Page 16 of Only One Bed: Anthology Vol. 1
The Bed Hierarchy
Lauren Connolly
MONDAY
This will be the final page in a chapter of my life.
Her chapter.
It was rude of her, to only make one appearance in the beginning. But things will tie off to a nice end when I see her this time. This infatuation will cease, and my life will move on.
I pull into the driveway of a house painted an odd shade of purple. The lilac fits in though, one in a line of colorful houses stretching along the beachfront.
Thick, salty air coats my skin as I step out of my car. Living in Raleigh, North Carolina, humidity is nothing new. But here on the coast, the ocean waves season the wind.
“Theo is here!”
Glancing up at the shout, I spot Melony Buchanan on the second-floor deck, a phone to her ear, hand over the receiver. There’s one more floor above her, this house towering high over the dunes. The woman waves down at me, and a second later a familiar head peaks over the top railing.
“You made it! Just in time for crabs.” Tim Buchanan, a man I share too many embarrassing college memories with, grins down at me. The siblings’ faces are strikingly similar from this angle. Round cheeks, sharp noses, wide mouths made for smiling.
Just like their sister.
“Crabs sound great!” I shout up at him, heading for the stairs.
The heat of the day has begun to fade along with the setting sun, which takes away the excuse for my sweaty palms.
You’ve built her up in your memory. She’s just an ordinary girl.
The pep talk doesn’t help as I climb up to the first deck, where I give Melony a wave, and then the second deck, where I give Tim a hug.
“Thanks for inviting me. You sure I’m not crashing?”
“No way!” He pats my back before letting me go and heading for the sliding glass doors. “The Buchanan family vacation is open to friends. Has been since we were teenagers and mom and dad got tired of entertaining us. Come on, let me grab you a beer. How was the drive?”
A shiver runs through me as I step from ocean humidity into cool AC. With a reverse floor plan, the house boasts an open kitchen/living room combo that covers almost the entire top floor. On the far wall is another set of doors, plus a string of windows that reveal the Atlantic Ocean.
“Not bad,” I murmur, my eyes trailing over the shadowy heads on the other side of the glass.
An icy bottle presses into my hand, and I glance down to see Tim handed me a wheat beer. “Thanks, man.”
He points to the ocean-side doors. “Go say hi. Just need to finish up with this.”
Clearly, my friend is in charge of dinner for the night. He grabs an oven mitt and proceeds to pull a tray of cornbread from the oven.
The first summer after I met Tim, our freshman year at UNC, I heard about the annual Buchanan family vacation. Every August, Mrs. and Mr. Buchanan find an interesting spot somewhere in the United States and rent a house large enough for them and their kids. They covered the cost, but their offspring got kitchen duty for the week to pay their way. I wonder if I’ll get assigned a dinner. Hopefully everyone likes grilled cheeses.
After a bracing breath, I step out onto the deck and into a gathering.
Immediately, my attention strays to the woman on the porch swing.
Olive Buchanan.
She sways her seat and licks salt off the rim of her mixed drink. Mocha brown eyes meet mine, crinkling at the corners with her wide grin.
“Theo Phillips,” she greets me. “You’ve finally jumped into our pool of sharks.”
“We are not sharks!” Mrs. Buchanan announces, standing from her lounge chair and approaching me with arms wide for a hug. “Don’t listen to Olive. We are a pod of friendly dolphins.”
