“I’m fine,” he promised. “I’m relieved, actually. Steph’s problems were exhausting.”
Although I wanted him to be happy and that was what mattered most, I couldn’t help but feel for Steph and sympathize with her. Cole’s words depressed me and I took them far more personally than he would ever have wanted me to. But the truth was, I was like Steph. I wasn’t insanely jealous, but my own insecurities came from a lack of trust in the opposite sex. It was crazy, I knew it was. I was surrounded by good men who didn’t stray from their wives, but what Marco had done to me and the consequences of that night had cut deep. It had left ugly scar tissue I’d been able to ignore until he was suddenly back in my life. Part of the reason I never bothered trying to find anything serious was because of that feeling Marco had left behind, but also because I suspected that most men would react to me and my issues like Cole had to Steph: with ambivalence and impatience. So what was the point in trying?
“Something’s going on,” Jo mused, staring at Liv and Nate across the table. She waved her fork at them. “What’s wrong with you?”
Cam snorted beside her. “Maybe that’s their business, sweetheart.”
“Well, it would be their business if they’d managed to pretend they weren’t fighting, but things are feeling a little icy,” Ellie added.
Liv rolled her eyes. “Nate’s being a tool.”
Nate didn’t lift his gaze from his plate as he ate. “Nate’s not doing anything,” he murmured back.
Nate was definitely doing something. He was barely talking to his wife, and anytime he was forced to, he wouldn’t look at her.
“Keep the domestics at home, people,” Cole pleaded.
“It’s not a domestic.” Liv made a face. “It’s an example of man’s inescapable immaturity.”
“Oh, do tell,” Ellie leaned in eagerly.
“I was clearing things out of the house and I specifically asked him to make a pile of things he didn’t want to give to charity and a pile of stuff he did want to give to charity. It is not my fault that he got the piles mixed up.”
“I did not.” He glared at her, finally looking away from his plate. “Why the hell would I give away every single one of my favorite T-shirts? Did you not think when you were looking through them that it was a bit strange they were all in there?”
She sniffed before responding. “I didn’t look through them. I just assumed you gave me the right pile and I put them in the charity bag and gave them to the lady who comes to collect the stuff.”
“Some of that shit was irreplaceable.”
Lily gave this cute little girlie gasp and Nate closed his eyes, wincing.
Liv scowled at him.
With a sigh, he turned in his seat to look over at Lily, who was sitting with Ellie at the kids’ table. “That’s a bad word, honey. Don’t use it. Daddy shouldn’t have and he’s sorry.”
Lily gave him this cute, serious nod of agreement. My God, was it possible to die from her adorableness?
Nate turned back to Liv. “Happy? Can we not discuss this in front of the kids?”
“Of course.” She shrugged nonchalantly, returning her gaze to her plate. “But I don’t know why you’re so upset. If you’d bothered to look in the bag I put at the side of the bed yesterday afternoon, you’d have seen I called the charity, explained the mistake, and went and collected your irreplaceable crap.” She glanced over at him. “I would like to remind you, though, that the only things in your life that are irreplaceable are sitting in this room with you.”
“Hear, hear,” Mum murmured.
Nate’s expression slackened with confusion. “You got it all back?”
“Of course I got it all back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because now I have leverage against you anytime I screw up. I’ll just remind you of the past forty-eight hours where you acted like a petulant schoolboy because I accidentally gave your Borg T-shirt to charity.”
“It was the T-shirt I was wearing when we met,” he told her quietly.
Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, no, you’re not pulling semi-romantic excuses for your behavior out of your petushy to screw me out of leverage.”
“Leverage?” I asked. “Marriage is about leverage?”
“Yes.” Every single married person at the table answered.
I wrinkled my nose.
Ellie waved her fork at me. “When you screw up, and if you’re married you’re bound to screw up at some point, it’s good to have detailed notes of your partner’s screwups because that way you can remind them, and forgiveness for your screwup comes much more quickly. Peace reigns.”
“In this case,” Liv said, her eyes alight with triumph, “I screwed up a little but Nate screwed up more, so the next time I screw up, he’ll forgive me way faster.”
“It sounds… mature,” I answered sarcastically.
“What it lacks in sophistication it more than makes up for in effectiveness,” Adam attested.
“Married people are weird.” I turned to Cole. “Remind me never to do that.”