Merlot Marriage (Sunshine Cellars #2)

1. Ophie

Ophie

A Vegas hangover, plus plane turbulence, equals me reaching for my seat belt every ten seconds, contemplating if I need to make a run for the bathroom to puke my guts up.

I’m not sure how much of the nausea is from alcohol and how much is from the knowledge that, when this plane lands, the timer starts on getting my adult life together. In eight weeks, I’ll graduate with my master’s and run out of excuses not to decide what I want to be when I grow up.

I suppose twenty-six is pushing it, but really, my prefrontal cortex has only just finished cooking. I’m a baby adult who probably still needs adultier-adult supervision.

I definitely needed it this week.

To my right, Sydney groans, just as hungover as I am. I wasn’t sure about having my future sister-in-law crash my last college spring break. But she needed a break from work, and I thought I needed a partner in non-crime. Joke’s on me—Sydney could drink a frat boy under the table.

How she managed to drink three of those foot-long margaritas while walking down the Strip without even a single stumble is still beyond me. I drank half of one and could barely keep my eyes from crossing.

“I am definitely going to puke when we get off this plane.”

Maybe Sydney isn’t as tough as I thought. Her moaned words give me hope that I’m not the least cool person in this group.

I am one hundred percent the least cool person on this trip, but at least I’m not the only one with a hangover from hell.

“Don’t be such babies,” Cassie says, reaching her fingers through the gap in our seats to poke my arm. “But if I ever suggest a Vegas trip again, I give you all permission to dunk my head in a toilet. Actually, I may do it myself so I can puke in peace.”

Beside her, her sister Heather and our friend Morgan groan in agreement from the row behind us. We wanted to combine successfully defending our theses, our last spring break of grad school, and Cassie’s bachelorette. Theoretically a great idea. However, based on our current state of being, twenty-six is too old for four straight days of debauchery in Sin City.

“ Ach , man, my head feels like it weighs a hundred kilos,” my other seatmate groans from my left. Philip lets out a deep sigh as he rests his head on my shoulder. His South African accent soothes my frayed nerves, but his warm breath on my neck does nothing for the roiling in my stomach. Neither does the dim memory of two nights ago that I’ve been avoiding ever since it happened.

“I wish we’d had time for real coffee this morning. Whose idea was it to take such an early morning flight?” Sydney leans her head against the window and closes her eyes. “Wake me up if they come around for drinks.”

Blocking out the piercing overhead light, I close mine too, willing myself to lose consciousness. Anything to bring this trip to an end and let me go back to my nice, quiet life.

Correction: my quiet, lonely, anxiety-filled life.

“You smell lekker, Ophie,” Philip mutters. “Like flowers and…I don’t know.” His voice trails off as he nuzzles deeper into my neck. He is always this touchy, I remind myself. No one will suspect anything.

“Are you still drunk?” I whisper, praying that Sydney is asleep and not listening.

He lifts a hand, his thumb and pointer finger half an inch apart. “Little bit.”

“How drunk have you been this week? I thought…” I tip my head back, dislodging his from my shoulder. Panic joins the party in my intestinal tract, and I glance down at the seat’s back pocket, searching for a puke bag.

He rolls his head to the side to eye me. “Sober enough, yeah?”

Sober enough .

So was I.

Neither of us can use the excuse of being too drunk to remember sneaking away from our friends and showing up at the little chapel on the Strip.

Have I made the biggest mistake of my life?

Philip is still staring at me, his ocean blues disconcertingly close. Instead of answering his implied question, I flip my hood over my head and settle back into my seat, ignoring his adorably rumpled face and hair.

There’s shifting to either side of me as Philip lifts the armrest between us and Sydney adjusts her legs. Then my head is pulled down on his shoulder. “Have a nap, liefling. I’ll wake you just now.”

Blessed unconsciousness takes me as Philip’s cologne drifts into my nose.

I spend the two-and-a-half-hour flight home to Portland dozing against his shoulder—too tired to keep my eyes open but too awake to sleep deeply. Philip mutters Afrikaans nonsense above me. I have no idea what he’s saying, but the lilting words sound so close to English, it feels like I should . Fitting, really, that the blur of our Vegas trip stays surreal until the end.

Like it was all a lucid dream of drinking, dancing, eating, and lying by the pool.

I manage to stay in my detached state until the six of us exit baggage claim into a spring downpour. Even stopping for coffee as we leave the terminal doesn’t force me completely back to reality, but it does settle my stomach. A chill wind whips through the parking structure, the smell of rain, exhaust, and piss hitting me in the face as we head to the rideshare pickup point. The cold air dissolves my grip on the fog keeping me from facing my future.

“Thanks for letting me crash your trip.” Sydney gives Cassie a hug as we wait. “My feet may never recover, but it was fun.” Releasing Cassie, she shuffles back to take her coffee from me. “I really thought bringing only one pair of heels to save space for more outfits was smart.”

All of us stop to look down. Thick white socks cover Sydney’s feet, shoved into a pair of much-too-big flip-flops she borrowed from Philip. She has the right sock pulled up over her sweatpants, almost to her knee, the left one falling down to her calf. The toes and heels of the fabric are already speckled with wet spots.

Combined with her hoodie, messy bun, and raccoon circles from last night’s makeup, she looks as messy on the outside as I feel on the inside.

