Читать книгу Made Of Honor - Marilynn Griffith - Страница 9

She got him. I don’t know how, but Tracey managed to get Ryan back to the table and keep him there. After a few minutes, we were all laughing and I wondered why I’d ever been worried. Things would be fine. Tracey was a big girl—well, not physically anymore—and could take care of herself.

And if not, there was always Rochelle. She’d try and take care of us all. A slip of humidity, orphaned by Fall, thickened the air. Afternoon, now fully clothed, burned away any memory of morning. I swiped my forehead as Rochelle held a piece of wedding cake up to her mouth, surveying the white icing, white cake and red filling. Strawberry or cherry, I couldn’t tell, but that stuff looked seriously nasty.

Tracey’s cake remained uneaten on her plate. “I’m full from that piece I shared with Ryan.”

Yeah, right. I shook my head. My mother would have perished at the sight of this cake, if she weren’t already dead. As it was, Mama had reminded me about how much sage to add to the Thanksgiving stuffing on her deathbed. She didn’t do things fancy, but she did them right.

Jericho arrived with two pieces on his plate. “It looks good to me.” With youthful abandon, the boy bit into a mammoth slice, pausing only to give a thumbs-up and shove more into his mouth.

Rochelle shrugged. “Remember that black fruitcake with the white icing a few years ago?”

Boy, did I. “How could I forget?” Wedding number four. Institutional green dress. Nice jazz. Horrible cake. Nightmare bad. I winced at the thought of it.

Tracey did, too. “Come on, ladies. Stop fronting on the cake. It’s good. Right, Jericho?”

He nodded, licking his fingers.

As if a teenager’s opinion about food could be trusted. I frowned. “That boy would eat the paint off my car.”

Jericho paused, considering the possibility. “Not your car. Maybe Adrian’s…”

Everyone except Ryan and Jericho froze.

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

“Hush, Jericho.” Rochelle 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.” Rochelle’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 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 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.?”

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

I turned to the window. A rose petal Rochelle 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 thorny bouquet I’d snatched 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 pricking my hand. Their pricks 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 glasses, 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 assured 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 hello. 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 God, 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 God 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 Rochelle 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.”

I’d known Adrian would come back one day, and that it would hurt when he did, but I had no idea how badly. And Rochelle showing up at my door before I could lick my wounds didn’t help a thing.

“You’ve got to admit it was funny.”

What was funny? Rochelle racing over here like a maniac? “Not really.” I kicked off my torturous shoes and started off across my living room, shoving an industrial-size tub of cocoa butter out of my path. My next destination was my room, to take off this wretched dress.

Rochelle kicked her pumps off. Her bare feet echoed mine against the hardwood floor. She paused at the tub I’d pushed aside. “That’s a lot of cocoa butter. What are you making with it?”

Here we go with the interrogation. “Body balm, soap and lotion. For Renee’s cousin’s wedding. Spa party for the bridesmaids. More stuff that I can’t think of right now.”

“Wedding favors. Now that idea is a winner, Dane. You could build a business off weddings alone.”

And feel like this every day?

I rubbed my eyes and leaned against the sofa, eager to end the chitchat. “I don’t think so.” I ignored Rochelle’s attempt to cheer me up and hobbled to my bedroom, shutting the oak door before she could enter, but knowing she’d come in anyway.

My room, still darkened by my closed blinds, allowed a few strips of afternoon to leak through. Tracey had always jerked them up every morning. I missed her sunshine already. I yanked at my zipper for a few seconds, and then padded to the door. “Rochelle, can you come here a minute? Help me?”

She arrived all too quickly. “Sure.” The zipper gave way and the dress with it. I maneuvered over the skirt and buried myself beneath my comforter. I turned to the wall. “Thanks.”

Daytime flooded the room as Rochelle whisked my blinds up.

A pillow over my head solved that.

Pointy fingernails, Rochelle’s version of tickling, jabbed at my middle. “Oh, come on. Get over it. It wasn’t that bad. Probably broke the ice between you two.”

I snickered. “It broke the ice all right. More like unplugged the dam.”

My friend’s hands went still. “But he didn’t come in, right? I came right over—”

“No, Mother May I, he did not come in. Thanks for trying to block though. I see now what you really think of me.” I lifted my head a little and gave her a smile, just enough to clear the concern in her eyes.

Rochelle slapped at the pansy-covered blanket. “I trust you, girl. Him, too. It’s the enemy I don’t trust. Know what I’m saying?”

