She wanted to argue about him holding his liquor better than her, but kept her mouth shut. After all, he was right, and there was that whole effort thing to consider. Using up what little energy she had at the moment seemed like a bad idea. “Do you think this will work?” she asked, gesturing with her chin to the IV.
He shrugged as he hung the IV bag on the pole. “Restorative IVs aren’t magical cure-alls. The only real hangover cure is time. But this’ll probably take the edge off and make it so you can catch your flight home this afternoon without puking on the plane.”
Thoughts of puking on the plane just brought up memories of the last time she’d puked on a plane, which brought up memories of Nick, which just made her sad and contemplating Smirnoff Smoothies again. She needed a subject change, and fast. “Did you check on Michael last night?”
Gage sat down next to her on the couch. “He’s fine. He was with your mom and she was trying to set him up with some blonde when I saw them.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “I suppose she’s thinking he can just screw someone else until he doesn’t miss Sadie anymore?”
Gage raised a brow at her. “I guess he could just drink Smirnoff Smoothies until he needs a restorative IV instead.”
She sniffed. “Touché.”
“Everyone copes with a breakup and loss differently. Don’t be judge-y.”
Grace leaned her head back against the sofa. “And how will you deal with your loss in this whole thing?”
“I didn’t lose anything,” he said, his voice flatter than day-old Diet Coke. “I felt…something for a girl who apparently didn’t feel anything back, because she left without a word.” He shrugged. “No loss. I move on.”
“And hook up with blondes?” she asked gently.
He glanced over at her and smirked. “If they’re lucky.”
Grace reached over and patted his knee, careful not to disturb her IV. “They would be lucky. Sadie would’ve been lucky to have you. And just for the record, she did feel something back. She just didn’t know what to do with that feeling. Or any feelings, apparently.”
“Fuckin’ kids these days,” he muttered in his best old-man get-off-my-lawn voice. “Don’t know nothin’.”
“Yeah, you laugh so you won’t have to feel.”
“Yeah, well, you drink so you won’t have to feel.”
Another sniff. “Touché.”
“You know,” he began conversationally, “you’re a dumbass if you don’t go after him.”
She narrowed her eyes on him, incredulous. “I’m a dumbass for not going after someone who believed I was capable of horrible things? Twice?”
He rolled his eyes at her. “He didn’t really think that. He got angry in the heat of the moment. Twice. No big deal. He got over it, and he apologized. He’s passionate. Passionate people yell. It’s when they don’t yell anymore that you have a problem.”
Grace immediately thought of Brad. They’d never yelled at each other. They hadn’t had one single fight, until the day he admitted to cheating on her. They got along perfectly, right up until they didn’t. Was that because they were well-suited, or because they were apathetic?
The buzzing of her phone disrupted her thoughts, and her hopes rose, thinking maybe it was Nick on the other line. She lunged to answer the call before she remembered she’d told Nick goodbye, and the chances of him calling her this morning were slim to nil.
Her hopes were completely crushed when she read doucheBrad calling on the screen. Ugh. Could her day get any worse?
Grace answered the call reluctantly and grumbled the world’s most half-hearted greeting.
“Oh, Grace, thank God I caught you. And thank you so much for answering,” Brad babbled, sounding extremely happy for a man with a broken penis.
“How are you doing, Brad?” she asked, even though she found it hard to care. Asking seemed like the polite thing to do, though.
“I’m fantastic. The surgery was a success. The doctors are confident that I’ll, um, gain back full function.”
Even though she was in an exceedingly bad mood and hadn’t ever really benefited much from Brad’s full function while they were married, Grace bit back an uncharitable reply. She was finding she just didn’t want to hang onto her hatred of Brad anymore. “That’s good, Brad,” she said. “I’m happy for you.”
“That’s what I wanted to tell you, actually.”
“That you’re happy my penis isn’t broken anymore?” she asked, thoroughly confused.
