The wedding ceremony was like a dream, a pleasant one that I couldn’t fully recall after it was over, but it left me with a glowing feeling. My memory was reduced to snapshots, images of moments. Emily and Simon joining hands, looking like they’d been waiting their whole lives for that moment. April wiping a surreptitious tear during the vows. Caitlin reading a romantic Shakespearean sonnet that made Emily blush and Simon’s hand tighten around hers. The most perfect, sweetest of kisses as they were pronounced husband and wife.

After the wedding, while we took an endless series of wedding-party photos, the chairs were repositioned and the chess field became the reception hall, with tables and chairs set around the edges and a makeshift dance floor in the middle. The caterers set up little stations of appetizers, the string quartet gave way to a deejay with a sound system, and before long everyone was chatting and eating. I was released from all the posed wedding photo–taking to find Daniel waiting for me with a plate of finger food—chicken wings, stuffed mushrooms, assorted canapés—along with a plastic glass of champagne.

“God bless you.” I couldn’t decide what I wanted to attack first, but the fact that I had hardly eaten a bite all day made me practically snatch the plate out of his hand. “Are we sharing this?”

“Nope, this is all yours. I ate my share while I was waiting for you.” He ushered me to a seat at a nearby table and picked up the beer he’d left there. “You haven’t eaten today, have you? You hardly eat during a normal Faire day, and with all of this going on, I figured . . .” He shrugged, and there was that feeling again. That easy, familiar feeling that we’d been together for a few years and not a couple weeks. He knew my habits and the things I liked. He knew me.

I sank gratefully into a chair and took a healthy sip of champagne. My role in this wedding was over. Now I could relax and enjoy myself. No longer a bridesmaid, now just a wedding guest. Thank God.

The food wasn’t particularly Faire-themed, which was probably a good thing. The more conventional wedding guests wouldn’t have gone for a dinner of giant turkey legs, mead, and funnel cakes. Instead it was an assortment of finger foods, like tapas, but in large enough quantities to guarantee that no one would go hungry. Once the guests were full of food, the toasts began, and we raised our glasses again and again, saying lots of “Huzzahs!” to the happy couple before they took the floor for the first dance.

“Come on.” Daniel popped one last mini-meatball in his mouth and wiped his hands on a napkin before he stood and extended a hand to me, his eyebrows raised in a question. “Dance with me?”

As if I’d say no to that. I let him pull me to my feet and onto the makeshift dance floor, moving to a sweet, slow song.

“So, tell me.” I laid a hand on his broadcloth-covered chest, relishing the way the muscles tightened under my hand. “Do you own any clothes that aren’t black?” In black dress trousers and a black button-down shirt with a black tie, he looked like a dressed-up version of the clothes he wore every day.

“Hey,” he said, but his protest had no real heat to it. He covered my hand with his, keeping it over his heart. “It’s an easy color to wear. Everything matches that way.”

I considered that. “One of these days I want to see you in a pink shirt.”

He barked out a laugh. “With my hair? No, thank you.” He shook his head, and the aforementioned hair fell into his eyes. I reached up to brush it off his forehead, and his eyes softened in reaction to my touch. “I’m really not a pink-shirt kind of guy. Besides . . .” He ran a hand up my back and then over my shoulder, the soft fabric of the sleeve of my dress sliding between his fingers like water. “You wear enough color for the both of us.”

The both of us. I loved the way that sounded.

The sun sank lower in the sky and a slight chill crept into the evening, just enough to take the worst of the heat off the day. Daniel and I took a break from the dancing to split a slice of white wedding cake, and I watched Simon and Emily mingle among the guests on the other side of the chess field.

“They look so happy.” I’d had a couple glasses of champagne and some cake by now, so I wasn’t exactly grouchy myself. I leaned back, pillowing my head in the hollow of Daniel’s shoulder, and his arm went around me as though we did this all the time. I wished we could do this all the time. Why did the summer have to end?

