Page 50 of Love and Gravity
“An appendix, Anton! Do you know how shitty it feels to be the appendix of the group?”
It had been exactly what she’d felt like, upon leaving home for college to discover that her family kept moving along without her, perhaps even better without her under the same roof.
“No?” Anton cautioned with a puzzled look on his face.
“I’ll tell you what it feels like. It sucks. That the group you love so much can just keep right on truckin’ without you, so long as there’s someone to slap their hands and tell them no. I hate being the appendix, because you can take that thing out and the human body just keeps be-bopping along. No one needs it.”
“You are not an appendix.”
“Am too,” Grace muttered, giving the menu a dark look. “Mindy is managing the labs just fine, and I’m here word-vomiting all over you on what should be our very first and very magical brunch date. This is just not the way I thought this would go.”
“Life rarely goes that way.” He leaned over and caught her hand in his. “But you’re not some unnecessary organ prone to inflammation and failure. I knew that the first time I saw you.”
“The first time you saw me you called me a food delivery girl,” she reminded him, though she placed her other hand on his.
He grimaced. “I did, but in my defense I was hungover and self-destructive. How about I knew it the first time you made me laugh out loud via email in a board meeting I was supposed to be paying attention in? Or maybe I knew it the first time I heard your voice. Besides, the first time I saw you, I saw a beautiful, confident woman who managed to keep everyone sane, and one that didn’t take shit from anyone. And the next day I saw more of that, and I knew I wanted to be close to it—toyou. All of the emails, the pining, the random phone calls, me asking you out, I prayed didn’t look stalkerish—all of it made sense to me, because you are the heart, not the appendix of that place.”
Grace’s chest went tight. Her heart sped up and felt like it might stop at the same time. This was the same as the look he’d given her before. The one that was so intense and focused, the one full of need and longing.
The one made of magic.
This was magic.
“They need someone like you, because otherwise there’s no warmth, no caring. It isn’t a family without you.”
“But you said they were adults and could take care of themselves,” Grace whispered.
“That’s because I want my girlfriend here with me,” Anton replied, raising her hand to his lips. He pressed a kiss to her knuckles and smiled at her. “That comment was motivated by selfish need.”
“Oh,” Grace breathed. Maybe the labs could wait a few hours, especially if there were more kisses like the one he had just given her. She dropped her eyes to her hand and blushed. How did the single brush of his lips to her knuckles make her feel like a swoony maiden?
She swallowed hard and leaned toward him. “Are you still game for keeping me out of the labs for the day?”
Anton’s eyes lit up and he kissed her hand again. “Are you game for playing hooky?” he asked, and she nodded eagerly.
You didn’t get told a man pined for you by way of emails and not get inspired to play hooky. Emails were basically the modern day equivalent of Regency letter writing. They were practically an old school romance novel come to life. It didn’t get much better than that.
“Let’s do it. It’s just one day,” she said, giving in to her urge to ignore everything but the man in front of her.
The man who declared she was a heart and not an appendix. The one that had given her pure magic, not once, but twice, in just as many days.
“I mean, how much trouble can they really get into?” she mused.
* * *
Six hours later…
“They are insane! Little beasts. All of them!” Mindy waved her tablet at the lab behind her.
“But what-”
“What the hell is Lab War?” Mindy barked, shaking what looked to be glitter out of her hair.
Grace’s mouth dropped. “Did you just say Lab War?” she growled. When she had wondered how bad things could go, she hadn’t expected to receive her answer in spades. Lab War, indeed!
Oh, she was going to have vengeance over this.
“Yes,” Mindy wailed. “One of them made a glitter bomb-I think that’s what it was supposed to be? But the glitter keeps multiplying.” She shook her blazer and stomped her foot as a fresh wave of glitter cascaded to the floor. “It’s like tribbles around here. I don’t understand it. I had a cleaning crew in here for two hours.”