This further teasing flops, and his expression turns grave, face closed off as he navigates through the road to avoid as many potholes as possible for my comfort. Fuck, it’s too early for this kind of joke. I wish I could take his hand on the console between us and squeeze it, but he’s on my injured side, and turning around would be too painful. So, instead, I twist my face toward him with a gentle smile.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know.”
“You’d do the same for me in a heartbeat, and I know that, baby.”
That’s not enough to appease his guilty conscience, his eyes still hard under his frown, focused on the road before us.
“Tell you what,” I start, forcing my voice to be as light as possible. “Next time there’s some saving to be done, I’ll let you do it. I promise I won’t interfere,” I say, drawing a cross over my heart with my good hand.
He gives me a brief side-eye glance but says nothing.
Determined to lighten up the mood, I say, “We should have a backstory.”
“For what?”
“Well, how we met, when we got married, all that. In case we encounter people and they ask questions, you know?”
“We won’t encounter anyone.”
“It’s just in case,” I insist.
Resigned, he nods. He might find it silly, but I can already tell he’ll secretly enjoy it.
“Hmm… Have you created fake identities for us yet?”
“I didn’t have time for it. But if we don’t come across anyone, there shouldn’t be a need for it.”
“I see… Okay, we met six years ago, at a bar. Dated for two years, then engaged for one, and we got married three years ago.”
“A bar?”
“I was on an evening out with some friends.”
“And what was I, of all people, doing at a bar?”
“You were celebrating signing a big client with your associates. You’re a successful architect.”
“That’s too easy to disprove.”
“Right. Hm… Stock trader? A man of the shadows.”
“That works.”
“Well then, you had a bad day and came to the bar to decompress, then you saw me from the other side of the room, and youhadto have me.”
“Sticking close to reality, I see,” he answers with amusement.
“Except in this version, I dragged you to the bathroom after two hours, and we locked ourselves in a stall.”
“Why do we need this kind of information to explain our encounter to strangers?”
“It’s for authenticity. We didn’t fuck, though. You begged for a taste, and I let you have one. And you were so good at it that it earned you my number.”
“So we didn’t go back to my place that night?”
“I’m not easy like that. But you texted me the morning after, offering to buy me brunch.”
