Page 27

Fourteen

“R ed.”

“White.”

“White.”

I attempt to play peacekeeper. “Both.”

Everyone glares at me. I’ve spoiled their game.

I hate wine. It gives me a headache, and we’ve tasted a dozen varieties since arriving in Valle de Guadalupe vineyard three hours after leaving Tijuana.

The valley is so dry, hot, and choked with vineyards that we could be in Greece.

It’s also super chic, full of in-the-know Angelenos and pop-up dinners held beneath two-hundred-year-old oak trees, at alfresco sushi bars, or in wine caves.

I think up a dozen ways to abandon Berta and flee back to my San Francisco loft.

I fantasize about life on an ice floe, just me, the penguins, and a nonhostile polar bear.

I dream of alone time in an air-conditioned room.

After shutting down Ozzy’s attempts to play with me (and/or kill me with good cheer), we’d driven down Route 3, La Ruta del Vino, the Pacific Ocean sparking on our right and the desert shifting sharply upwards into mountains on our left.

Unfortunately for me, Ozzy does not know how to stew silently.

Instead, he hums, sings, loudly proclaims the beauty of the rocky terrain, the cacti, the buzzards hovering overhead.

He’s deeply in love with the rolling hills with their stupid, shrubby, prickly bushes.

He’s never seen anything more charming than the white adobe buildings that sprout of nowhere with their tiled roofs.

And now we’re here, at our third and final vineyard. It’s rustic yet modern, chic but charming, insert your adjectives here. The marketing team and Ozzy have cooed over every grape vine, terracotta tile, and barrel room.

Me? Tannins disagree with me. The sun disagrees with me. Camper vans, motion sickness, and forced proximity? Also disagree with me.

“Let’s buy them all!” Ozzy crows. He’s ready to stack Berta with cases of wine. He wants a monthly subscription.

His shirt tonight is one of those black athletic numbers made of clingy artificial fibers.

It gift wraps muscles that would make a god jealous.

He attracts attention wherever we go. I can feel myself weakening.

He’s pulled his hair back in his usual man bun and is frowning adorably into his wine glass.

He’s not his usual, ebullient self. He’s a little tousled, not quite smooth, probably from being pent-up in a moving vehicle with me.

Hopefully, he’s contemplating a new career path as an enologist.

It’s been eight days since we had sex. Since I got underneath his shirt, got my hands on his divine body.

It is nowhere near long enough to dull the edges of my memory.

I drag out my mental snapshots and pour over them.

Ozzy lounging in bed, bare-skinned, sheet wrapped around his hips.

Ozzy moving over me. In me. My face flushes.

I know what he looks like naked . There is no going back from this.

“Panda? You okay?” His voice is concerned. I force myself to nod.

“I’m great! How are you?”

“The drive wasn’t too much?”

My throat squeezes. He says drive . He means fuck .

He’s wondering if I mentioned to the TripFriendz executive team that we jumped each other just over a week ago.

He’s barreled down the Mexican highway imagining that he might lose his chance at my job if they find out.

The joke’s on me. No way anyone will believe my algorithm is impartial and accurate if they learn what happened in his loft.

“All good.” I give him double thumbs-up.

“You sure?”

I nod vigorously. There’s no time for panicking. Or memories. We can do this just once… But then you’d be all alone, Panda… You’d miss me… My vag squeezes remembering our sex marathon. My skin smelled of him for days. The sex was amazing. Not that it matters. We’re not doing it again.

Valle de Guadalupe? Officially checked off the list. We’ve visited the vineyards and taken all the pictures.

Likes trickle in slowly on TripFriendz’s Instagram.

Ozzy’s fan club comments in gushing terms on the photos he’s somehow managed to share despite hogging the driver’s seat all day.

Most people don’t bother to type anything; they sprinkle colorful hearts, smiley faces, a flame emoticon.

Someone sets their empty wineglass down and yells: “Photo on the roof!”

Ozzy slides me a look. He can see how much I’m into this suggestion. I’d rather file my taxes. March barefoot through the Mexican desert. Re-architect the TripFriendz app.

“Ding! Ozzy elevator!” He holds up his hands. We both stare at the ink on his forearms. He’s out of space for anything else.

“Sure. It’ll be a great shot.” I try to be a team player. It may kill me.

“Going up,” he says. He wraps his hands around my waist and lifts me onto the roof. I scramble briefly for traction, my foot slipping, but he’s got me. He doesn’t take the easy out and let his competition tumble to the ground.

