Page 8 of Merlot Marriage

My four a.m. alarm felt obnoxiously loud when it woke me up this morning, and I’d turned it off in a hurry, unlike my usual three-snooze-button routine. Of course, this means that I’m twenty-four minutes ahead of schedule, leaving me time for a proper hair wash before heading to my opening shift at the coffee shop.

God, I can’t wait to find a real job. I never want to start work at five in the morning again.

Yawning, I finish showering, letting the hot water wash away the remnants of my tossing and turning. I don’t know why I was so jumpy all night—I should have slept like the dead after yesterday’s drama.

Maybe it was because I fell asleep on the couch while we were watching a movie last night. Yes. That had to have been the problem. It’s definitely not because having Philip here feels weird. Or that when the movie finished, I woke up with my back pressed against his chest, his arms wrapped around me, and his soft breath tickling my ear. Philip’s always been physically affectionate with me, kissing my head all the time, but we’ve never cuddled like that before. It was dangerously comfortable.

I haven’t exactly avoided him since we came back from Vegas, but I haven’t gone out of my way to hang out with him, either—both of us being overwhelmed by the end of grad school made it easy to keep some distance. Ever since the Elvis impersonator officiating our Vegas nuptials told him to give me some sugar, and Philip gave me a quick, sweet peck on the lips, there’s been an unsatisfied feeling in the pit of my stomach. A feeling that roared to life last night when he nuzzled his face into the crook of my neck, making the most adorable sleepy noises.

He’s spent the night on my couch or in Maggie’s room dozens of times before. There’s no reason it should have felt different last night.

Except it did.

My hair can’t decide if it’s straight or wavy, but the one thing it is for sure is thick—drying it is a commitment. A commitment I can’t deal with today, so I push all the weirdness from my mind as I braid back my hair for work. Right now, I can’t be thinking about the man who’s asleep in my spare room.

Towel wrapped around my torso, I open the bathroom door and run straight into a wall of man chest. Echoes of my vows to love him tender and love him sweet sing at the back of my mind while I stare at the muscled pecs in front of my face.

“Good morning to you too.” Philip grips my arms, holding me steady as I gape up at him. When I don’t move, he slides his hands to cup my elbows, picking me up and moving me to theside. “Gotta use the loo.” He drops a kiss on the side of my head and then closes the door in my face.

Stunned, I stand there staring at it for a moment. I’m naked. He was shirtless. Does he really not feel like everything is different now? Also, why am I still thinking about it? He’s being perfectly normal.I’mthe one being weird.

I hurry to my room and force myself to focus on getting dressed and ready for work. By the time I emerge, the bathroom door is wide open, and his is shut. Pausing outside the closed door, I listen but don’t hear anything. He must have gone back to bed. Which makes sense since the sun’s not even up yet.

It’s so overcast that the sky barely changes as I drive to work, adding to my internal grumbling. The end of spring in Portland is either gorgeous or miserable, and there is no in-between. Growing up in Seattle was the same, so you’d think I would be used to it, but every spring, as the gray skies drag into June, I get antsy and irritable about it. I’ve been dreaming of the sunny skies in Las Vegas and the memory of baking by the poolside to get through these last few weeks of gloom.

My shift is the usual Sunday morning parade—the regular before-church rush, then the more leisurely crowd, with some of my regulars sprinkled in between.

“That guy is hot,” one of my coworkers whispers in my ear as I pass her behind the bar.

“Which guy?” I’d been taking out the trash, and there definitely hadn’t been anyone I’d describe as “hot” when I’d left the front of the coffee shop.

Sarah tips her chin toward a scrawny white guy with greasy hair and chin fuzz. “The one in the corner who looks like he’s waiting for a job interview.” He’s fiddling with the tie around his neck and drumming his fingers on the table beside his cup.

I raise an eyebrow at my coworker. “Seriously? Raise your standards, Sarah.”

“What? He’s cute,” she objects. “He kind of looks like Pete Davidson.”

“Yeah—also not cute. I don’t understand the appeal at all.” I shake my head. “At least go for a guy who looks like he bathes regularly.”

My words conjure up an image of Philip showering at my place, and a new and unwelcome zing shoots through my core. This is ridiculous—he shared the hotel suite with Sydney and me in Vegas, and I didn’t react like this. I am losing my mind.

But Philip definitely bathes regularly. He always smells delicious.

“Whatever, Ophelia. At least I do something about being interested in a guy.” Sarah shakes her head at me as she pulls a carton of almond milk out of the fridge.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

A woman walks through the door, and I move to take her order.

Sarah pours milk into the metal pitcher for steaming and gives me a look. “It means you talk a lot of game about who people should date without ever dating yourself. You and Philip just do that weird thing you all do.”

I don’t have a chance to respond before the customer starts rattling off her order while Sarah flips on the machine’s steamer, drowning out anything else.

I don’t date because I don’twantto date. A fact nobody seems to understand. With how things ended with my college boyfriend, I don’t trust myself not to pick another narcissist. And after I nearly didn’t finish my undergrad because of him, I vowed never to let a penis derail my plans again.

Besides, I’ve been too busy with school and work and have plenty of friends. Past me made sure that present me doesn’t have the burning desire to have “a man” in my life that everyone seems to assume I do.

I have Philip and a vibrator—what else do I need?

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