The house was chaos. Our whole family had returned, and their family too, and some idiot decided months ago that the church they wanted for the ceremony was in my dad's stupid small town. Since nobody had any idea about the convention coming the same weekend, nobody had a place to stay. Fifteen people in our house -- fifteen! It had a lake and a big yard for all the guests, but the house itself... small. Almost a cabin really.
My big sister Carla was getting married the next day. The rehearsal had gone off without a hitch, the only reception details left were going to be easy to solve, and the families were getting along great. Everyone was looking forward to a smooth, happy day tomorrow.
It's too bad for them I was about to ruin all that.
Carla's 28, tall, thin, and blonde. Guys think she's beautiful but I think her short little nose makes her look... well... okay I admit it, she's beautiful.
I guess you'd think I was jealous. Of her fiance, and her looks. I'm Emily. At 25, I'm still the black sheep of the family, and I look it. She's got 4 inches on me, and I just look... ordinary. I'm never going to be glamorous like her.
She's also my parents' favorite. It's not exactly that they give her everything she wants because of that. True, she has an expensive car, and a paid-for apartment, and an embarrassing supply of clothes and shoes. But the main reason I don't have those things is I for some reason think it's better to actually be an adult and make my own way.
Okay, I let my parents pay for college, I'm not stupid. But while I don't have fifty dresses or even the room for them in my closet, I do have the self-respect that comes with working to pay my own rent, and my own drinks with my own, real friends. And since mom and dad can't tell me to live near them, they don't get to hover, and I can actually pick my own friends instead of letting the churchy parents pick them for me.
Oh, and I think I look fine. My hair looks great, dyed black, framing my face. I've got piercing eyes and a soft little mouth, and if my makeup is more about black and red than Carla's all-natural palette, that's just what I look best in. I'm not super-goth or anything. I look fine. I look good.
Geez, who wants fifty dresses anyway?! She actually has that. Well, I didn't count. I estimated.
Mom had been calling me from the kitchen table to come help deal with the sleeping arrangements. Like I said, the house is not big, and we only had so many mats and cushions and air mattresses and cots. Matt the army guy insisted on sleeping on the floor, but that left fourteen people, some old, and if we pushed it, only eight real places to sleep in.
She sat me down, and with her pencil and paper we tried to get everyone a place. We squeezed two of the little kids head-to-toe, got John the teenager to take the back seat of the big car, and one by one worked it all out.
We finally got to the end, and the last detail was where Eric the fiance, Carla the fiancee, and Emily her little black-sheep sister were going to sleep.
Both families are super religious, and putting Eric and Carla together in the same bed, even the same room, the night before the wedding was completely out of the question. No one thought they would do anything -- but it would have been scandalous for everyone to think they might be tempted on accident.
The last three places were the tiny guest room bed, a cot in that same tiny room, and Carla's old bedroom. We couldn't put Eric in Carla's room, there were three of her super-uptight girlfriends crammed together in sleeping bags on her floor. That meant he was on the guest room cot -- and that meant Carla got her old bedroom with her uptight friends, and I got the guest room bed.
I assume the reason nobody had a problem with me sleeping in the same room as the fiance is that we weren't getting married, so of course nothing would happen. But I think with my dark eyeliner and loose clothes, and yes, maybe my reputation for being sarcastic and putting my feet up on the coffee table in a most unladylike manner, it just never crossed anyone's mind. Eric was marrying Carla, after all. Next to her, unladylike Emily was more like... furniture.
Or maybe since I hadn't been home much since college, they didn't realize I was a grown woman.
I changed into my sleeping clothes, which was an XL T-shirt and, tonight, pretty lace panties. I climbed under the covers into the twin bed. Man that bed was small. It was a good thing it sat up against the wall because that way I only had one side to worry about falling out of. A few minutes later, Eric stuck his head in the door to say he'd said good night to Carla, and he was just going to stay up talking with the men of the house for a little while before he came to bed.
Sure thing, I said.
An hour later, the house was quiet -- all the rest of the men had gone to bed, and Eric slipped back in after spending a while on the porch, just gazing at the stars I guess. He had to tiptoe through one room and one hallway full of sleeping people, stepping over them as he went. He squeezed into the guest room and stood a while with the door closed to adjust his eyes. There on the floor was his cot. He'd have to squeeze sideways to even get next to it, there was so little room between the bed and the opposite wall.
So he did, and he took off his shoes, and socks, and tie, and shirt, and belt. Then looked at me to make sure I was asleep.
Obviously I wasn't. In the dark, he couldn't see me looking.
Then he slid off his slacks, folded them neatly, and in his undershirt and boxers, climbed onto his cot.
There was a creak as he got on, and then, just as he laid his head on the throw-pillow we'd found for him, there was a creak, then a snapping noise, and as I cracked an eyelid open, I saw him sink out of sight as the crappy old cot gave way onto the floor.
"Oh, no," he said softly, and then I woke-up for real and asked what was going on and watched as he tried to...
...fold it back into its standing position (it wouldn't stay)...
...prop it back up by using the wall and the bed (no luck)...
...fold it all the way up so he could stand it up out of the way (it wouldn't budge)...
...and finally, take all the wooden struts and legs and pieces, which were now turning the thin canvas sheet into a relief map of the Alps, and push them under the bed, so he could at least lie down on the hardwood floor. No luck.
The tiny guest room was now a serious problem. One bed, zero floor space, and nowhere else to sleep in the house. It was past midnight, around freezing outside, and not too much warmer inside.
He stood there for a little while, until I made the obvious suggestion.
"No, I couldn't... sleep there with you, that's not possible," he said.
"Why not? It's late, we'll fall asleep, we wake up in the morning, we get on with our lives. Not a big deal."
"That's really not going to happen."
"Eric... you've got nowhere else to go. I know. I told everyone where to sleep and there's no more room. This whole house is jammed. Your next best place would literally be the bathtub. And you've got a long busy day tomorrow. You need your sleep." I folded back half the blanket. "Just squeeze in and we'll call it a night."
He saw the logic of it. "Well... there doesn't seem to be anything else does there." He wasn't about to ask me to take the bathtub.
And I wasn't about to volunteer, for reasons that would soon become apparent.
"And you know I won't tell Carla... or anyone, of course. We'll say the cot broke only when you got up in the morning."
He nodded, and gave a tiny little speech about respect that made him feel better, and carefully slid first one leg, then the other, under the covers.