“You’re strong.” My mouth starts a conversation without consulting with my brain. Idiotic things come out. I rearrange myself, trying to deflect his attention. Sit crisscross applesauce.

“Thanks. I work out.” Ozzy handles the weird compliment like a professional before remembering that his working out irritates me. He makes an oops face. He assumes a surf stance for our audience. Rubs his knee and readjusts.

“So what’s it like to surf?”

“It’s like walking on water. On a good day, you’re just flying over the ocean. No wings, no fancy gear, just you and the waves. I couldn’t believe people would pay me to do it. It was good to me.”

Past tense.

“Even if you’re not competing, you can still go out, right?” Making conversation on a rooftop is awkward, but I feel like we’re really talking. For the first time, we’re not fighting. We might be listening to each other.

“Panda.” He beams at the camera. He knows what he’s doing. “It was a bad wipeout.”

He pokes at the scar on his knee. Shrugs. Pretends everything is great despite being land-bound.

“And so that’s really it? Forever?”

I try to imagine never coding another line. I fail.

He mimes shaking a Magic 8 Ball. “Cannot predict now.”

Wineglasses are handed up. We obediently pretend to toast each other. To TripFriendz! To bread, without which there would be no toast! To travel buddies! We smile too much. Laugh overloudly. Thom wanders away—we’ve bored him.

When my glass clicks against Ozzy’s, wine sloshes onto his hand. He sits down next to me and licks it off. Our eyes meet.

“Is this okay?” His voice is hoarse, his smile painted on his pretty face.

It’s too soon after our sexathon for me to have forgotten how good he is at this.

“So much fun.” I try for perky. I might read murderous. Ozzy flinches.

“Is that what you want? Fun?”

“It’s what everyone wants. A good time. Keep it light. Keep moving.” I smile like this is the best idea ever. I’d never ask for something more.

“And that’s what you want from this trip?”

“Fun is good.” I pretend to mull it over. I imitate Rodin’s The Thinker , hunched over, deep in thought. I am downright pensive.

Are we done yet? My head aches. From the travel, from being on.

From so. Many. People. I rub my face. There’s a carpet of stars overhead, though, bright spots floating in the inky black.

I flop backward. My head ends up on Ozzy’s thigh.

His fingers rub my hairline. It’s hypnotic. Soothing. I never want him to stop.

A new bottle of wine is passed up to us. I pencil in fatty liver disease on tomorrow’s agenda.

When the sound of lasers goes off on my phone an eternity later, I’m almost too exhausted to care. Driving and Ozzy are a lethal combination. Plus, wine. I reluctantly remove myself from his leg and sit up. I edge over to the open hatch in the camper van’s roof while Ozzy watches me, amused.

I scramble awkwardly through the hatch and onto the bed. At least the landing’s soft. Ozzy thumps around overhead as I pull up our bug tracking app on my phone.

My team has missed me. Our work queue is bursting with critical issues, bad code, new feature requests. I call Noah back on Slack and have him walk me through the ticket he just opened.

“Can you fix it?” He is already moving the ticket into my queue. He flags it as a blocker.

I send it back to him. “I’m out of the office.”

“But you’re the only one who can fix it,” he whines. “No one knows the code like you do. It will take me days, but you could be done in ten minutes. I can’t believe you won’t help.”

He’s wildly optimistic about my coding skills. The social media stuff doesn’t seem as important, not compared with this. Without code, we don’t have a product. Without a product, there’s nothing to market, at least not ethically. “I’ll look,” I sigh. “No promises.”

“And maybe you can redo the front-end UI? Zhuzh it up a little?” He’s a five-year-old asking Santa for a pony. Tickets pepper my queue like mosquitoes.

I whip my laptop out and sign in. Until now, I’ve always been sort of in the background—a temporary employee who may or may not stick around.

Now they need me. It will only take a few (hundred) minutes.

The wallpaper on my desktop is a picture taken in the Crystal Cluster Cosmos.

Imaginary gases swirl around an asteroid.

“What on earth did you guys do ?” The code is a mess. This is mission impossible.

“Give the bug to Amir. He can fix it.” Amir has been working for TripFriendz for twelve days; he has yet to successfully set up his laptop. “He wants to learn the front end.”

There’s a round of laughter from the table outside where Ozzy is racking up popularity points.

“No, I need you to do it.”

“Why me?” I click. Update to head. Watch as my workspace fills with errors.

“The other engineer is rude. You’re so much nicer.”

