Amanda turned the wheel, driving slowly enough with the music soft enough to hear the crunch of gravel under her tires. Nikki's car was already there, she saw. She pulled up next to the white Audi that she drove, and killed her BMW's engine. The car shut off, and Amanda leaned her head back against the headrest, thankful to have made it. Normally she worked from home on Fridays, but earlier in the week one of the firm's lawyers had made a brutal mistake, and there was an all-hands partners' meeting for Friday afternoon to discuss and debate the fate of the miscreant.
It had been stressful. Amanda knew that walking into the meeting; the emails flying around had grown insistent about deflecting or laying blame. She walked into the meeting knowing that she was going to have to be the peacemaker. And within ten minutes the tempers that had simmered between the firm's realization of that mistake and now boiled over. There were two distinct types of litigation that the firm handled, and the two sides were fighting over the seriousness of missing the important deadline. Amanda stood after twenty minutes of pointless bickering, pointed that out, and refocused the meeting.
She slid her phone out of her purse around five and sent a text to Nikki. "Still here" was all it said. Amanda had spoken to Nikki in their usual manner the night prior, after love but before sleep, reminding her that the weekend getaway would probably be delayed over the meeting. Nikki accepted the likely late arrival of her lover, wife and best friend fairly well; Nikki reasoned that Amanda had held down the fort on those nights where she was working late, or early, or out of town.
The meeting broke up at six, and Amanda fled to her SUV. The mid-August traffic in Houston was abhorrent. Awful. Everyone trying to get out of town as fast as their car would take them, and the jam left Amanda sitting in impotent rage in her car. She wanted to slam her hands against the steering wheel, to screech at the top of her lungs to get a fucking move on and gesticulate wildly from the driver's seat. Instead, she lurched along, yard by yard, until finally, mercifully, the traffic lessened and speed picked up.
With her SUV getting up to speed, Amanda turned the radio to her preferred station - an 80s-era one and sang along to some good tunes, Madonna and Prince among others. When she was in Nikki's car, she suffered through the twang of the C&W that her wife adored. It wasn't that the music was bad, but Amanda was not born in Texas, not raised in Texas, nor had she been living in Texas for long. She was there for Nikki and Nikki alone. So the good-natured but frequent debate over the quality of one's music was a routine car-ride situation. One that she avoided driving alone.
Should they have driven together? It was something they had debated for some time. The weekend was one that they planned a long while back. There was a branch of the lake in the northwest part that had remained a lot quieter, the homes surviving the rest of the lakefront's buy-raze-build McMansion process. Nikki had remained friendly with this good old boy since their days in high school together. Bobby Coleman was his name, and his family cabin was now fourth generation Coleman. Bobby used it infrequently; he had moved up to Dallas and so the place remained unused more often than not.
When Bobby asked her to give the place a thorough once-over, that was the deciding factor. Nikki took the day off of her job, and drove up early. She got the place opened, and texted Amanda a list of things that she needed to pick up and bring to the cabin to ensure its habitability. In exchange for the two women giving the place that tidying up that it needed, Bobby charged them the whopping price of free for the weekend. It was the second year that they'd taken this trip; both women had been looking forward to a quiet weekend away from the city and its hustle and bustle now for some time.
The door burst open and Nikki was standing there, looking impossibly domestic. She wore these basic khaki shorts, a tank top, her big, dark nipples visible through the fabric. She had the scarf tying her long dirty-blonde hair back, and stood there with her hands on her hips, hollering out at Amanda.
"You gonna sit in your car all night, or get in here and help me?" she demanded.
"Sorry, love!" Amanda replied, exiting the car and thumbing the button to open the tailgate. "I was resting. Traffic was fucking awful," she reported.
"Six on a Friday night?" Nikki snorted. "Awful is about the softest word I'd use," she drawled slowly. Amanda pulled two heavy bags out of the back and then managed to thumb the gate closed before trudging to the house.
Nikki boldly looked Amanda up and down. "God, you look so sexy in your office clothes," she greeted Amanda before kissing her on the lips. "Glad you're here!"
"Hell, girl, I'm glad I'm here, too," Amanda agreed, thrilled as always from the little kiss. After a twenty year marriage to a man she came to loathe, such little affectionate greetings lifted her heart each time.
They went inside, and Amanda peered around. "Ewww," she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste as the stink of musty air permeated.
"I know, right? Yuck," Nikki agreed. They took the supplies - mostly of the cleaning variety - out of the bags.
"I gotta go change, Nik," Amanda said.
"Sure, Am," she replied absently, still pulling things out and checking them off her list. Amanda's bag was already in the master bedroom, sitting there next to Nikki's. She hefted it up on the bed without the usual grunt. She flipped it open, finding a dearth of clothing and blessedly, no cosmetics. Amanda carefully got out of her silk top and hung it on the one hanger in the closet. The bra she tossed into the suitcase. She reached behind her and undid the button on her skirt, and shimmied out of that. It too was hung carefully, and then Amanda pulled on a gray tee-shirt emblazoned with her collegiate alma mater, and a pair of loose gym shorts.
Nikki looked up, and smiled. "Nice tits," she smirked, which made Amanda laugh gently.
"How can you be horny when there's cleaning to do?"
Nikki's grin got wider yet. "Can't help it. You make me horny, no matter what we're doing!" she proclaimed.
That was good for another kiss, this one longer and deeper with a trading of tongues. Amanda put both her hands on Nikki's shoulders and pushed away. "Easy, tigress," she said, winking. "I'll be enjoying all of you later tonight."
"Damn right you will," Nikki took the deferral easily. She grinned; Amanda could see her wife's thoughts so clear on her face. I can't wait!
But chores were necessary, and time was growing short. So they set to it, and stayed busy until close to nine.
***
Tah jumped a little in her seat, when quite suddenly from down the hallway came a high-pitched tirade. Her head tilted just so to listen better, and sure enough the stream of invective started blending Spanish and English in equal measures. The voice rose and fell, and the driver who was currently incurring Zara's wrath was probably standing there, looking shame-faced, as the administrative manager of the trucking company dressed whatever at-fault driver down.
Tahlia chuckled. What a pair they made! Tahlia, an import from Australia had never lost her Aussie accent despite living in the Austin area for years. She'd come to the States to go to college at UT, and survived two years of that education before she realized that she absolutely hated the formal education. She managed to latch onto a trucking company as an intern, and over her ten years of living in the Austin area, had secured good employment for most of that time. Her current position, handling the logistics of deliveries, was typically one held by a college graduate. But her experience in the position coupled with an interview that had impressed the owner enough that he'd given her the job.
She'd met Zara on her first day of work. She'd spent the first hour or so in the owner's office, going over paperwork with him. Once those chores were done, she was escorted around. The workers at the loading docks, and those truckers who were waiting for their rig load-outs, all gave her the same look. Tah knew that her shorter, thicker, curvier body drew the eyes of men with ease. It was something that she'd come to tolerate though never love. None of the men she had met stirred anything within her. Not that she fucked around at work; such impulses rarely came to good ends.
The last visit had been to Zara's office. Tahlia watched as the dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty looked up from her phone call. She was scowling, and jabbering in rapid-fire Spanish to someone. She ended the phone call after about another minute.
"Hi," she said brightly.
As Tah replied, Zara's eyes flashed a bit wider.
