LITMIR.BIZ

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“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 basement. 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 Rochelle 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.

      Rochelle 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. Rochelle’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, Rochelle 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. Rochelle 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 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

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