He chuckled. “No. That I’m happy for you. I’m glad you found someone who can make you happy.”
He meant Nick. And wasn’t that just a stab in the old heart? Then it occurred to her that Brad and Nick had been nothing but horrible to each other all week. “I thought you hated Nick.”
“Oh, I did, trust me. And he’s still not who I would’ve pictured you ending up with. But, you know how you always hear about people who’ve had near-death experiences coming back from the brink with such clarity? Well, that’s what happened to me, Grace.”
You broke your penis during rough bathroom sex with a random woman you picked up in a casino, dumbass. You were never near death. But saying that was beyond pointless, so Grace kept her mouth shut yet again.
“When I woke up after surgery,” he went on, “everything was so clear, clearer than it had ever been. You, me, our marriage…everything suddenly made sense to me. I thought about what I overheard Nick saying about you the night before the wedding. Well, I didn’t really overhear as much I was spying on him and shamelessly eavesdropping, if I’m being honest. But regardless, it was his words that made me realize that no matter how much I’d always loved you—and how much I still do love you—you’re just not the one for me. More importantly, I’m not the one for you.”
Wait…what? “What exactly did you hear Nick saying about me, Brad?”
“Oh, well, nothing that he probably hasn’t said to you a hundred times, but he said quite a lot, really. What really stuck with me, though, was when he said you were his balance. The sunlight to his darkness. He’s quite poetic, isn’t he?”
Tears filled Grace’s eyes and she suddenly felt like a fist had closed around her windpipe. “He said that?” she choked out.
“Indeed,” Brad answered. “Which is what made me realize that the better man had won in this instance. I just had to tell you that I won’t be troubling you to reconcile anymore. I’ll leave you to your happily-ever-after, and I’ll be off trying to find my own.”
It was the most civilized, adult conversation she’d had with Brad since the divorce, and Grace did the whole thing in a daze. Brad’s words—or rather, Nick’s words—rattled around in her brain the whole time.
When she ended the call, she turned to Gage, who appeared to be playing some kind of zombie-killing game on his phone. “He really did love me,” she said miserably.
“I would hope so,” Gage answered, not looking up from his screen. “He married you and all. He’s an ass, but he’s not stupid or unfeeling.”
“I was talking about Nick. He really did love me.”
Gage snorted. “Duh. Anyone could see that.” He hit pause on his game. “Wait…did you break things off with him because you thought he didn’t love you?”
Her reasons for breaking things off with Nick suddenly seemed kind of fuzzy. “I broke things off with him because it’s all so…complicated. He lives on the other side of the country, he was about to be my brother-in-law, we haven’t really known each other that long…and, yeah, I guess I didn’t think he really could love me after such a short time of knowing me. I figured he’d realize he’d made a big mistake if he followed me out to LA, then he’d leave and I’d be crushed.”
“And how do you feel about him?” Gage asked, sounding exasperated.
“I love him,” she answered without hesitation.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his splayed knees and giving her a hard side-eye. “So, let me get this straight. The dude loves you. You lov
e him. And you dumped him on the off chance that he might one day decide shit is moving too fast and dump you?”
Well, it sounded really teenager-y when he put it like that. “Well, yes.”
Gage stood up and let out a disgusted sigh. “You dumbass. If I’d known that, I never would’ve made you Smirnoff Smoothies.”
Grace frowned up at him. “Why’d you think I dumped him?”
He threw his hands up in frustration. “I thought he loved you more than you loved him, and you wanted to let him down gently but felt really bad about it. Jesus, if I’d known you were just too chicken-shit to take a chance on him, I would’ve dumped you off with your mom.”
“That’s so mean,” she whispered.
Gage jabbed his index finger in her direction. “If you don’t run him down and beg his forgiveness, you don’t deserve him. And if you can’t make it work with a guy who loves you as much as Nick clearly loves you, you should just go the fuck home and buy a dozen cats and take up knitting, because you’re gonna die a bitter, lonely old woman.”
