Page 3 of The Grump I Loathe
“You can wait your turn,” he insisted, planting his feet and refusing to budge.
“No, actually, I can’t—because I’ve got a panel in,” I checked my phone, “sevenminutes now.”
He rolled his eyes. “Whatever panelist you’re fangirling over can survive without you for the first few minutes.”
“Fangirling?” I squawked. “I’ll have you know that I’monthe panel.”
“Sure you are,” he said, voice full of derision. “What’s your expertise? Queuing etiquette?” He turned to the cashier, tapping that infuriatingly perfect jawline and dismissing me entirely. “You know what, I’d actually like to change my order to steak.”
“Are you kidding me right now?”Five minutes! I’d spent the entire break waiting in line, and there was no way I could grab food anywhere else. Desperate times called for desperate measures. I leaned all my weight against him. The guy barely budged. It was like throwing myself up against a brick wall. A very firm, muscly brick wall that I needed to not think about.
“Don’t listen to him,” I told the kid. “Focus on me. A person who actually intends to eat my food this century.”
“Sorry sir,” the kid said, checking over his shoulder. “We actually just ran out of the steak.”
“No worries,” Picky Peter said. “Do you think you substitute the steak for?—”
“No!” I cried. “He can’t substitute anything.” Why were they even allowing substitutions? I kept trying to nudge him over, trying not to get distracted by the heat of his body against mine. “Seriously, kid,” I said to the cashier. “Just slap some beans in a tortilla for me—whatever’s easiest.”
My phone buzzed. Crap! Two minutes until the panel! I was so hungry I’d gnaw off my own arm, but there was no time to fix that now. At this rate, I was going to have to speed walk across the convention center to get there on time.
The cashier pushed a plate with some quesadilla monstrosity in Picky Peter’s direction as a white-hot fury burned inside me. Well, there was time to fixonething.
I reached for the sauce counter, grabbed the spiciest hot sauce I could get my hands on—the one with the skull and crossbones on the label and all the warnings with exclamation points—and splattered Picky Peter’s entire quesadilla. The icing on the cake was the epic fart noise the bottle made as the hot sauce exploded on the crisp white shirt he wore beneath his suit jacket.
“Thought you might need some spice in your life,” I said as he tried to stop me. I gave him my best grin. I might be starving, but at least I could savor the tiniest amount of glee knowing that his meal plans had been ruined, too. “You can catch me rocking my panel in Hall A when you’re done,” I gestured to his hot sauce splattered shirt, “dealing with that situation.”
2
CONNOR
“If I close my eyes during the scary parts, can I try theMidnight Hollowdemo?”
“I’m gonna go with no,” I said, holding my daughter’s hand tightly as we made our way through the packed gaming pavilion at GeekCon.
“Aw, but Dad!” Grace complained, blowing her brown bangs out of her eyes and wrinkling up her nose in that adorable way she’d done since she was a baby. “It’s not eventhatscary.”
“It’s rated M,” I said. “When you’re seventeen, we can discuss it.”
“Ughhhh!” Grace groaned, skipping along beside me in her scuffed-up high-tops with purposely mismatched laces (because apparently that’s what all the cool nine-year-olds were doing these days). She flipped one of her tiny, lopsided braids over her shoulder. “But you’re always saying how mature I am. I heard you tell my teacher when you took me out of school last month for that business trip. That means I can handle something rated M.”
Sometimes Grace was too quick for her own good. But if I gave in and laughed the way I wanted to, she would think that meant she wasgoing to get her way. Ninety percent of parenting was being able to keep a straight face. “The answer is still no.”
Grace hummed with momentary disappointment, stuffing more quesadilla in her mouth before spotting another game demo that pulled her focus. She pointed and squealed, mouth full, tugging on my hand. While she watched a playthrough of a game with cartoon animals trapped inside bubbles, I took advantage of her distraction to dab at the stains on my dress shirt.
“Dad, look at this!” Grace said, tapping a touch screen and popping bubbles.
“Very cool,” I said, finally giving up on my shirt. I’d see what my dry cleaner could do, but I was pretty sure the answer would be “burn it with fire.” Some things couldn’t be fixed.
Thankfully, Grace’s lunch order wasn’t on that list. It had taken much longer than I would have liked, but I had finally managed to get her a quesadilla that wasn’t covered in Dragon’s Exhale Chili Hot Sauce.
No thanks to that firecracker in line. And like a firecracker, once she’d prodded me in the shoulder a second time, I’d known she’d be impossible to ignore. From that flaming attitude to those grating interruptions, I hated how much I’d noticed about her. Those curvy hips. The huffy sounds she made when I ignored her. The frustrated set of those perfect rosebud lips.
What the hell did she have to be annoyed about, anyway? I wasn’t the one trying to usurp her lunch order. I resisted the urge to crack my knuckles as the scene replayed in my mind.
“Neat. If you hold it, you get rapid bubble burst mode. Aw, man!” Grace said, staring down where she’d slopped a bit of quesadilla en route to her mouth. “This is my favorite shirt.”
“Here,” I said, taking the napkin I’d been using to dab at myself to blot the stain spreading across her gray LockMill Games branded tee. “It might come out in the wash. But if it doesn’t, we can always get you a new one from the office.”
