from baying like a wolf at the moon. I lifted my cup of punch and extended it to the cackling newlywed. “Drink this. Now.”
Tracey shook her head, waving me off with a pained expression.
Jericho smiled at a girl a few tables away, as if a trio of satin-clad crazy women was an everyday occurrence. It was, for us, of course, but he wasn’t supposed to act like it. He turned back to me and pointed at Tracey. “She’s gonna blow.”
I agreed. “No doubt.” A laughing fit was imminent and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it…but drink punch. With a shrug, I lifted the cup to my lips, and then frowned at the lukewarm taste. How hard would it be to break a fin off Daddy’s dolphin? No sense in me not having any fun.
“Dana?”
It was a man’s voice. The voice of a man I’d once loved.
A man I still loved.
Suddenly, shaving the ice sculptures looked very inviting.
Maybe it wasn’t him. “Adrian?” I turned, hoping I wasn’t purple due to the oxygen that had sudden left my body. It couldn’t be him, but it was. How could this be?
I was going to put Tracey out of her skinny misery.
The flower thing was negotiable, but Adrian’s absence from anywhere that I am is an unspoken, understood request. I’d have to put these things in writing in the future. “How are you?”
“Fine.” He took my hand and pulled me up from the chair.
A little too fine. He touched the corner of my eye. I drew back in pain.
“Bouquet?”
“You know it.” My head started to throb. How silly must I look with this scratch and my melted makeup and chewed off lipstick?
He didn’t seem to notice as he pulled me close. Too close. His signature scent, a pineapple coconut blend cut with orange essential oil, overtook me. I melted in his arms like a Hershey bar on a car hood.
Adrian pulled me back for another look at my face, by now negating all standards of beauty. “Man, it’s good to see you. I’d planned to slip in and out, but I saw Tracey jerking around over here and I knew she was about to go into her act—”
As if on cue, laughter howled behind us.
The plastic cup in my hand cracked, spurting red liquid down the seam between us. I jumped back. Adrian’s glasses hit the ground. I reached behind me, grabbed some napkins and wiped his chest, which was much more muscular than I remembered. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He rescued his tortoiseshell frames and shoved them on his face.
Clark Kent, move over.
He took off his suit jacket and shook it, smiling as rivers of red punch drained off it onto my feet. That same gorgeous smile, a little crooked from where I’d jumped over him at the skating rink in the fourth grade. Punch continued to rain from the edges of his suit jacket, a perfect fit over his broad body just moments before. I dabbed at my own front with what remained of my napkin pile, wondering if I’d end up with “Tracey and Ryan, The Real Thing” imprinted on the front of me. It would be an improvement.
Adrian tossed his jacket over a chair, knowing he’d be able to have what remained of the stain removed at the dry cleaners. He’d get rid of the shirt. That much I knew for sure and I hated that I knew it. He’d been so polite about my crazy appearance. Now I had him looking half as bad. I dropped my eyes to the ground.
Ugh. Ugly shoes.
He grabbed my chin in that mind-numbing way of his and lifted it. “Don’t worry about it. Seriously.” Then he kissed my forehead. Any remaining oxygen left my brain for good.
I rocked over onto one heel. “Well, I’ll let you talk to Tracey now. That was nice of you to come all the way from Chicago.”
He crossed his arms. “I came from across town. I’m back in Leverhill now. Didn’t Tracey tell you?”
I pressed my lips tighter so the scream wouldn’t escape. “Tell me what?”
Adrian squinted at me, despite his glasses, something he did when very nervous. More useless data I wish I didn’t know.
Surprise plus embarrassment blurred Adrian’s features. “So you didn’t know anything? Not even that I’d be here today?”
I looked over at my two friends, who’d long since stopped laughing. “They wouldn’t have told me about this wedding if they could’ve gotten away with it.” My voice trembled, trying to conceal the truth of the statement.
Adrian didn’t speak. Instead, he gave me what I needed. Another hug. “It’ll be okay. I prom…” He let the word drift away, along with the pain that must have rimmed my eyes at his mention of promises. “It’ll work out.”
I dared look up at him, dared feel his embrace around me, knowing all that had gone between us, all that had been broken. There was something still there, a shadow of a time when his face alone had been a promise. When his hugs had been a vow. How I’d missed those times.
Missed him.
I reached up to hug him back, only to hear that terrible sound of fabric going wrong again, this time not so softly.
As a swatch of animal print emerged from the pink satin, I suddenly questioned Lane Bryant’s decision to sell cheetah girdles. And my decision to buy one. Adrian pulled me into his pineapple-orange chest as Tracey and Rochelle’s laughter resumed behind us. He didn’t laugh. He knew me too well. “I am sorry,” he whispered into my hair.
“It’s not your fault.” I took a deep breath, knowing it wasn’t my dress he was apologizing for.
“Where’s your car?” he whispered.
I nodded to a gravel lot about a hundred feet away from the tent.
“Don’t worry. We can do this.” With that, Adrian swept me into his arms and calmly passed my table, where Rochelle sat on the edge of her seat, now devoid of mirth and ready to spring to my aid. I reached back for the bouquet and gave both Rochelle and Tracey a don’t-move-don’t-say-a-word look. I needn’t have bothered. They both knew better.
Jericho obviously did not.
“You riding in the Benz-o, Aunt Dane? Save me a seat!” He cupped his hands around his mouth for volume. No one missed the message or its implication.
To think that I diapered that child.
Adrian squeezed me closer and set off for my Mercury Cougar. Adrian somehow managed to get me into the passenger’s seat. He tossed his jacket across me before shutting me in. He rounded the car and got in.
I considered crying, but this was so far beyond that. “Now what?”
He reached in the ashtray for my keys. My mind reeled. He remembered. “Now, I take you home, Miss.” The salutation hung in the air. The ignition revved. Adrian looked over his shoulder and backed out slowly. “Or is it Mrs.?”
