Page 19 of Merlot Marriage

Ophie’s strained smile dropsthe moment she turns her back on the man shaking her hand. From my vantage point in the car, I can see her pissed-off expression and the way his eyes linger on her backside as she walks away. Both have me a heartbeat away from getting out of this car and punching him in the face.

The only thing that keeps me in my seat as she stomps toward me is her delicate middle finger waving in the air in response to one of the guys loitering around the lot when he shouts something to her.

“Don’t ask. Just drive.” Ophie drops into the seat, anger vibrating off her as she buckles her seat belt.

“Yes, ma’am.” Putting the car in reverse, I turn to look back as I pull out of the spot. My thumb brushes her neck as I grab the back of her headrest to look, and I swear she shivers. But maybethat’s just wishful thinking. She’s probably trying to shake off whatever happened in there.

I let the silence stretch on while I navigate us out of the parking lot, but as I turn onto the main road away from the port, I can’t take it any longer. “What happened?”

Deflating, she closes her eyes and slumps before taking a deep breath and straightening in her seat. “He started the interview by calling me ‘little lady,’ and it went downhill from there.”

“Ek gaan hom aan die plafonwaaier hang en soos biltong laat uitdroog.” The insult pours out of me, courtesy of a particular high school biology teacher.

“Um…what? I caught biltong. What does beef jerky have to do with it?”

Ophie’s confused question breaks the tension, and I laugh before answering. “It translates to ‘I’m going to hang him from the ceiling fan and let him dry out like biltong.’”

Her tinkling laugh fills the car, and the part of me that was worried she was hurt finally relaxes. “That sounds perfect. He’d deserve it. They’re not looking for a project manager, they’re looking for a maid who will go around cleaning up all their messes while wearing a low-cut blouse and a tight skirt.”

Squeezing the steering wheel, I stop myself from growling. “Yeah, I saw him checking out your ass as you walked to the car.”

Ophie makes a retching noise. “I should have flipped him off too.”

I turn my music back on as we ease onto the highway, keeping an eye on the directions from my GPS. It takes only a few moments for my brilliant best friend to realize we’re not going back the way we came.

“Where are we?”

“I made a discovery while you were in your interview. Trust me?”

Please let her say yes, please let her say yes. The idea started as a joke, but the more I think about it, the more I want to check out the landmark I found while poking around Google Maps. I’d been trying to distract myself from obsessing over that accidental kiss, and it led me down a fascinating rabbit hole. Besides, it’s obvious that she’s in desperate need of the kind of fun only I can get her to enjoy.

Not that kind of fun.

I wish.

“Yessssssss.” She draws the word out between her teeth, biting her bottom lip as it fades.

“It’s a fun surprise, I promise.”

Silence stretches between us for a long moment, and then, to my delight, she takes a deep breath and does a full-body shake. “Sure. Let’s do it. Anything to forget that interview ever happened.”

“Your wish is my command.” I give her a little salute before turning up the volume on the radio, Icona Pop blasting as we drive. By the end of the song, Ophie is singing along with me. Hearing her slightly off-key voice cracking on the high notes settles the last of my worries.

I spent the whole time she was in that interview worried that my impulsive actions had thrown her off her game. That the accidental pressing of her lips to mine had left her as confused as I was.

Sure, I’ve kissed the top of her head or her forehead a million times. I can’t help it, she’s just so damn adorable when she’s flustered. And even though we shared a sweet, albeit chaste, kiss in Vegas when we tied the knot, the way she’d walked away from the car like she was ready to kick ass and take names, while I was pondering why that kiss had felt both familiar and electric, has been eating away at me.

But I push all those emotions away and focus on driving and singing with my best friend who just had a shitty interview and needs a distraction.

Not Mrs. Hot Stuff is too busy singing along with Sabrina Carpenter to notice the road signs that might give away where I’m taking us. There are surprisingly few signs out, but I suppose the movies came out more than ten years ago, and the hype has died down. The vampire franchise was nowhere on my radar until the marked house popped up in maps. It helps that we binge-watched the movies last weekend while she was feeling rough from her period.

“Um, where the hell are we?” Ophie sits up, looking around as I drive down a tiny residential street. Squarely middle-class craftsman homes line the sides of the road. “There’s nothing down here except houses—”

She snaps her mouth shut as I drive between two massive cedars whose branches meet to form a tunnel overhead. There’s a small sandwich board in front of the third house on the left. Leaning forward, she braces her hands on the dash to read it. “The Swan house?”

I pull over to the side of the road. “No werewolves or vampires in residence, unfortunately.”

“Oh. My. God.” Ophie sits staring at the familiar white house, the siding pristine and the yard better kept than those in the surrounding areas. “It’s really the house from theTwilightmovies?”

---