He took this to mean yes.

A few vague thoughts skittered through my l.u.s.t-fogged brain, the predominant one being: Where was Di?

As Andrei dug into his coat pocket for car keys, I spotted my sister standing apart from us, her face pale, Mikhail by her side whispering something in her ear.

My mind cleared long enough to catch her eye, and that was when I saw it. Tears. Di's tears, streaming down her face in silent grief. G.o.d. What did that Mikhail idiot say to her? I was going to kill him.

"What happened?" I demanded, striding over to them, glaring at Drummer Boy and putting a protective arm around my sister's shoulders. "What'd he do?"

Di looked at me with a grateful glance I'd never seen her direct my way before, but then she shook her head. "Nothing, El. It's me, not him."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," Di said as Mikhail edged away from us. "I'm sure. I just want to get outta here. But-" She paused and gave me a sad half smile.

"But what?"

"I know you probably want to stay or...or go somewhere else with him." She pointed at Andrei, and I marveled at my new man. Then I marveled even more at how quickly I'd begun thinking of him as My New Man.

"Well-" I skimmed my gaze over the Slavic hunk again, who had a pretty decent mastery of smoldering from a distance. But this was one case where sisterly bonding had to take precedence over s.e.x hormones, despite my body's rebellion. "Nah. We can leave. Let me just say goodbye, okay?"

"Okay," Di said. "Thanks."

I returned to Andrei, every blood cell threatening mutiny if I actually left him for the night, but I made myself explain aloud that my sister and I had to go.

He said he understood, and he scribbled his phone number down. I took it. I then gave him mine, and he put the slip of paper carefully into his shirt pocket, the one above his heart. He reached for my hand and pressed both of our palms against that pocket.

"I will call you," he said. "I mean this. Please do not forget me."

I a.s.sured him that would be impossible and, after one parting kiss, Di and I were out the door.

"I've never seen you like that," she admitted on the drive back to Glen Forest.

"Like what?"

"Like, you know, in the throes of pa.s.sion." She gave me a look that was part grin, part grimace. "Something other than your geeky side."

"Gee, that's heartening."

I thought she was laughing, but then I caught a few tears clinging to the corners of her eyes.

"What happened back there, Di?" I asked her as gently as I could. I wanted to know but, truth be told, it was also freaking me out. My hard-a.s.s sister never cried.

She swallowed. "I thought I was ready to move on." She paused. "I'm not ready."

"Well, no. Of course not. You need to give yourself more than forty-eight hours to recover from a nearly five-year marriage. Most people would take at least a week."

She snickered and looked at me strangely.

"What?" I said.

"When did you grow a sense of humor? You were never funny when we were kids."

"You never talked to me when we were kids, except for the occasional threat."

"That's not tru-" She stopped. Thought. "Well, okay. Maybe it is."

Vindicated, I looked at her askance. She was again crying a stream of silent tears. "Di, c'mon. Talk to me now. What's going on? What happened with Alex?"

"It's the whole musician thing. That really got to me tonight, you know?"

I totally didn't know, but I said, "Yeah."

"I miss that side of Alex. I've missed it for a long time. He got all respectable and everything, and that's fine, but instead of just polishing up the rougher edges, he got rid of his whole wild side. He doesn't play his Fender much anymore, and when he does, he doesn't do it with the drive he used to have. He's all into working at the bank now and being responsible, and those are good things, but-" She grabbed a tissue, blew her nose and shrugged.

"But you miss the guy you married?"

"Yeah. A f.u.c.king lot. He had dreams once. Things he wanted to do. I wish he'd have held on to a few of them. They kept him fun and young, and I felt that way, too, back then. Now," her voice turned hard, "he tries to say that I'm, like, reckless or immature for wanting to have a little fun sometimes. For wanting us to go out with friends. Such a total load of c.r.a.p. So I told him, fine! He doesn't have to come along. I work hard all week, too. I look managerial enough at the store every day. I handle all kinds of G.o.dd.a.m.n crises. It's not like it's a crime to want to blow off some steam on Friday or Sat.u.r.day night. Is it?" She turned to me with a demanding glare.

"Um, no-" I began.

