Page 66 of You Complicate Me

For a split second, Grace thought her mother was going to slink away and keep her mouth shut. After all, the most her mother ever did to defy Ruthie was throw a couple of passive-aggressive gestures her way. But instead, Sarah straightened to her full height, stared down into Ruthie’s narrowed eyes, and said, “I said it’s none of your business what goes on between Grace and Nick. None. Of. Your. Business. Grace didn’t ask for your opinion. Just like I never asked for your opinion all the times you gave it to me over the years.” Her voice rising with every sentence, she added, “No one ever asks for your opinion, old woman, so why don’t you just shut the fuck up?”

Grace’s eyes widened in shock. She’d never in her life heard her mother say “fuck,” even when she burned her thumb on her baking sheet or stubbed her toe on the leg of the coffee table. On the other side of the room at the bar, Gage started a slow clap that all of the wait staff and the bartender quickly joined in on.

Ruthie shifted her gaze to David. “Are you going to allow your wife to speak to your mother like that, Davey?”

“Davey” walked over slowly, looking dazed like he’d just awakened from a coma, and took his place at his wife’s side. That’s when Grace noticed he’d set his Kindle down on the bar. It was the first time she’d seen him without it all week. “Yes, Mother, I am,” he said. Then he shifted his gaze to his wife and said, “I love you.”

Sarah laid both her palms on his face and kissed him square on the mouth. “Of course you do.” Then she moved behind Ruthie’s chair. “Now, I have flights to book and arrangements to make, so let’s get you back to your room so that you can rest, Mother, um, I mean, Ruthie.”

Ruthie wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I suppose it’s alright if you want to call me mother. Or not. Whatever,” she grumbled.

Sarah smiled a cat-who-ate-the-canary smile, winked at her husband, and said, “I’d love to. Mother.”

As they walked away, Gage walked over and pressed a shot glass full of something that looked like tequila into Grace’s hand. “At least someone got their happily-ever-after today, huh?” he asked.

Grace laughed without humor and downed her shot. Yep, definitely tequila, she thought as it burned a path down to her stomach. “Yeah. I guess one out of five will have to do.”

“Nick’s probably just hurt that Sadie asked for your help to escape instead of his,” Gage told her. “You realize his little blow-up probably didn’t really have anything to do with you, right?”

Instead of answering, Grace grabbed his shot glass and downed his tequila. She didn’t want to talk about Nick. Not anymore. She’d been letting her heart do her thinking for the past week. It was totally irrational to even consider a future with somebody she’d just met, especially somebody who thought she was a manipulative liar. Time to start using her great big, Notre Dame-educated brain to do her thinking for her instead of delegating the job to her heart.

And her brain was telling her that his little blow-up today was the best thing that could’ve happened to them. It was time to go back to LA—alone—and get on with her life.

She’d just have to ignore her pathetic heart, which practically wept at the thought of never seeing Nick again.

Gage opened his mouth to say something else, but snapped it shut when a shriek split the air, the sound so shrill Grace winced and had to cover her ears.

“Jesus,” Grace said when the noise died down into quiet whimpers, sobs, and nearly incoherent prayers. “What the hell is that?”

Gage shook his head. “No clue. Maybe someone’s skinning a senator’s daughter for the woman suit he’s making in his basement?”

“I told you never to mention that movie to me again,” Grace said with a shudder.

“It puts the lotion on or it gets the hose—”

Grace slapped her palms back over her ears. “Stop it!”

He chuckled and said something she couldn’t hear—because, covered ears—but then his expression turned serious as he glanced at someone over Grace’s shoulder.

She took her hands off her ears and whirled around to find Lucille standing in front of her, wearing only one high-heel shoe, a mini-skirt that looked to be on backwards, and a half-buttoned, leopard-print silk blouse.

Lucille smoothed a hand over her head—which was sporting the worst case of bedhead Grace had ever seen—and gave Gage a wide, nervous smile. “Hey, there, uh, doc,” she sputtered, obviously trying to look like she hadn’t just stumbled out of a natural disaster. “Can I get you to come help me for a quick sec?”

Gage immediately switched from tipsy wedding guest to doctor in less time than it took Grace to drag her eyes away from the great expanse of cleavage Lucille was flashing. “Are you alright?” he asked, already looking her over, eyes cold, assessing her for injuries.

“Oh, yeah, sure, I’m fine. It’s, uh, not me who needs help.”

“Wait here,” he told Grace as he hurried to follow Lucille, who’d started tottering at a pretty impressive clip on her one ridiculously high heel toward the bathroom on the opposite side of the reception hall.

It’d been a shitty, shitty day. Grace was tired and heartbroken. There was no way she was missing out on whatever was going on in that bathroom. Misery loved company, right?

So into the unisex bathroom they went, Lucille, followed by Gage, with Grace right on his heels. And what they saw there made Grace completely question the whole misery-loves-company thing.

Brad lay on the bathroom floor, completely naked, but for a wad of paper towels he was holding over his groin. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he was sucking in great gulps of air in between uttering what sounded like stuttering, broken prayers.

Gage stumbled to a stop, causing Grace to run into his back. “Jesus, Grace,” he muttered, “I told you to wait out there for me.”

Grace bit down on her bottom lip. “I was curious,” she whispered, horrified.

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