followed, as Sadie and Gage locked eyes and seemed to get stuck that way, Brad cleared his throat and said, “Well, this has all been very awkward.” Then he punctuated his statement with a nervous hyena giggle that made Grace cringe.

Ruthie sniffed. “No more awkward than you sitting here trying to win back a woman who was up all night making Wild Kingdom noises with an Irishman who probably goes through her purse while she’s sleeping.”

“Sometimes I don’t even wait until she’s asleep,” Nick fired back without missing a beat. “Fill ‘em up with sperm, then rob ‘em blind while they search for their panties,” he added in a dead-on Irish accent that would’ve done Colin Farrell proud. “It’s the Irish way.”

Grace practically had a snark-induced orgasm at that point. A snarkgasm. Had there ever been a more eloquently executed example of snark? It was perfect.

Grace had been falling in love with Nick for a while. But it was in that moment she realized she wasn’t falling anymore. She’d already fallen. Anyone who could snark like Nick just had was a keeper.

Gage and Sadie stifled chuckles, while Ruthie harrumphed into her coffee cup, and Brad looked like he might have a stroke at any moment. Tossing his napkin to the table much like Michael had, Brad stood up and left, after announcing he needed some air.

“I hear the air is nice in Canada,” Gage called after him. “You should go there to get some.”

Grace couldn’t agree more.

Ruthie, completely unfazed by Brad’s departure, threw her hands up and said, “Where’s the damn apple butter?”

Sadie handed Ruthie the apple butter while Grace silently thanked God that her parents had decided to skip breakfast. Having her dad hear about her sexcapades the previous night (and this morning) rated very low on her list of must-do’s, somewhere between getting food poisoning again, and jabbing a fork in her eye.

“Is it too early to go somewhere and get drunk?” Nick asked, not really sounding like he was kidding.

“They really should serve vodka at family restaurants,” Grace said. “When does anyone need a drink more than when they’re with family?”

Gage nodded and added, “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

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