"See! But does that b.a.s.t.a.r.d listen to reason? No. He goes off and calls me irresponsible. Says I should be home at a reasonable hour, like f.u.c.king ten o'clock on a weekend! And the sad thing is, I didn't even care much about going out. I just wanted us to laugh again and have fun and talk about something other than work and retirement funds and old-people c.r.a.p like that. I thought when you got married to someone they'd sort of stay recognizable."

"But they don't, huh?"

"h.e.l.l, no. At least Alex didn't," she murmured. "You think you know someone, but a few years go by and nothing's predictable anymore."

I tried to wrap my mind around this and apply it to my life. What would happen if Andrei and I got serious? We probably wouldn't, but what if? Would that phenomenal chemistry between us fizzle out within a couple of years? Would we eventually tire of talking about Russian writers? Would his singing someday cease to amaze me?

Di seemed to sense where my mind was headed. She sniffled a time or two and said, "Watch out for musicians, El. I mean, he might be your guy, The One for you, I don't know. But most of the time you're either second place to their rock'n'roll ambitions or they get realistic, give up their dreams and become soulless dweebs. Like Alex."

"I'll be careful," I told her.

Di nodded at me in approval and, in my head, Jane applauded as well.

"Tell me every detail, Ellie," my old college buddy/boyfriend Mark said over the phone a few weeks later, "starting with whether or not the man can dance."

I smirked into the receiver. "Andrei's a singer and a guitarist. He has a great sense of rhythm. He can dance."

"But can he dance well?"

"I know what you want me to say, so, yeah. Okay. You win. He can dance, but not as well as you, Mark 'Jitterbug King' Williams." Mark had a G.o.d-given talent for intricate footwork and shone like Fred Astaire on the dance floor. (And, boy, could he lead. He'd led me on for three months.) I heard a heavy faux sigh on the line. "That's a relief. I couldn't stand to be outdone by a straight guy. And a foreigner to boot. He's really Russian?"

"Yes."

"Huh. Well, you'd better bring him in May. I want to check him out."

"Bring him to Toronto? To a gay union?" I said, laughing. "That's so not going to happen."

"Why not? You ashamed of us?" Mark's voice sounded light, as though he were still joking, but I heard the catch in it that signified hurt.

"Absolutely not," I told him truthfully. "I just have no idea where he stands on stuff like gay marriage."

"What, you two don't talk when you're together? You don't discuss issues?"

I thought of the things Andrei and I had been doing together and, well, "discussing the issues" wasn't the main one.

"It's only been about a month," I said to Mark, evading a bit. "There are lots of topics we haven't covered yet."

"Hmm, yeah. Like how freaky it was when you found out one of your ex-boyfriends was dating your old roommate's husband's old roommate?"

Admittedly, convoluted as it was trying to explain it to anyone else, yes, Mark and Seth together did blow my mind at first, but I got over it. So did Kim and Tom.

Kim, my friend and favorite undergrad roommate, had eventually married Tom in a beautiful (and lengthy) Roman Catholic wedding the summer after my first year of grad school. Tom's roomie for one of our undergrad years had been a football-playing, Army Reserve guy named Seth-who had, incidentally, gone to high school with my then-in-the-closet gay boyfriend Mark (whom I dated that year after we met in Ballroom Dancing 102, which, let me tell you, is the most fabulous way ever to satisfy the college PE requirement).

Kim, Tom, Mark and I went on a few double dates but, after Mark finally came out, he started hanging around Tom and Seth's room...and, well...

"It wouldn't have been such a shock to all of us if Seth hadn't been Mr. ROTC Dude," I said to Mark, thinking of Seth's stocky build and buzz haircut, and how different he was in style and temperament from the lean, suave, near-preppy Mark. Kind of like Top Gun versus Top Hat.

"Just goes to show, people shouldn't stereotype."

"Very smug of you. I hope that means, if I do bring Andrei in May, you're going to keep an open mind about him. No antiBolshoi Ballet slurs or criticisms of Moscow's purportedly inferior wine. You'll behave?"

"If I must." Mark paused. "Hey, is this guy treating you well, Ellie?"

"Yeah," I said, feeling the smile grow on my face. "He's thoughtful and sweet. He gave me the most romantic Valentine's Day I've had since the one with you."

"Only, you two actually slept together at the end of the evening, right?"

"I don't have to answer that," I said, but I giggled, giving it away. It'd only been two days since the candy-heart-filled holiday, but the dreamy images from that night continued to make me euphoric.