His words were the equivalent of a slap to the face. A reality bitch-slap. It occurred to her then that she’d never really given Nick a fair chance. In the back of her mind, she’d always assumed he’d leave her, just like Brad did. She’d lawyered him. She’d collected the little mistakes he’d made and kept them as evidence in her case against him. Had used them as an excuse to end things with him before he could hurt her.
“Oh my God,” she muttered. “I’m a dumbass!”
Gage nodded. “This is what I’m saying.”
As fast as her fingers would go, she punched Nick’s number into her phone. The call went right to voice mail. She leapt off the couch like it was on fire. “I have to find him! I need to talk to him now.”
“That could be a problem.”
She fought back a growl of pure frustration. “There’s no problem. I know what I need to do. I have to make this work.”
The look he shot her bordered on pity. “It’s a problem because Nick left an hour ago.”
Fuuuucccckkkkk.
Chapter Thirty-eight
All those romantic comedies that showed the beautiful, put-together heroine racing to the airport—wind-whipped, perfect hair flying behind her—to declare her undying love to the hero, and the two of them embracing dramatically in front of the gate before his plane departed were full of shit. Absolute shit.
The truth of a last-minute airport run was much less screen-worthy. First of all, finding out where Nick was had practically taken an act of God. As it turned out, the airlines and the Department of Homeland Security weren’t terribly inclined to give out the flight info of their air marshals. Grace assumed she was now on more than a few terrorist watch- lists thanks to all the inquiries she’d made.
In the end, it had only been with the help of the smarmy air marshal she’d met at the airport when she’d been detained that she’d been able to get Nick’s travel itinerary. She wasn’t sure if she should be thankful, or creeped-out that he remembered who she was (“the blonde with the rack”) after their one brief meeting. She supposed she should just be grateful he thought Nick needed to get laid enough to break all his employer’s rules and risk losing his job.
And as she raced from one end of the airport to the other, uncombed hair sticking to her sweaty forehead, missing one shoe (God only knew where she’d lost that), wearing Gage’s T-shirt (she’d puked Smirnoff Smoothie all over hers, apparently) and a pair of flannel pajama pants that said “sassy” across her ass, Grace imagined she was about as far removed from a romantic comedy heroine as a body could get. Not to mention the ginormous hit her bank account had taken when she had to book the last- minute, first-class ticket that would allow her a seat on Nick’s flight.
But none of that mattered, because she was here. It looked like everyone else had boarded, but she’d made it. She’d finally get a chance to tell Nick how she felt and beg for his forgiveness.
Gasping for breath, she bent over at the waist and handed her ticket to the pretty brunette gate attendant, who gave her a serious-looking side-eye. “Ma’am, are you alright?”
“Fine…” gasp “…stupid running…” gasp “…out of shape…” gasp “…Smirnoff Smoothies…” gasp “air marshal…” gasp “this plane…” “…love him” gasp “need to tell him…” gasp “…now.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh my God, did you do the romantic- comedy-last-minute-airport-run for Marshal McHottie?” She jumped up and down and clapped her hands together like a kid. “That’s so awesome!” Then she stopped, “Wait, are you the reason he’s so grumpy this morning?”
Grace grimaced. “Ugh. Probably.”
She raised a brow at her. “Girl, you’ve got your work cut out for you. But let’s get you on that plane, okay? And if it all works out, I’m going to expect an invite to your wedding. And if it doesn’t work out, you’re going to give me his phone number, because I’ve been trying to get it for three years, and that is just too much man to go to waste, am I right?”
Since Grace pretty much would’ve promised the other woman a kidney at that point to get on the plane, she readily agreed and quickly found herself tucked into her ridiculously overpriced first-class seat, waiting for takeoff, after which she’d be allowed to move back into business class, where Nick was seated.
