Grace was listening to an alarm blare, a handsome Spanish man swear and was laughing hard enough to cry a little. Grace and her best friend Nate were in the kitchen of her family home, while he was trying to impress the entire James family with the latest recipe the bar he worked at had taught him. It wasn't going well to say the least.
To add to the moment of levity in a normally emotionally dense house, Grace's mother, Maddison, was filming the entire debacle on her cell phone, inevitably to end up on youtube and help spoil the aura of sexy, confident lothario that Nate had built up online. Everyone did so love to cock block that man. He was her best friend, and in moments of tragic honesty, Grace could admit to herself that she was in love with him, but he was a slut. He refused to emotionally connect with the women he slept with, and would run from a girl the moment she started to drop hints about wanting to be a girl friend and not just a bedmate. Although he was better than the players from highschool, because he was honest about his intentions straight up, and never went out of his way to break a girl's heart. It just happened anyways because most normal people can't seperate love and sex as easily as he seemed to do.
Grace yanked her thoughts off of that worn out path, knowing that it would just sap her happy away and focused instead on harassing the man in question. "No wonder you're so damn scrawny Nate. You can't cook worth shit. Even I do better and I'm the one that made spagoup!"
Of course, mentioning that little cooking mishap was a mistake. Grace was at best a half hearted cook. She wasn't designed to be domestic, and it showed whenever she had to cook for herself. When her parents had been out of the city for a week last year, Grace was left to fend for herself and spagoup had unfortunately been born. She'd been making canned vegetable soup and wanted to add another can in to make it last for two meals. So she'd opened the cupboard, grabbed the next can, opened it and added it, all without really paying attention. It wasn't until she sat down and started to eat that she wondered just exactly why her vegetable soup had spagetti in it that she realized her mistake. And no, canned spagetti with cheese and sause in it does not taste good mized in with vegetable soup, no matter how 'not that horrible' it sounds. It was so bad even NATE wouldn't eat it, and he was a hoover when it came to free food.
"Hey, once I scrape off the burned bits, this will at least taste good. When you screw up food, not even the dog will eat it!" Nate retorted, making both the red headed James women from at him in confusion.
"Nathaniel sweety, we don't HAVE a dog..." Maddison James reminded kindly, her mouth batttling to hide her grin. It was always hard to stay mad at Nate, despite his outrageous behaviour most of the time, he was just so...appealing.
"That you know of Mrs. James, that you know of..." Nate remarked randomly, making Grace and her mom both laugh some more at his strangeness. There were days that Grace wondered if he would be happier as a comedian than a photographer. Except for the whole genius behind a lens thing he had going on.
"So Grace, did he balls up and ask you to the Fall Ball?" Grace's mother asked, trying to make Nate jealous. Pretty much everyone in Grace's family, and the entire Vega clan, were expecting Nate and Grace to end up together, but Grace refused to be a notch on a bed post. Not that Nate didn't love her, he just didn't love love her and that was the crucial ingredient missing for her to let him get that next step from her. So until he smartened up or she finally gave up all hope, Grace acted like their brief intimate moments were just practice for someone else later and left it at that. It would be made easier if her mother didn't insist on trying to rile Nate up so he'd confess some ill thought out proclamation of undying love. It seemed he just didn't have it in him.
"Actually no, instead one of Aunt Opi's student's, Colby, asked me to the Ball." Grace stated, keeping the smug look off of her face when Nate frowned slightly and went back to muttering at the food he had all but flambayed. Nate and Colby didn't get along. Not in the whole, beat their chests and hurtle insults at each other way, but more along the lines of not at all wanting to be in the other's presence way. Which is why she had pulled Cody aside and made him a deal. He was pretty much in love with her aunt Ophelia, and he seemed to have already deduced Grace's reluctant attraction to her playboy best friend. But Opi was about as resistant to the concept of dating as Nathaniel was, and so they both hoped to provoke a little jealousy out of their respective interests. Though Grace doubted that Nate would even bat an eyelash over her going with Colby, she was looking forward to the chance to just go on a date with a handsome man. One who would not press her for anything she wasn't willing to do. They were just going to dance, which was a nice change from her constantly freaking out and running away from the guys she usually went to these kind of things with.
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Aces Wild (House of Cards Series 4)
Teen Fiction(Sequel to Queen of Spades/King of Hearts stories) Nathaniel Vega grew up in a less than conventional family. His mother and father had once been student and teacher, his best friend was also his adoptive sister and his family seemed to include peop...