I eased upright, resting my back against the headboard. “I do know. And I’m thankful you’re looking out for me. You could have done one better though and warned me he would be there.”

She held up both hands. “I’m innocent on that one. I figured she’d throw the flowers, but Tracey and I both agreed not to tell you about Adrian’s move until after the wedding and not to invite him. Seems she couldn’t go through with the second part. Probably knew you wanted to see him. Thought she was doing you a favor.”

“Traitors.”

She shrugged. “Just because you can’t deal with him doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t love him. Adrian is like a brother to me.”

A frosty pause ensued, probably at the mention of the word brother, as mine was still missing in action.

“So what did happen?” She slid under the covers, too.

“He carried me up the stairs.”

Rochelle’s jaw went slack. “Is that straight out of a fairy tale or what?”

Straight out of my nightmares more like it. “I got down on the second flight.”

Rochelle nodded. “Brothah fell down, didn’t he? I told you to stop eating all that pizza.”

I punched her shoulder, for real this time. “He didn’t say a word. I thought that holding my breath was making me lighter, until he started sweating.”

She held her stomach. “Don’t make me scream.”

“Make you scream? You weren’t the one standing there in that thing.” I pointed to the rumpled dress on the floor.

Rochelle patted my arm, looking down at her own dress, a smaller, yet just as terrible version of the one I’d removed. “I tried to talk some sense into Ryan’s mother about these dresses, but you know everyone thinks I’m too conservative. If you had—”

“I know. I know. I dropped the ball. I don’t know why I let my feelings—or lack thereof—about Ryan get to me. I regret it already.”

Rochelle pushed back the covers and stood. “No regrets, missy. Get up out of that bed and get dressed. We’ve got BASIC tonight, a special meeting and elections for officers. You’re going.”

I groaned and flopped back onto the bed. BASIC. Our sham of a singles group. A certified freak show if I’d ever seen one.

There goes my pedicure. And I’ll never get to that ice cream with Rochelle here.

“Please. I just had to put a block on my phone because of Deacon Rivers calling me from the retirement home. And Tad-the-Harvard-Grad? If he starts in with why he can’t seem to find a woman who is at his spiritual and intellectual level, I think I’ll throw up. Watching him do the weather is punishment enough.”

Rochelle leaned over my bureau and started her assault on my top drawer, no doubt looking for something suitable for me to wear.

“Don’t start throwing stuff out of that closet, okay? Last time it took me half an hour to refold all those clothes. You know there isn’t anything in there you like. Not one thing.”

She waved her free hand. Her other five fingers remained buried in my drawer.

“Don’t pay Tad any mind. He’s already in love—with himself. And I’m encouraging Deacon Rivers to join the Seniors Bible Study, but he’s still not convinced he belongs there.”

“Neither am I. He chased me to my car so fast a few Sundays ago that I thought he was Jericho.”

Rochelle harrumphed at the mention of her son. “That boy wishes he could run that fast. Maybe if he was chasing a girl. His coach called me all last year about his sluggish playing. I hope the summer AAU league helped some.”

I considered telling her that summer league ball hadn’t helped and that Jericho ran slow because he hated basketball, but some secrets were best kept. If Rochelle knew how much her son confided in me, our friendship wouldn’t be the same. That Rochelle was head over heels for her kid was obvious, but sometimes she could only hear what she needed for him to say.

My amateur wardrobe professional slung a pair of jeans on the bed with a turquoise short-sleeved sweater. I narrowed my eyes. The shade was too close to teal, Adrian’s favorite color. “Did you invite him? To church tonight, I mean?”

Rochelle stopped and stared at the ceiling. “I may have mentioned it, but I doubt he’ll show. He’s going to another church. That Messianic fellowship we went to last year.”

Wow. “The place we went for the Feast of Tabernacles display? That was awesome.” I’d wanted to visit again, once this work project was over. So much for that. The Nehemiah Group, comprised of a mix of believers—those Jewish by blood and those made Jewish by His blood—had intrigued me, both with the breathtaking outdoor display and open, vibrant worship.

Some of the detailed historical teaching had flown right over my head, but Rochelle had broken it down for me afterward. Such a place of scholarship and praise would be right up Adrian’s alley, given his late father’s Jewish background and his love of learning. I smiled, remembering his joy when I gave him his first Hebrew lexicon on a long-forgotten Christmas. Even when it came to the Bible, he was a nerd at heart. “I doubt he’ll show after this morning anyway.”

Rochelle picked up the pair of jeans and held them up? “A Velcro zipper? Dana, you’ve got to stop. This is crazy.”

