It was also weirdly quiet.
“You feel it too?” Nate drew circles on my ankle with the tips of his fingers.
“The girls?” I said softly.
He nodded. “It’s quiet without them.”
“Yeah. You get used to having them around.” I chuckled. “Lily said something so funny this morning.”
Nate smiled. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, I just can’t remember what it was.” I rested my head on the back of the sofa hearing Nate laugh. “It’s been a weird day. I can barely remember any of it.”
“Except for the part where you had lunch with an ex?”
I shot a look at him. He was drinking his beer and still tracing my skin casually but the lines of his shoulders were tense. “Ben wasn’t an ex.”
“Close to.”
My brows drew together. “You honestly had a problem with me seeing him today?”
He turned his head and our gazes locked. “Yes. I had a problem with some guy getting to have a quiet lunch and a nice conversation with my wife because until right now I couldn’t remember the last time I got to have a quiet lunch and nice conversation with my wife.”
“Nate.”
“I know I’m being an arse.” He rubbed a hand over his face and groaned.
I smiled. “You’re not an ass. On retrospect, considering how little time we’ve had for each other lately, I would have been mad if you had lunch with some other woman who had some affiliation with your romantic history.”
Nate squeezed my ankle. “Doesn’t matter now. We’re here.”
“Yes we are.”
We lapsed into comfortable silence, the only sound the crackling of the flames in the grate of the fire.
And then I couldn’t help myself.
“Would you rather take part in The Hunger Games or the Tri Wizard Tournament?”
Nate contemplated the question. “Depends. Am I competing in the 74th annual Hunger Games or the 75th?”
“Why?”
“Well the 75th was the one where all the previous winners were pitted against each other.”
“You’ve seen those movies too many times.”
“You’ve seen Harry Potter too many times.”
Well I couldn’t argue with that. “True.” I frowned. “Does it matter if you’re in the 75th annual hunger games?”
“I take it I am then?”
“Yes, for the sake of expedience you are in the 75th annual Hunger Games. So The Hunger Games or the Tri Wizard Tournament?”
“It’s kind of an easy decision. I’ll probably die in The Hunger Games. I’ll live in the Tri Wizard thing.”
“Uh no!” I shook my head. “You will inevitably face Voldemort at the end of the Tri Wizard Tournament.”
“Still not as difficult as The Hunger Games, Babe.”
“Hello, it’s Voldemort. He’s the second most powerful wizard in the world.”
“Third if you count Harry Potter.”
“But not at the Tri Wizard Tournament point in the books and movies.”
“That Voldemort guy has no nose. How scary can a man without a nose be?”
“He has nostrils.”
“But no nose.”
“I feel like you’re underestimating him.”
“I feel like you’re underestimating the games. There are people with weapons and mutated dogs and acidic fog in the games. It’s Battle Royale on steroids.”
I huffed. “Please, Battle Royale was way bloodier than the Hunger Games.”
“Because of a rating issue. In reality the games are extremely violent and futuristically sadistic.”
“I feel like you care about these movies way too much. Is it the Jennifer Lawrence thing?”
Nate laughed. “No. You asked me a ‘would you rather’ and I gave my answer.”
“Well…” I sighed heavily. “I hope you’re happy because you’ve separated us. You’re in the Tri Wizard Tournament facing he who shall not be named and I’m in The Hunger Games trying to avoid killing freaking Katniss because she’s awesome.”
We stared each other a moment as we processed our conversation.
“We never really grew up did we?” Nate mused.
“No, we really didn’t.”
“Our kids are going to out mature us.”
“Probably. Definitely January. She’s already more mature than you.”
Nate tickled my feet in payback and I laughed as I tried to pull away. He grabbed onto me and tugged on my leg so I slid down the couch.
“Hey!” I giggled, holding my beer out so it wouldn’t spoil.
Nate’s answer was to take the beer off me and put it on our coffee table next to his. He then braced himself over me, nudging my legs apart and I wrapped them around his hips as he stared down into my eyes. His dimple flashed as he smiled at me.
“You’re beautiful, you know that.”
I grinned. “You’re drunk.”
“I’ve had half a beer.” He shook his head. “I just… sometimes I forget how beautiful you are and then I look over at you and you’re smiling at the kids and your beauty punches me in the chest. How did I get so lucky, Liv?”
I slid my arms under his shirt and around his back, stroking his warm, smooth skin. “I asked you to teach me to be good at sex and you very kindly obliged. The rest is history.”
“Oh. Right.” he grinned, still smiling as he pressed a kiss to my lips. Very suddenly he frowned, however, and pulled back.
“What?”
“We are never telling our kids the story of house we fell in love.”
Horrified at the realization, I agreed. “Never.”
“We need a story to tell the kids in case they ask.”
“Well…” My grip on him tightened. “You kind of started getting me all hot and bothered here. Can you finish doing that and then we’ll think of something?”
His answer was start kissing me hungrily.
“Mmm.” I pushed at his chest and he pulled back, frowning down at me. “You know where we should do it?”
“I thought we were doing it right here?”
“No, let’s do it in the shower. Oh we haven’t had shower sex in so long.”
He eyed me suspiciously. “This wouldn’t be a way to kill two birds with one stone would it?”