Everyone except Ryan and Jericho froze.

Adrian. The taboo was broken. Someone had mentioned his name.

"Hush, Jericho." Roch.e.l.le looked away. Tracey's eyes avoided mine, too. I'd made it all day without saying it, though his name was ready on my lips. I didn't dare speak it any more than I dared open the letters and e-mails he'd sent me over the past year. I hoped I was being selfish and silly, denying him because of what he'd denied me, but I couldn't be sure. All I knew was that Adrian meant trouble. Good-looking, good-smelling trouble, but trouble all the same.

Jericho smiled, oblivious to my pain. "Adrian's Benz-o. Now, that thing is pretty enough to eat."

And so is he.

I pressed my eyes shut. "I'll have some cake after all." Roch.e.l.le's mouth was already white with icing.

My fork picked between the layers.

Tracey elbowed me. "It's good. His mother made it."

His mother? All that money and his mother made the cake? How could Tracey be so bourgeoisie and so cheap at the same time? I was no wedding planner, but you didn't drop twenty grand on a wedding just to let the mother of the groom whip up the cake in the church bas.e.m.e.nt. I could see the telltale grooves from our fellowship hall baking pans now that I looked closer. "The swirls are pretty-"

"Eat it!" The cry was collective.

I jumped, banging my knees against the table legs. "All right, already."

Please don't let this taste as nasty as it looks, I prayed, then shut my eyes and slid the fork into my mouth. Strawberry filling, cherry icing and light-as-air white cake melted on my tongue. "Wow." Both hands flew to my mouth, a crazy thing I do when something tastes extraordinary. The food swing, as Roch.e.l.le calls it.

I moved a little too fast, evidently, but not fast enough for anyone to miss the hum of satin ripping up my sides. My chest tightened. Further inspection revealed two inch-high slits, hardly identifiable if I kept my arms down, but humiliating nonetheless.

"Now that was funny," Jericho said, choking down the rest of his second piece of cake.

Roch.e.l.le crossed her arms, trying to look serious. I sighed. Those quiet ones. They keep their emotions corked and when they blow, it's a total explosion of stupidity.

"Don't even start," I said, smashing my arms against me like sausage casings.

Tracey sputtered on the other side of me, making the sound my car does on winter mornings. I rolled my eyes, knowing that once the bride let that laugh go, it'd be at least ten minutes of uncontrollable giggling. Considering the stress of the day, she might go longer. That was a real concern. Roch.e.l.le's busting a gut was one thing, but Tracey rolling on the ground in her wedding dress was more humiliation than even I could bear. Not that I thought she'd go that far, but there was that time she'd giggled herself into the salsa at the junior prom.

"You people are sad, you know that?" I shook my head.

As if that had been the punch line for a sitcom, Roch.e.l.le reached across the table, yanked up one of my arms and then collapsed in her chair, her body contorting like James Brown. Her mouth opened and closed in the this-is-so-funny-no-sound-will-come-out laughter. Not one of her spritzed hairs dared leave its place.

"This is what happens when people don't get out much. Too easily amused." I secured my arms at my sides again.

My attempt to diffuse the humor had no effect. Roch.e.l.le turned from the table, holding her stomach. One look at Tracey, with both hands clasped over her mouth, told me this could get ugly. Ryan sat stunned for a second and then...escaped. No surprise there. Jericho reached for Tracey's cake. He'd seen all this before. And more. That left me to save Tracey 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 gla.s.ses. .h.i.t 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 tortoisesh.e.l.l 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 gla.s.ses, something he did when very nervous. More useless data I wish I didn't know.

Surprise plus embarra.s.sment 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 Roch.e.l.le'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 pa.s.sed my table, where Roch.e.l.le 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 Roch.e.l.le 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 pa.s.senger'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.?"

The sun glinted off his wedding band as he spun the steering wheel.

I turned to the window. A rose petal Roch.e.l.le had somehow missed slid into my lap. "I'm still Miss. Miss Dana Rose."