“I don’t know if it was the shoes that were the bigger issue or kicking the concrete pylon,” Cassie points out. She and Heather share a look, Heather smirking in the way that’s been annoying me ever since she met us at the airport five days ago. If Cassie wasn’t such a good friend, I’d have said something already, but I was trying to keep the peace. Sydney declared Heather an uptight asshole whose husband couldn’t find her clit and laughed in her face. She’s not wrong, but the trip’s been a little tense ever since.

Sydney lifts her sunglasses, looks both women up and down, then drops them back into place with a shrug. “That pylon came out of nowhere.”

There’s an amused snort from beside me as Philip steps closer, blocking the cold wind blowing at my back. I lean back, snuggling into his side to keep warm. Maybe I can borrow a little bit of his constant good humor to finish this trip on a good note. Sydney ignores us all, pulling her purse open and looking inside, searching for something.

“Besides, it’s just a toenail—it’ll grow back.” She stops digging in her bag to raise an eyebrow at Cassie and Heather, then nods her head toward Morgan. “At least I knew the names of all the guys I kissed. Unlike some of us.”

As Morgan’s face goes beet red, I’m doubly glad no one caught Philip and me after our little—big—adventure. We would never hear the end of it, and the whole point is that no one needs to know. Ever.

“The club was really loud, okay? I swear he said his name was Nigel.” Morgan hunches her shoulders, but Cassie pulls her in for a one-armed hug.

“The club was loud. And his Australian accent was thick,” I reassure her. “We only figured out his name was Michael after you left with him, when Philip was talking to his friend Simon.”

“Ah, my good friend Simon,” Philip teases. “Lovely fellow. Shame about the ears.”

Morgan huffs, rocking her suitcase on and off its wheels in an agitated way, and Cassie throws an arm over her shoulder, glaring at us. “Just because you two have an unhealthy attachment that prevented Ophie from getting laid, don’t take it out on Morgan. She had to break that dry spell. It was the whole point of going to Vegas.”

There’s a sharp twist in my stomach, and my cheeks heat at her words. The only reason I’d been glad to have Heather along on the trip was so I didn’t have to share a room with Cassie and her constant need to push Philip and me together. Sydney, bless her, doesn’t give two fucks about my love life.

Since Morgan and her long-term, long-distance boyfriend broke up about six months ago, Cassie has been on a mission to get her back into the dating world—and laid—ever since. Her ex had been working in Dubai for the last two years, and Morgan had been taking care of herself for too long, according to Cassie. The moment we landed in Vegas, she didn’t stop pointing out potential men. Literally. She was halfway to getting her a date with our Uber driver by the time we made it to our hotel from the airport.

Why do happily paired-off people always try and force the rest of us to date? Why can’t they just accept that I like my life the way it is and stop trying to make me change things? I have enough Big Life Milestones coming my way—I do not need to complicate that by adding dating or a relationship on top of it. I have Philip. I don’t need anyone else. Besides, there is a finite number of decent men in the world, and I’m too busy with grad school to look for that needle in a haystack.

I’m not about to let a man derail my education. Again.

Cassie finally stopped trying to set me up with TJ’s friends last year when I threatened to tell anyone she set me up with why she’s not allowed to be the designated driver anymore. Anywhere.

Those poor sheep still back away from the fence whenever we drive by in her car.

“We do not have an unhealthy attachment. It’s called being friends,” I point out.

“A real friend wouldn’t cockblock the other.” Cassie points her phone at me as a gray sedan pulls up in front of us. She checks the license plate. “This is us.”

Heather leans in to verify the driver’s name while Cassie rushes over to give me a hug. “Thank you for coming. It was fun, right?” she murmurs in my ear.

I hug her back, careful not to spill my coffee on her. “Yes, it was fun. Mostly. I think we’re just too old for this shit.”

Cassie looks back over her shoulder to where Heather and the driver are loading her suitcase in the trunk. “Sorry my sister was being an asshole. She misses her kids. And also, you know I’m right. You need to get laid as badly as Morgan does. You shouldn’t let Philip pussy-block you.”

She steps back and hurries to follow her impatient sister into the car, waving as they pull away. Just as their car disappears, Morgan and Sydney’s rideshare pulls up. Sydney gives me and Philip hugs before joining her—she and Morgan both live near the Pearl District, so sharing a car made sense. The knot in my stomach that has nothing to do with being hungover squeezes tighter as my friends—and buffers—leave me alone with the consequences of my actions.

There’s been a bunch of recent break-ins at my condo complex, and I jumped at the chance to leave my car at Philip’s place, where campus security patrols. Now I’m regretting that no one else lives near enough to him to share a car.

It’s the first time we’ve been alone in forty-eight hours. Nervous sweat breaks out on my upper lip, even though it’s a cool spring day. The silence between us is tense and awkward as I finish sipping my now-cold coffee.

I can feel him studying me as I nervously shake the empty cup. With a soft chuckle, he takes it from me, walking away to the nearest trash can.

With nothing to hold on to, my fingers clutch the handle of my suitcase, releasing and clicking the button on top over and over. My focus is glued to Philip’s back. The fit of his leather jacket across his shoulders. The way his curly brown hair flops to one side as he leans around a pair of teens to toss the cups.

I don’t look away quickly enough as he turns, catching my eye and grinning when he sees me staring. Hands shoved in his pockets, he ambles back, that easy smile and loose body telling me I’m the only one feeling nervous about spending the next twenty minutes together in the back of a car. Or the next eight weeks actively ignoring the rash decision we made.

“Well, Mrs. van der Merwe. Should we go home?”