Page 15 of Always a Roommate
Tanner let out a harsh laugh. “Definitely not. Too weird. She’s basically the female me.”
“See? I didn’t say it would be great to live with Rae, just someone like her. A beautiful woman, who is also a lot of fun to be around.”
All three of us went quiet. I wasn’t sure what the two of them were thinking of, but I couldn’t help trying to reconcile how Johnny saw Rae with what my reality had been. We hadn’t had fun together in as long as I could remember, probably not since we were teens.
I had lived with a woman who was exactly what Johnny described. Diana. She was breathtakingly beautiful, with thick, dark hair and impossibly blue eyes. And when she smiled, it made me fall in love with her all over again.
She’d been kind and funny. We’d always had a good time together. She taught English at the high school. Now, when I saw her, all I could see was the moment I’d learned she had an affair with another teacher at the school, a guy I knew well.
We were supposed to be married, and instead, all I had was the bitterness, the knowledge I couldn’t trust anyone like that ever again.
My family had known I was living with someone until she moved out eighteen months ago—before our landlord decided to sell the house. But I’d never gotten a chance to tell them about the engagement.
We pulled up to the first address and found my real estate agent, Emily, waiting outside. She was older, with gray-streaked, brown hair and kind eyes.
But the house wasn’t for me. I knew that from the moment I stepped from the car.
There was one reason. It had no gardens, nothing. I couldn’t live in a house without gardens. Diana used to laugh at how much time I spent outside tending to our plants, but the truth was, it brought me calm when things were usually so turbulent inside.
The second house was beautiful, with an open floor plan and high ceilings, but it was also out of my price range.
By the time we reached the fourth house we’d made an appointment to see, I could tell my brothers were restless, and I was beginning to lose hope.
“The housing stock in Gulf City is at an all-time low,” Emily said as we walked up the concrete drive to a small, pale-blue ranch home. The gardens needed some work, but they were there, and that was a start.
Inside, there wasn’t much to see. Two bedrooms, two small bathrooms, an open living room and kitchen. But then, we walked out onto the screened-in lanai. It backed up against a small pond, but I couldn’t see any other houses from this angle.
The late afternoon sun glinted off the water, making everything shine. And I knew I had to live here. On the far bank, an alligator basked in the warmth, his ridged tail halfway in the water.
Not far from him, two sandhill cranes mirrored each other’s poses, their eyes on something in the distance.
Emily stepped up beside me. “The listing claims they get bobcats and wild turkeys back here, as well as cranes, turtles, and all manner of birds.”
I looked back at my brothers to see what they thought, only to find them arguing about where the grill would go. I took that as a sign they liked the place.
“I’d like to make an offer.”
It took only three hours for the seller to accept my offer but much longer for it to sink in that I was buying a house. Every penny of my savings had to go to the down payment. I always figured I’d be doing this with someone else, someone like Diana. And now, it was just me.
Tanner, Johnny, and I sat at Emma’s diner as I went over everything the seller had told my real estate agent. We’d start moving forward tomorrow with financing and inspections and the whole mess of things that had to happen.
“So, you have thirty days until you take possession?” Tanner asked.
I reached for my milkshake. We were three grown men who’d come here for milkshakes after a long day instead of heading to a bar for drinks. And I didn’t care. I sipped the strawberry shake with pride because I was about to become a homeowner. “Apparently, that’s pretty standard.”
Johnny laughed. “Meaning you have to live with Rae for another month? This will be good.”
I shot him a scowl. “We’ll survive.” I hoped.
Tanner clapped me on the shoulder. “This is like real adult stuff.”
“You do realize I’m thirty-six, right? I’ve been an adult for a long time.” My brothers were ridiculous.
“Yes, but now you’ll own a house.”
“So? You own a business.” Who’d have ever thought Tanner would grow up before the rest of us?
Tanner shrugged. “Tell me that again when it’s profitable.” He’d learned when he took over the Surf Hut that the previous owners ran it mostly as a hobby. It hadn’t provided them much income, but he was working to change that.