Leaning her head back against her seat and squeezing her eyes shut, Grace did what she did every time she got on a plane.
She prayed.
Only this time, the prayer she sent heavenward didn’t have anything to do with her request not to plummet from the sky in a fireball of death.
Please, God, don’t let me screw this up. That ticket-taker was super-cute, and I really don’t want to have to give her Nick’s phone number if this whole thing doesn’t go my way.
Nick had already been tired and pissed-off at the world when his boss called and asked him to pick up a flight to Boston, filling in for a fellow marshal who’d gotten the flu. But now, as he sat in his aisle seat next to a burly, hairy dude who smelled like broiled beef and a little old lady who wouldn’t stop showing him pictures of her seven or eight hundred grandkids, Nick started seriously questioning the life choices that had gotten him to this place in his life.
This was a whole new level of pissed off for him. He was tired of this plane and everyone on it, and the flight couldn’t be over fast enough for his peace of mind.
It didn’t help that his mind and his heart were firmly back in Indianapolis—maybe on their way back to LA by now—with Grace.
Damn it, he hadn’t wanted to leave without saying anything to her, but Gage said she was passed out—literally. She’d had a rough night and needed her sleep, he’d said. Since it was his fault she’d had that rough night, Nick couldn’t bring himself to selfishly wake her up and beg for her forgiveness again. That wouldn’t make her feel any better. As much as he hated it, he’d resigned himself to the fact that she might just need some time away from him to get her feelings sorted out.
And if when everything was sorted, she still didn’t want anything to do with him…well, he’d blow up that bridge when he came to it. Pathetic groveling would ensue, of that he was pretty damn sure.
“And this one is of my granddaughter, Amelia,” the old lady to his right said as she shoved her phone under his nose once more. “The picture doesn’t really do her justice. She’s pretty enough to be a model, you know. Kind of like this young lady right here…only my Amelia would never go out in public in her pajamas.”
Nick lifted his eyes from the phone to see who the old lady was referring to, and almost swallowed his tongue.
Grace stood in the aisle in front of him. Her limp hair was plastered to her shiny forehead. She was wearing mismatched socks and only one house slipper, along with a man’s T-shirt and ill-fitting flannel pants with little purple pineapples printed all over them. There was a pillow crease down the entire left side of her face.
He’d never seen anything more beautiful�
��or welcome—in his life.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she held up her hands to silence him. “Look,” she said, “I need to get this out, so please don’t say anything until I’m done, OK?”
That was fine, because he had no idea what he’d been about to say to her, anyway. Probably something stupid that involved begging. So he just gave her what he hoped was an encouraging nod.
She took a deep breath before blurting, “I was a complete dumbass. I am a complete dumbass. I was so worried about how things could go wrong between us that I got distracted from how perfect things actually are between us. You were right. The two measly little fights we had this week weren’t anything that any other couple wouldn’t have gone through. But the truth is that I was so scared—of you, of us, of falling in love—that I pushed you away. I used those stupid fights to push you away because somewhere in the back of my mind, I just assumed you were going to eventually leave me, and I thought that if I pushed you away first, it’d hurt less in the long run.”
Tears filled her eyes, and it was all he could do not to pull her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be okay. But she must have sensed his intentions, because she raised her hands again to ward him off and squeezed her eyes shut.
“But I was wrong. I was wrong to push you away,” she said, speaking much faster than before. “I couldn’t stand to let you go home without telling you how I really feel. I can’t let you walk away without fighting for you. You deserve someone who will fight for you, and I’ve done such a terrible job of that so far. After how I treated you yesterday, if you decide you don’t want me anymore, I’ll totally understand. But I need to tell you the truth—what I wanted to tell you the night before the wedding, but was too scared to do it. I got all caught up in thinking I needed to hear you say it first, but that’s all just such bullshit. I realize that now. I didn’t realize it until Gage told me you’d gone, but I realize it now.”
You Complicate Me Page 19