"Oh, gawd," Mark said, groaning. "You're still in that stage."

"Mmm-hmm."

"Well, forget I asked about details, then. I don't want to know."

I grinned into the phone.

"Snap out of it, El, I'm serious! We've got my ceremony to discuss, and you need to help me decide which poems should be read."

But as Mark dithered between the Khalil Gibran, the Goethe and the W. H. Auden, my mind wandered into the land of romantic fantasy it'd inhabited since Andrei entered my life.

For the first day in ages, I felt as though everything might just work out. That I'd get my happily-ever-after ending after all.

It sure as h.e.l.l was about time.

A couple of Sat.u.r.days later, at Andrei's apartment, I pulled a can of tuna and a jar of pasta sauce from his grocery bag and handed them to him. He shelved them in the cupboard and reached behind him, palm open, for me to give him the next item. I dug into the bag again, this time retrieving a box of stuffing and a bottle of ketchup, and I had to fight the urge to laugh.

"You know, we're acting like an old married couple," I told him. "Grocery shopping together. Stocking the pantry." I didn't add that I loved it. Loved it.

He smiled at me. "This is not bad thing."

"No," I said, my heart soaring at this display of confidence and commitment-readiness. "It's not."

I could feel us moving toward that elusive Next Stage every time we spent more than a few hours in each other's company. Like that morning. Hunting for the cereal he'd tasted at Mikhail's but couldn't remember the name of. (Turned out to be Cocoa Puffs.) Laughing over which soups to buy. Racing to load the items we'd chosen, all of which he insisted on paying for, on the conveyor belt at checkout. Leaving the store hand in hand.

Women who were used to such intimacies might take them for granted, but I didn't. Mundane ch.o.r.es-car washes, laundry, cooking-all were better, or even kind of fun, when I did them with Andrei.

So when we finished putting away the groceries, I said, "I have a wedding to go to in three months, and I can bring a guest along."

He put his arms around me. "I am being invited?"

"Yeah. If you want to go." I waited to hear him say something like "It's still a long time from now" or "We'll see when things get closer," but he didn't.

He nodded and pulled me to him, kissing my forehead. "I go with you."

I snuggled into his chest and squeezed. "There are a few things you should know first. The ceremony's going to be in Canada."

"This is not problem. Work visa lets me go short time out of country. I have all papers in order."

"And it won't be difficult to take off work for three or four days?"

"Not if I am knowing from now." He moved his kiss down my nose, lingered for a moment on my lips and headed lower still to my neck.

Before I allowed myself to rip off his clothes and throw myself at his heavenly body, I figured I'd better tell him the rest. "There's, um, just one other thing. The couple getting married is gay."

He pulled back and raised an eyebrow. "You are meaning two women?" He looked interested.

I shook my head. "Two men."

He shrugged. "Oh. Less exciting, but also okay." He returned his full attention to my neck, and I felt a switch flip on inside of me.

This was love. It had to be. I was in love with him. I may have been for a week or two already. Maybe. In some form or other. Possibly even since the night we met. Love at first sight can happen. (Can't it?) But that day I recognized it for sure. That day I just knew my feelings were for real.

I yanked his cotton shirt out of the waistband of his jeans and ran my fingers in the s.p.a.ce between the fabric and his back. It was a study in contrasts-the soft, downy material against my knuckles and his hard, knotted muscles against my palms. I tried to ma.s.sage away the tension.

"I need more than back rub, Ellie," he said, his voice half laughter, half whisper.

"And I need more than kisses," I replied, which was all I knew I had to say to get what I wanted. Even so, I added, "I need you inside me."

Andrei didn't answer. He just began peeling off our clothing until there were no obstructions.

We collapsed onto his double bed, on the coverlet, which was a thin blue spread he'd picked up from Wal-Mart. I brushed the pads of my fingers against it, caressing it like I might his skin. He'd gotten it the first time we went out shopping together, and now I was becoming sentimental over it.

He opened the bedside drawer for a condom and slipped it on in a motion so smooth, so practiced that I'd been worried the first time I saw him do it. But Andrei had made it very clear he was a one-woman man, and nothing he'd said or done in the past month or so indicated otherwise.

"Are you ready for me?" he asked, running his tongue from my neck to my tummy, pausing to kiss my belly b.u.t.ton and then continuing down to my upper thighs and the s.p.a.ce in between them.