I pouted a little. “They’re comfortable. And just for holidays and church potlucks, thank you.”

She grabbed another pair off the hanger, clucking her tongue. “And look at these. Elastic in the waist.”

“But they have a zipper. Look.” I pointed to the front of the pants with satisfaction. Rochelle looked at me with pity, which made me laugh harder. I couldn’t live her lacquered life for anything. The hairspray alone would do me in.

“Okay. Put these on. And no sneakers, either. I really don’t think that Adrian will show, but now that he’s back, you need to—”

“I’m not going to change myself in hopes that some man is going to react to me in some way. This is it. Me. All you get. All he gets.” The he came out with a little venom. The growl of my voice even surprised me.

Rochelle leaned over and picked up a pair of moccasins with turquoise stones. A gift from one of my customers. I loved them, but never wore them out. She placed them between us on the bed.

“You’re both my friends and I’m sick of you two botching this up. You may not see him for another month, I don’t care, but tonight, we practice.” She crossed her arms with finality.

We’ll see about that.

I stood and started out of the room, both hurt and happy when Rochelle didn’t follow.

It had nothing to do with anything that had happened today. The anger in my tone had been simmering for years. Sure, Sandy was gone, but was I just supposed to forget how he’d cut me off after our time together, my first time no less?

The painful memory drove me to the kitchen, hoping there would be a spoonful of ginger spice chai caked in the container. The way Adrian had played me then, so true to the Biblical account of Tamar and Amnon…It seemed that after we were together he’d hated me more than he had loved me. Understandably so, as he was the Christian then and I, the pagan soul. How could I blame him for running when I’d wrecked his faith?

I fell for that until Sandy took the distance between Adrian and I as separation and went for him, full throttle. And he went along for the ride, all the way to the altar, dragging my mother, my friends and even me.

“The first thing he asked me was if you’d started your business yet. He so believes in you. That’s hard to find in a man.” Rochelle’s voice startled me.

I stopped short, my hand on the cabinet. “I doubt it’s support. He just wants me to do something so he can come and steal my ideas…again.” Adrian’s business credibility wasn’t the best with me, either.

Rochelle banged the chai container on the counter while I heated water. “Are we back on that? Adrian’s store? Dana, you know that he didn’t deliberately steal ideas from you. Whatever you told him a zillion years ago was just brainstorming. People do that. It’s part of business.” She blew out a breath. “It’s not like you were going to do anything with those ideas anyway.”

Was that the point? What I did with them? No. The point was the ideas were mine, something I could never seem to get Rochelle to understand. Let somebody come in there and “brainstorm” a pair of those shoes. It’d be all over. “We weren’t in business, Chelle. We were in love. Even more, we were friends. Two friends on the stoop with big dreams…and he stole mine.”

Even as I said it, Adrian’s store, Kick! Candles, flashed through my mind. It was a woman’s refuge, intimate and relaxing, swathed with tulle and fresh flowers: roses in summer, amaryllis and poinsettias in winter, anything from daffodils to handpicked wildflowers in spring, when like a garden, the place buzzed with color.

It was October now. In a few weeks, his store back in Chicago would be decked in velvet, from the tapestries dripping off the walls onto the small couches beneath them. Ladies’ boots would line the edge of the deep shag as tired shoppers soaked their toes into its depths and bored husbands sipped cocoa and watched cable sports in massaging chairs. Overhead lanterns and die-cut sconces lined the walls, filling the store with a new scent every hour. A few times a year, Rochelle and I snuck up there and bought all the stuff we could on Adrian’s days off. I always wanted to kick off my shoes and stay longer, but never dared.

It was a place girlfriends loved, boyfriends needed and husbands feared. A place I’d described to Adrian on a rainy Sunday while he rubbed my feet after one of Daddy’s Sunday dinners. Our place.

Only he’d built it with Sandy instead of me.

And now Chelle wanted me to brush that away and jump into his arms, the very act that drove him away in the first place. “You know, this is why Adrian is off-limits. Of all people, you should be able to appreciate that some things just don’t need to be discussed.”

Not with people anyway. God and I would have a long chat about this tonight.

Rochelle added a swirl of milk to the already weak chai and walked into my dining room, taking a zigzag pattern to get around the boxes of bath and body supplies strewn around the space, chosen for its disuse and out-of-the-way location. All the time Tracey had lived with me, I don’t remember her messing with my supplies, except to clean around them.

Leave it to Chelle.

