8. Philip
Philip
Ophie’s strained smile drops the 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 maybe that’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 the Twilight movies?”
When I nod, she bursts out laughing. “How the hell did you find this? Daisy is going to be so jealous.”
I tell her about my map rabbit hole as we climb out of the car. Leaving her blazer behind, she wanders toward the house, telling me about the short-lived Team Edward vs. Team Jacob feud between her sisters back in high school.
As my wife explores, I’m struck by how beautiful she looks in the summer sunshine, the way the light catches the caramel highlights in her hair and outlines the curve of her hips in that skirt.
I should be focused on my own job hunt, not obsessing over making my best friend happy. If I want to stay here in the States and have Ophie be part of my daily life, I need a job.
The tension melts away as we wander around for a few more minutes, taking photos and giggling, before my grumbling stomach can’t be ignored.
“There’s a restaurant not far from here. Let’s get lunch.” I pull a giggling Ophie to the car. We’re still laughing as we stumble into the restaurant. The host seating us keeps looking back as she leads us to the far end of the restaurant, and I give her a friendly smile to reassure her that we’re not a pair of loonies.
There’s a mix of decor on the walls, including some Twilight memorabilia. I’m busy studying a faded photograph on the wall beside our booth as I slide in, the hostess forgotten.
Something soft bumps my hip, and I turn to see Ophie has slid in beside me instead of across like she normally would. “Wha—”
“Thanks so much. My husband and I are starving. Do you make a good club sandwich? I’m dying for one, haven’t had a decent one in ages.” She wraps her hands around my upper arm, cuddling in beside me. “What do you think, babe?”
Before I can answer, the host is gone, her ponytail bouncing as she speed walks away from us.
“What was that all about?”
Instead of answering, she releases my arm and slides over, leaving six inches of space between us. Six inches too much.
“Nothing. I’ve just had my fill of ogling today.”
“Ogling?”
Bright pink stains her cheeks, and she dips her head. Her response is half muttered and barely audible. “She was checking out your ass as you slid into the booth.”
I turn toward her, my eyebrows raised, waiting for her to make eye contact. It takes a moment, but when she does, she sighs. “I thought she was going to lean over and take a bite out of it.”
“So you decided that if anyone was going to take a bite out of my ass, it would be you?”
She twists in her seat, setting her elbow on the table before resting her chin on her hand. The position pushes her lips together, a cross between the infamous duck lips of our youth and a pout that I can’t seem to stop staring at. “Technically? Yes.” She grins, making me laugh out loud.
With my focus still glued to her lips, I’m dying to know how she feels about that accidental kiss, the words sitting on the tip of my tongue. But everything between us is so easy, so fun and carefree, that I don’t want to disturb it.
We’ve both been so careful to keep our relationship on safe, platonic ground—each of us for our own reasons. But the tension between us ever since Vegas has been simmering and building.
Our lives are in upheaval right now, and I don’t want to add to the complication. Who knows where either of us might get a job offer? Ophie’s kept her job search to the Pacific Northwest so far so she can be near her family, but I’ve applied to places all over the country.
Not that I want to leave her.
But I might not have a choice, so I push the curiosity clawing at me to the side and focus on finding out what other companies she’s waiting to hear back from. Ophie fills me in on the companies she is most excited about applying to, while I sit entranced as she tells me about them.
The server who comes to take our order looks like he couldn’t be more than eighteen. His brown hair sticks out at all angles as if he forgot to brush it, and the wispy scruff on his cheeks isn’t thick enough to hide the still-red scars from his last bout with acne. But he’s old enough to look Ophie up and down in a way that has me immediately on the defensive.
If he doesn’t stop trying to see down her shirt, I’m going to deck him. I don’t care that I easily outweigh him. He looks scrappy, so I’m sure he’d be fine once he learned his lesson.
He checks her out every time he passes us, which means that every time I start to get my irritation under control, he goes and triggers it again. By the time we’re done eating and getting ready to leave, the pit of my stomach is a churning mass of anger and mediocre BLT.
“I hope everything tasted alright?” he asks Ophie as he drops off the check without acknowledging my presence. “Is there anything else I can get you, ma’am?”
Something in me snaps, and I throw my arm over the back of the bench, my hand dropping casually over her shoulder, effectively blocking his view of her cleavage. “The bacon was a little undercooked, but otherwise fine.” I lean forward to make eye contact. “How was your club sandwich, babe ?”
Ophie twitches under my arm, pushing back toward the bench and forcing me to stop my stare down with the teenage letch. She turns to look at me, one eyebrow raised and a playful smile on her face. “It was good. And my bacon was fine.” She looks over her shoulder to smile at the server.
He smiles back, and Ophie gives a little laugh. The annoyance I’ve been pushing away ever since he first glanced at her chest bubbles over inside me. Instead of joining in like I think she expects, I reach up with my free hand to grip her chin. “You got a little—” I swipe a speck of salt off her lip, and her eyes go wide, caught on mine as she freezes. The server behind her coughs, and in my peripheral, I see him turn away, but I’m trapped by something I can’t identify flitting across her face.
Without thinking, I lean forward and kiss her.
Not just a peck either. I crush my lips against hers, using my grip on her chin to pull hers apart so I can capture them with mine. For a second, she’s frozen, and then Ophie kisses me back with the tiniest little sigh escaping her. One of her hands rests against my thigh as she leans in, and I tense beneath her touch.
In one smooth movement, she pulls back and slides out of the booth. By the time I’ve gathered my two remaining brain cells together, she’s halfway across the restaurant, headed toward the door.
Well, fuck me.
I think I might be in love with my best friend.