He carried me upstairs. I tried to protest, but Adrian wouldn't hear it. By the time we topped the first landing, sweat trickled of his bald head and onto my shoulder.

"I can walk," I whispered, suddenly feeling worse than before.

Adrian kept climbing. "You don't have to."

I slipped through his grasp and stood. "I know. Thank you." I gathered my skirts, careful not to scratch him with the th.o.r.n.y bouquet I'd s.n.a.t.c.hed off the table as we went by. Why I'd kept it, I had no clue.

"Just like old times, huh?" I said, as we topped the landing of the stairs to my apartment. The apartment I'd stayed up nights in dreaming of this very moment. Only in my dreams, I wasn't dressed as an animal trainer/ballerina in need of a Band-Aid and Adrian wasn't wearing another woman's wedding band.

She's gone.

That was true. But where did that leave him and me?

Adrian nodded toward the door across the hall from mine, the place where he'd spent a few minutes of his childhood. The rest of the time, he'd been at my house. His grin faded into a pained expression. I knew he was thinking of his mother. I was, too.

"Your mother's funeral was beautiful. I loved that song you sang. She would have loved that." The service was a year ago, the last time we'd seen each other.

Adrian nodded. "I thought she would have liked it. Nothing else seemed appropriate. Thank you for coming, Dane."

I leaned back against my door, happy for the thorns p.r.i.c.king my hand. Their p.r.i.c.ks muted the tearing of my heart. "If I'd known about it, I would have come to Sandy's funeral, too. Really." How long had I waited to say that? Two, three years?

He stiffened at the mention of his late wife, then fingered his ring, probably out of habit. "Sorry for not inviting you." He pulled off his gla.s.ses, pinched the bridge of his nose. "I needed some time."

Me, too. Still do.

I tried not to imagine what a mess we might have made of things if I'd responded to his phone call after his wife died. Without looking at the caller ID, I'd known it was him. Felt that it was.

Sandy had called me herself the night before and expressed regret for pursuing Adrian while she was supposed to be my friend. With labored breaths, she'd asked me to take care of him. I'd a.s.sured her, like I really had the power to do so, that she would recover and take care of him herself. When the phone rang again, it was Adrian, with all that pain in his voice.

"I called you once. When it happened." He ran a palm over his sweaty head. "I'm glad you didn't say anything." He reached out and pressed against the door, as if trying to hold himself up.

Staring up at him, I remembered that anguished h.e.l.lo. My phone outlet was still chipped from where I'd yanked out the cord, not trusting myself. His tone had reeked of need: emotional and physical. I'd known I wasn't the one to fill either category. Only Jesus could.

Both then and now, I feared one word might escape his lips.

Please.

So I kept running, not giving him, or me, a chance to say it. Though Adrian loved G.o.d, I didn't fool myself about his humanity.

Or mine.

I smoothed my hairline, raking a broken nail between my braids. When did that happen? "I'd better let you get back to the reception. Again, I'm sorry."

"No more apologies." He paused. "Please."

There it was, filling the hall like a fog. Time for me to exit, or in this case enter.

Adrian's fingers brushed my hand as I fumbled with my keys. I pulled away. I'd already broken a nail because I wasn't paying attention. If I wasn't careful, my heart would be broken, too. Why had Daddy made that stupid punch filled with childhood memories? Why had G.o.d allowed Adrian to come here, waking love I thought long dead?

I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.

The Song of Solomon. I avoided that book of the Bible, but Roch.e.l.le had included this verse in yesterday's devotional. I'd laughed at it, not knowing it would haunt me so soon. I hugged my middle and slipped out from under Adrian's outstretched arm. "Well, thanks again. I'd invite you in but-"

"That wouldn't be a good idea." His shirt eased across the rapid rise and fall of his chest, releasing more of that intoxicating tropical scent. He turned and headed for the stairs.

I brought my hand to my throat and slid my key into the lock. "Exactly."