I woke up to the warm sun. It poured in through the windows that lined the walls in my fiancé, Shaun's bedroom. I was buried beneath his overstuffed comforter, snuggled between his multitude of pillows as naked as the day I was born. I peeked from beneath the comforter at the alarm clock beside the bed, 9:45am. Shaun had been gone for about two hours. I couldn't believe that I had slept for so long, but Shaun had really wore me out the night before.
I had surprised him by riding up during my spring break to his house at the beach. We always made plans to see each other at least once a month since he had taken this job and moved after college, but I had missed him so much. I was supposed to come up on Friday, but had decided to drive up early. So, here I was on Wednesday morning naked beneath his sheets while he was off to work at the bank.
Shaun and I had the perfect relationship. We met in college three years ago, when we were both sophomores. Shaun was from a well-off family from Columbia, and I was his complete opposite. The daughter of Mexican-American mother and white factory working father. I was the first to go to college from my family and it was a big deal. I had never thought that I would find someone like Shaun, but when I sat behind him in our American Literature class, I knew something was going to come of it. He asked me out three classes in, and we have been together ever since.
On our graduation day, Shaun surprised me at our joint family outing by proposing. I, of course, said yes and had never looked back. After graduation, Shaun was moving to a beach house that his family had purchased for him as a graduation present. Both of his older brothers had been given a property at the beach as well. Both had been modest homes that they would later sale to help finance their permanent homes when they got married. Shaun however, had learned from his brothers. Shaun was as frugal as they come. So when it was time for his parents to buy his house, he was able to put up a good amount of his savings toward the home he wanted and instead of getting a small one bedroom bungalow like his brothers, he was able to get a two bedroom house right on the ocean. It hadn't hurt that the economy wasn't doing so great at the time and houses were a dime a dozen.
The first time I saw the house that Shaun and I would share. I was overwhelmed. It wasn't huge, but it was brand new and shone and smelled of a house not lived in. It sat up on stilts with parking, a laundry room, and a double outdoor shower beneath the home. On the first floor was a kitchen, living room and a guest bed and bath. The upstairs was smaller than the lower level, but the entire floor was the master suite. Windows opened up to the sky on three sides and the fourth side held a huge open bathroom and two walk in closets. Shaun had taken me there the week after our engagement and we had broken in every room in the place.
I was an elementary major, but instead of moving to the beach with Shaun after graduation, I decided to get a job close to home and move back in with my parents. I knew finding a teaching job would always be easy and I wanted to spend one last year with my parents and help my mom plan the wedding. Shaun got a job with a very prestigious bank and moved into the beach house. Luck would have it that his younger brother, Jason, who was going to college at the College of Charleston decided to rent the guest bedroom from Shaun during his senior year. He would be graduated and moved out by the time we got married, so it was a perfect arrangement, and since Shaun was all about making a dollar he loved the idea.
I didn't really know Jason that much. I had seen him over the years at family gatherings, but when Shaun and I started dating he was in high school and didn't care to be around that much. Later after he started college, he was rarely home when I visited Shaun's parents. He was only a year younger than Shaun, so I thought it was weird that they weren't closer. When I asked Shaun about it one day, he said that Jason was too much like his mother's side of the family. Shaun, however, was very close to his oldest sibling Donald, who was much more like himself. Shaun and Donald both favored their father.
As the year had progressed and I had come to visit Shaun on the weekends at least once a month, I realized how much Jason and Shaun were different. Where Shaun was all business, frugal, and responsible, Jason was the opposite. He was fun-loving, comedic, and carefree. It drove Shaun crazy when he would find out that Jason would sleep through class, or failed to complete one of the errand runs he did for his part-time job. Jason learned to not tell Shaun to keep the peace and the living arrangement went more smoothly. When I was over on most weekends, Jason was never around. Right before Halloween, Jason had started dating a girl from Savannah named Lacey. I had never met her, but he spent most of his off days traveling the two hours to see her. Shaun told me that it was Jason's first real girlfriend and that Jason was falling hard for her. I secretly hoped that she was a good one for Jason, as I thought he was a great guy.
Actually, it was because of Lacey that I had decided to come up early. It was spring break for me at my elementary school, but instead of coming up for the whole week, since it would be too cold too really enjoy the beach, I had decided to stay home and help mom with the wedding plans. Shaun understood as he was going to have to work every day, except for Friday.
Secretly, planning the wedding was part of why I had not come, but another big part was the broken downstairs bathroom. The last weekend that I was here had been really awkward. The downstairs bathroom was out of commission. Something to do with an outflow water pipe. The sink, toilet and shower were all out of order, and seeing as it was too cold to utilize the outdoor shower, Jason and Shaun were having to share the master bathroom.
For them, it wasn't a problem, but when I stayed over it seemed I was always having to step out and head downstairs so Jason could get ready or he would discreetly leave and head to the nearby store. I assumed it was to use the restroom instead of taking a dump in the shared bathroom while I was there. I felt like I was putting him out in a big way and had avoided coming since then. Shaun had promised to get the bathroom fixed and a contractor had already come out and given him a quote, and planned to start in a few weeks.
