Page 158 of Consummation

I touch Gracie’s hand as she continues to eat and she curls her little fingers around my index finger. “No. I had a huge party for my thirtieth. Jay-Z played, actually.”

“Oh, well that wasn’t excessive or anything.”

“So this year I’m ready to have a quiet celebration, just my wife, my baby, and me—a romantic dinner for two-and-a-half—followed by you and me getting freaky-deaky on the carpet in the nursery again after Little G falls asleep.” I wink. “I really like the way that carpet feels on my balls.”

Without warning, Gracie pulls sharply away from Kat’s breast, milk dripping down her chin, and glares at me like she understood every word of what I just said.

We both burst out laughing at the hilariously pissed expression on Gracie’s face—and the sound of our laughter makes Gracie break into gurgling peals of adorable laughter, too.

“Take a video of her giggling, babe,” Kat says. “Oh my God. She’s hilarious!”

I grab my phone and take the video, followed by a whole bunch of photos of Kat and Gracie together. But after a moment, Gracie begins fussing so Kat tries to get her to feed off her other boob.

“Aw, come on, Gracie-cakes,” Kat says. “Don’t you want my other boob? You’re gonna leave me lopsided, baby.”

Gracie breaks into a pterodactyl scream.

“What the heck?” Kat says. “She gets riled up so freaking fast, I swear to God.”

“Gee,” I say. “I wonder where she getsthat?”

“Definitely not from me,” Kat sniffs—and much to my surprise, she sounds completely serious. But before I can reply to her and tell her she’s a delusional loon, my phone buzzes with an incoming call from Reed.

“Oh, it’s Reed—I wanna take this.” I leap out of bed and sprint out of the bedroom, far away from Gracie’s loud shrieks, to take the call.

“Tell him congrats from me!” Kat calls to my back.

“Reed!” I shout into the phone. “Congrats, man! Your boykilledit!”

“Oh my God. Didn’t he? He hit a fucking homerun, man.”

“A grand slam in the bottom of the ninth,” I say. “We were screaming at the TV like we were right there in the audience. Was he loving it?”

“Yeah, afterwards, for sure. But beforehand, he was so nervous, he puked into a trashcan. Oh my God—you should have seen him, worse than you were right before your wedding.” He laughs. “This is the first major performance Will’s given since the whole Carmen thing. She’s normally the one who calms him down when he gets really amped.”

“What ‘whole Carmen thing’?”

“Oh, shit. I didn’t tell you? Oh. Yeah. They broke up.”

“Oh, really? Aw, she seemed like a sweetheart.”

“She is—a total sweetheart. You know how it goes. He’s twenty-four. He fucked it up. It’s to be expected under normal circumstances, but he’s also adjusting to the whole fame thing, you know—women throwing themselves at him wherever he goes. Pretty tall order not to fuck up at least once.”

“Too bad.”

“Believe me, he regrets it.”

“So when are you gonna be on the West Coast, bro?” I ask. “You gotta swing by and see Little G. She’s gotten so big since you saw her.”

“Not for a while, man. I’m hopping a flight to Thailand first thing in the morning with Will. We recorded a song with this Thai hip-hop group, and—”

“AThaihip-hop group?” I interject. “I didn’t realize there was such a thing.”

“Yeah.Thaime’s Up. They’re huge in Thailand.”

I laugh. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, they’re massive and so is American hip-hop—this song’s gonna make me a fucking mint, mark my words. So, anyway, we’re shooting the music video with the Thai boys in Phuket for a week and then we’re doing a promotional appearance the following week at a nightclub in Bangkok.”

---