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 con
fided 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.