“And apparently, two rounds of teeth brushing, a bottle of water, and numerous curse words.”
She nodded slowly, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Excellent. I’m here for that kind of brutality. So, what do you need my help with?”
Right then, our coffees and pastries were brought over. I took mine, and Angelica got started on her Danish as if it was going to grow legs and jump off the table.
I guess pregnancy made people crazy.
Hell, I felt like that about food in general, so if she only felt like that because she was pregnant, then she had more self-control than I did.
“Okay. I know Ethan has to have a weakness somewhere. I can do all these silly things to him in response to what he’s going to do to me, but I want to get under his skin.”
Angelica nodded, dabbing at her mouth with her napkin. “I get that. He and I had some intense fights growing up, so he’s not going to be easy to get at. If you want to really get at him, you’re going to need to find his weak spot.”
“Exactly. I feel like I’ve thought of everything with Halley and Reagan’s help; toothpaste for shaving cream, shampoo for hair removal cream, biting into all his snacks, sugar for salt, stealing the insoles of his shoes—”
She choked on her latte. “That’s being saved for the next time my husband pisses me off.”
“You’re welcome,” I replied. “Stupid shit like that, you know? It’s what he’s going to do to me. Little things that are just goddamn inconvenient. But if he replaces my shampoo with my hair removal cream, I’m going to chop off his balls with a butter knife and choke him on them.”
“Totally reasonable.” She nodded slowly. “Okay, so other little things: if you don’t use cable, you could cancel it. It will make him rage.”
“I don’t use it,” I admitted. “I usually watch Netflix and Prime Video, and I’ve been toying with getting a Hulu subscription.”
“There you go. While you’re there, delete his Netflix profile on your account so he has to start his list again.”
“How do you know he has a Netflix profile on mine?”
“Because he hasn’t logged into my account for at least four days, so I figure he’s using yours.”
“Huh. Yeah. What a jerk.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, sister.” Her lips pulled to one side. “This way, he’ll probably get a Hulu subscription and pay for it so you can use that.”
“I like the way you think.”
She grinned. “You’d feel the same about your brother.”
Probably.
“All right, so I have all these now. And I’m totally canceling my cable, for what it’s worth.” I wiped the grease from my Danish off my fingers. “There has to be something else, right?”
Angelica frowned. “Like what?”
“His big issue. I don’t know. His crux. The thing that stymies him. His Achilles heel, I guess.”
“His Achilles heel?”
“Yeah. The one thing that really gets to him. There has to be something that really gets under his skin. Isn’t there?”
Angelica took a long drink of her latte and set it down. Slowly, she sat back and linked her fingers over her bump, her blue gaze firmly locked onto mine. “You wanna know?”
“Yes. What is Ethan’s Achilles heel?”
Her throat bobbed, and she said one word in response. “You.”
CHAPTER SEVEN – ETHAN
Salty As Fuck—Literally
I wiped my face with the nearest cloth and quickly dropped it to the floor. It was covered in oil, and I knew it’d done more damage than good to my face.
Shit.
I ducked into the staff bathroom and scrubbed at my face. I didn’t know who the idiot was that made oil and water repel each other, but I wanted to have words with them right now.
Yesterday, it was salt in my coffee.
Now, it was oil on my face after cleaning up.
Shit.
It’d been one of the longest Mondays in the history of the world, and I was so fucking glad it was over.
I grabbed my stuff from the staff room, and after waving goodbye to my uncle and the other guys in the garage who were finishing up with an oil change for an elderly lady, I slipped out of the side door and headed toward my car.
I needed to come up with a way to get back at Ava. I swore I could still taste the salt if I touched my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
Yep.
I could.
No amount of scrubbing and mouthwash was going to get rid of it.
It was going to haunt my fucking dreams, which was fitting since Ava was already doing that.
I pulled out of the parking lot and turned in the direction of the store. There had to be something in the grocery store that would give me inspiration to pay her back for the salt.
That, and I needed to buy more sugar. And a safe for my sugar. Just in case.