This is my first blue ribbon. He hands me the gold trophy. I am drinking champagne out of the cup, and my team is hoisting me on their shoulders.

“All right. Let me see if I can fit it in tomorrow.” Maybe I can code while we drive.

Ozzy’s feet pad into view. He’s come in search of me.

“Can you do it now? I was supposed to be done an hour ago.” He sends a meme of a begging puppy dog.

“Wait,” I say, but he’s hung up on me. Slack plays whimsical hold music and informs me: you are alone in the huddle.

Ozzy sighs. “You let them take advantage of you. Tell him no. I can call him back for you.”

I’m embarrassed. Hot. And also: exhausted. I want to lie down somewhere quiet and sleep for a week. “He needs my help.”

“He needs you to cover his ass.”

I dig in. “I’m a team player.”

Lore pops his head in, which puts an end to Ozzy’s unwelcome comments on my workplace habits.

He wants to show us a reel he’s put together of today’s travel highlights.

It’s mostly shots of Berta rumbling down Highway 1 with the ocean on one side and the desert on the other.

Ozzy and I are two bickering dots in the front seat.

At the end, Ozzy flashes a peace sign out the window.

“It’s good. I love the music.” It’s fairly generic, but I’m trying for positive feedback.

Lore’s smile lights up his eyes. He has the goatee of a pirate. “Awesome!” He hangs out in the open door of the van, like he maybe wants to have a conversation “There’s a hot tub, and some of us are hanging out later. Seems like a good way to unwind.”

“Super. It sounds like fun.”

Once again, I am questioning the accuracy of my algorithm’s results.

The social media team will be spending tonight in posh canvas tents with twinkle lights.

In the spirit of authenticity, Ozzy and I do not get to glamp alongside them and have instead been relegated to Berta’s less luxurious embrace.

Remembering the swoopy canvas ceilings and tasseled throw pillows on their beds results in twinges of envy.

I want a tent. A bed. Quirky word sculptures decorating my bedside table.

Indoor plumbing. There’s no way my algorithm should have condemned me to camping.

“You could join us?” Lore looks at me eagerly.

Before I can process his request, Ozzy interrupts. “Sorry, she’s busy. Do you have the engagement numbers for today’s posts?”

Lore hands over a tablet. He’s still smiling at me as he slinks away. He’s been schooled.

It’s after midnight when our teammates turn into pumpkins. They stagger to their posh tents, excited about the possibilities of glamping. They carry darling little lanterns. They fall into actual beds.

Berta is parked in a spot carved out of the vineyard.

She swelters in the heat that lingers, looking worn-out and dusty from today’s drive.

We’re too late for cooler weather but too early to pick grapes for breakfast. The vines have flowered, and the petals are falling away from the tiny buds to reveal the baby grapes.

Ozzy slides the door open. Heat rushes out.

This will be our first night sleeping in the van; I half expect one of our teammates to pop out from behind a grapevine and pap us, because the expression on my face is stunned.

The TripFriendz executive team is clearly not worried about personal space, boundaries, or potential sexual harassment lawsuits, because the single, solitary bed has shrunk to even smaller proportions since we left Tijuana.

I continue to worry about the one-bed situation, despite the decidedly unromantic nature of bedtime in a camper van. First, we have to rearrange all of our day stuff to get at the bed, and then there’s the lack of bathroom facilities to contend with.

Ozzy brushes his teeth with my bottled water, spitting into the dirt.

I brush away at his side. We are an old married couple.

Despite our recent sexathon, I wriggle into an oversize T-shirt and sweatpants inside the van with the curtains closed and Ozzy locked outside.

I’m mildly embarrassed when I reopen the door, but I’m not putting on a show for him.

I have bigger problems anyhow, starting with the world’s smallest mattress. Ozzy is huge. Even if we wanted to, I’m not sure sex is possible in such a cramped space. I eye the bench behind the built-in table, but it’s maybe three feet long and I’m not a sadist.

Ozzy has a solution. “I’ll take the sleeping bag outside.”

I scour the inside of the van, but spot no camping supplies. “Is it an imaginary sleeping bag or an invisibility cloak?”

He whips a colorful blanket out of his duffel bag and waves it like a cape. “I have this fabulous Mexican blanket!”

“Okay.” If he wants to sleep on a five-dollar flea market blanket in the Mexican wilderness, I don’t feel it’s my place to stop him.

“That’s not your line,” he mock-whispers. “This is the part where you tell me, ‘Have a nice night.’”

He disappears outside with his blanket.

We’re not friends, but we’re no longer mortal enemies.