“What’s all this?” Rochelle demanded, taking inventory with her eyes. I looked, too, a bit ashamed at my excess, but it had all seemed necessary at the time. Shea butter, rose petals, calendula, chamomile, lye for soap along with coconut and olive oil…and then there were those boxes under my bed.

“Just some supplies.” I shrugged. “My clicker-finger went a little mad.”

She rolled her eyes. “A lot mad, I’d say. I know you think you’re getting a deal from those online companies, but the shipping is killing you and there’s always something better locally if you talk to people face-to-face—”

“Don’t start.” One-track mind, that one. If she wasn’t trying to marry me off, she was trying to motivate me into the marketplace.

I took a closer look at the receipt dangling from Rochelle’s fingers. Four hundred and thirty-eight dollars. An order I’d obviously made while rapt in the buzz of my promised-but-never-delivered promotion at Scents and Savings. Rochelle did have a bit of a point. I was going to have to get a little more mileage out of that small business license or forget this stuff altogether.

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, though checkered with failure, than to take rank with those poor souls who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

I grimaced. “Uh, Marcus Garvey?”

She shook her head.

“Winston Churchill?”

“Theodore Roosevelt. It’s at the bottom of all my e-mails. Just goes to show how much attention you pay me.”

She had me there. “Sorry. I sort of glaze over all that stuff.”

“Whatever. Look, you can say whatever you want about Adrian, but at least the guy stepped out and took a risk.”

My teeth set on edge. “Risk? What would you know about it? If you’re not at work or church, you’re home hiding behind that computer.”

Rochelle flinched, then pressed the receipt back onto one of the boxes. “At least I can afford to. You don’t hear me complaining about not being able to pay my bills. I’m not afraid to charge what I’m worth. If you come to Shoes of Peace, you won’t find any pumps hidden in my back room. They’re in the display window, where they belong.”

I hunched a little, like a crazed kitten driven into a corner. “Complaining? I haven’t asked you for a dime. You’re always the one pushing, trying to make me something I’m not. Don’t you know this isn’t about money to me? This is something I can predict, something I can control. I can throw it out and start over if it doesn’t work out.”

Clutching my chai, I tried to get a grip. Why couldn’t Rochelle understand? Tracey never bothered me about this stuff. I took a sip of the tea. Tepid. Ugh. I set it aside, ready to try once more to express my muddled feelings.

“Soap can’t lie to me or—or show up smelling like oranges and daydreams, waiting to break my heart—”

“Oh, honey.” Rochelle touched my shoulder.

“All these years you’ve waited, surely you know. Surely.” I shrugged off her touch, realizing I’d crossed her boundary by mentioning Jericho’s father. For once, I didn’t care. I had to get it out.

“This is my risk…and my safety.” My teeth nipped my bottom lip as if my subconscious were trying to shut me up. A staple gun would have been more appropriate. Why had I shared so much with Rochelle, shown her so much of my heart? She’d just use it against me in some subtle way, some devotional about the mouth showing the condition of the heart. Maybe if I actually talked to her about it instead of complaining to Tracey, she might realize what she’s doing and how it hurts me. If she only knew, I’m usually well aware of my heart’s condition before saying a word. “Now let’s just let it go.”

“Fine.” She sounded wounded.

I stormed into the living room, slowing with each step. Normally, I would have taken Rochelle’s dishing because I knew she had it hard being a single mom and sometimes needed to let go on somebody. But today, I just couldn’t take it. Was it because I’d used Tracey for the same purpose?

I didn’t want to think about it. As I dropped onto my leather sectional, a bulletin board framed with orders stared back at me. My bread store soap rack leaned against the wall like a gas tank at the middle of a long trip, half empty and half full. Just like my week. Just like my life.

“If you get your clothes on, we can grab some dinner before we go.”

The apple cobbler soap I’d made two weeks before filled the room with scent as I rotated the bars so air could hit every side. The tart sweetness settled down around my shoulders like an old sweater. Or an old friend.

I turned. “I’ll go, but I’m not voting and if Tad uses the words spiritual intimacy more than once, I’m out of there.”

“Deal.” Rochelle wiped her eyes and walked toward me, the skirt of her dress swaying with each step.

Knowing that she needed a hug, but wouldn’t offer one, I opened my arms to her. She accepted my affection, but more stiffly than usual. My gut wrenched. Letting off steam had seemed right at the time, but now it seemed foolish. I hugged her closer, bending her rigid fear into my soft shoulder. Fear of loving again, fear of what would happen to our friendship without Tracey to blur our sharp edges, to make us laugh in the right places.

I patted Rochelle’s back. “It’s okay. I’m scared, too.”