Page 3 of Only One Bed: Anthology Vol. 1
“She was only four or five and already full of such kindness and generosity. People like that are rare. You can go your whole life without meeting someone like that. So, when one comes along you have to do whatever you can to hold on to them.” He paused for a moment, causing an unexplained belly flutter, before continuing.
“Benito only had his camera. He snapped one quick photo of her, packed up and left. A year later, he won a Pulitzer…for this photo.” He straightened, ushering a cool breeze on my shoulder and I’d turned to face him.
He was still handsome with an athletic build, an easy laugh and deep brown eyes with long lashes that should be illegal. We spent the next two hours wandering around the museum catching up on old times. I talked about papers I was working on and internships I was hoping to land. He talked about some of his cooler assignments and living in Brooklyn. We definitely exchanged numbers but I wasn’t sure if Julian really wanted to hang out again or if he was doing that thing that people do when they haven’t seen each other in a while: vague invitations with no real plans to meet. When weeks went by without him calling me, I thought I had my answer. But apparently, he’d been waiting for me to call and almost two years went by.
“Hey,” he called to me with a laugh. “It’s not a big thing. Shit happens. People get busy.”
I felt my face heat again and my heart was pounding. I was replaying every moment of the day in the museum.
How many times had I caught Julian looking at me? How many times had he casually brushed my arm or went out of his way to touch me? Was he flirting with me and I was too oblivious to see it?
“Hey, Dee Dee. You okay?” Julian was looking at me with a concerned expression. I was still trying to make sense of this new information. My eyes drifted up towards the windshield. I saw a baby deer standing in the middle of the small mountain road we’d turned onto after we’d left the highway.
I screamed Julian’s name. He looked up just in time to avoid the fawn but too late to avoid running off the road and down a small embankment.
Two
“Fuck. Fuck.”Julian smashed the steering wheel with his fist. “Dee Dee, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I panted. I was a little shocked from the accident but otherwise I was fine. “I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m good. You sure you’re okay?” he asked again and I nodded.
“Did we hit the deer?” I bit my bottom lip and raised my eyebrows. Julian hit me with a quizzical expression before he burst out laughing.
“Are you for real?” he asked between chuckles. I narrowed my eyes, pursed my lips and nodded. We ran off the road and practically into a ditch; it would be nice to know we didn’t do it for nothing. Plus, I didn’t want a Bambi body count on my hands. “Nah, we didn’t hit the deer.”
“Can you drive out of here?”
“Let’s see.” Julian shifted into drive and hit the gas. The truck lurched but it didn’t move and we could hear the wheels spinning. He tried the same thing in reverse. No luck.
“I’m gonna go check it out.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his door before turning around to look at me again. “You good, Dee?”
I nodded and gave him a little smile. He returned my smile with a wink and closed the door.
I started drawing in deep calming breaths. My hands were shaking in my lap and my heart was pounding. I wasn’t sure if I was reacting to the accident or to our conversation about our day at the museum. In the following weeks I’d thought about him non-stop. I reflexively kept one hand on my phone at all times hoping to feel it buzz with a call or a text from Julian. But as the weeks and months passed, the butterflies died one by one and the excitement I’d felt was replaced by the same foolish feeling I felt as a teenager, pining for a cute older boy who was just being nice to his friend’s kid sister.
Is it possible that I misread his signals back then? If I did, what am I supposed to do with that information? What if I bring it up and I’m wrong? I’d be stuck in this truck until we get to the wedding and then stuck at a mountain resort with our families for the entire weekend. My brain was still whirring when Julian tapped on my window.
“Jesus Christ!” I jumped in my seat and clutched my heart. After rolling down the window, I screamed, “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry.” He rested his elbows on the open window and leaned in, grazing my upper arm with his fingertips. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’m fine.” I wasn’t, but it had nothing to do with the accident. “What’s going on back there?”
“Well, the ground is really soft and we have two flat tires. I’m gonna call triple A and see how soon they can get us out, but I have to walk around because the reception is spotty around here. So sit tight and I’ll be right back.” He tapped the door of the car and started backing away.
“Wait. You’re leaving me here alone?”
“I won’t go far. Just enough to get a signal.”
“No. We’re in the mountains of Upstate New York. I’m not comfortable with you wandering around these woods by yourself. I’m coming with you.” Our town was small and diverse, but not without issues. There were an unspoken set of rules my parents expected Marcus and me to follow, and I know Julian’s family was the same way. One very important rule was strength in numbers. I unbuckled my seatbelt and reached for the door handle. The door was open an inch when Julian pushed it closed and leaned in the window.
“I love that you’re so worried about me,” he began, and my heart thudded at the word love, “but my number one priority is keeping you safe. Number two is getting us to that wedding. If I fail at either one of those things there won’t be anything left for Wendy to strangle after our mothers are done.” He grinned at me. I rolled my eyes, let out a chuckle and nodded. “Sit tight…Nadirah.” He gave me a lingering look that melted me before he turned and walked in the direction of the road.
Apparently, I’d been holding my breath because as soon as I lost sight of Julian I let out a huge sigh. I thought about turning on the car to play some music, but I didn’t want to risk draining the battery. I scrolled through my phone for a few minutes, but I couldn’t do much without a signal and I didn’t want my phone to die in case we were stuck out here for longer than we expected. Staring into the woods where Julian disappeared was too stressful, so I started looking around the truck for something to read. I knew that Julian loved books and I was surprised that I couldn’t find one.
The glove compartment opened with a pop because I’d officially reached owner’s manual levels of desperation. After one final glance into the woods with no sign of Jules, I dug through the glove compartment. I pulled out a stack of papers and I was careful not to read any of them when a photograph slipped from them. My breath caught in my throat when I saw the image. It was Julian and me on the night of my senior prom.