Nope. Not thinking about that yet. Instead I turned my attention back to the newlyweds and sighed. What I wouldn’t give to have someone look at me the way Simon looked at Emily. With his entire soul in his eyes. Out of nowhere I remembered how I’d felt at the end of last summer. The restless melancholy, the sense that I didn’t have my shit together, that had led me to send that first drunken message to the man who turned out to be Daniel. It had all been spurred by the news of Simon and Emily’s engagement, and the feeling that I needed to build a life of my own.

Then I felt a touch on my arm, and I turned my head to see Daniel staring down at me, and oh my God. He was looking at me the way Simon looked at Emily. When I looked in his eyes, I didn’t feel restless. I didn’t feel melancholy. A lot had changed for me in a year. He skimmed his fingertips up my arm and to my shoulder, leaving little electric tingles in the wake of his touch. My breath caught in my lungs, and I was lost in the endless green of his eyes.

“Hey, you.” My voice was hushed, barely more than a whisper of breath, but a smile played over his mouth. He’d heard me.

“Hi.” He caught a lock of my hair, winding the strands between his fingers. He bent closer and my eyes slid closed as I waited for his mouth to close over mine.

And that was when a raindrop splashed directly onto the middle of my forehead.

I started, my eyes flying open, and Daniel turned to look up at the sky as I touched the water that had hit me. “Is that rain?” Above us the sky had grown dark, much darker than it should be this time of evening; there should have been at least another half hour or so of daylight. But now a breeze kicked up, and there was a subtle rumble of thunder in the distance.

“Yep,” he said. “That’s rain. Shit.”

I hadn’t checked the forecast that day, but I wasn’t exactly surprised. Summer thunderstorms were common, especially when the day had been as warm as this one. “At least it waited till the wedding was over.”

“Mostly.” Stray raindrops started falling faster, and in moments they’d coalesced into a steady drizzle. Soon it would be a downpour. Daniel tugged me to my feet and we ducked beneath a large tree that provided some shelter. But that rumble of thunder in the distance meant lightning, so we couldn’t stay there. All around us the party was breaking up quickly. The music shut off abruptly as a couple volunteers, Mitch included, helped the deejay break down his equipment. Wedding guests started running for their cars. Meanwhile, Emily’s parents, April, and Caitlin gathered the wedding presents in tablecloths, pulling them away like Santa Claus with sacks of presents. In minutes, the wedding reception was all but over, abruptly called on account of rain. The only two who hadn’t gotten the memo were Simon and Emily themselves, still on the chess field dance floor, with eyes only for each other.

“Get out of the rain, you idiots!” I yelled, and Emily flicked her eyes to me, waving me off with a laugh before turning her attention back to her new husband, who smiled down into her eyes as though he couldn’t feel the rain.

Well, I’d tried. I reached inside the pocket of my dress for my keys, and then I remembered. I had keys but . . . “I don’t have my car.” It was at April’s house, because I’d come here in the limo. I’d intended to hitch a ride home with my parents, but apparently I’d forgotten to share that plan with them; they’d left after the cake was cut.

“Come on.” Daniel looked up at the sky again. “It’s just going to get worse. I’ll take you home.”

“You sure?” But we were already running in the rain, our hands clasped together and him pulling me along toward the performers’ parking lot.

He hazarded one glance over his shoulder, a skeptical look on his face. “Of course I’m sure. You think I’d leave you stranded?”

No. If there was one thing I knew for sure about Daniel, he wouldn’t leave me stranded.

* * *

  • • •

“It’s just up ahead.” I leaned forward in the passenger seat of Daniel’s pickup as he navigated us through the rain and onto my street. “Third house on the left. With the light on.”

“Got it.” He swung into my driveway. “Wow. I have to say I’m impressed.”

“Impressed?” I looked at the rain-soaked driveway, then back at him again.

“Yeah.” He pulled to a stop and for a moment we both sat there, windshield wipers throwing rain from one side of the windshield to the other, staring at my parents’ completely unimpressive house. “I had no idea receptionists in dental offices made so much. That’s a pretty nice house you’ve got there.”

“What?” My laugh echoed in the cab of his truck, louder than I’d intended it to be. “No. No, this isn’t my house. You know that.”