A Love Like Ours

Chapter 4

Michelle left me just beyond the door, saying that I should find my seat, and that she had to speak to the band. I watched her take off, hurrying to get to the stage across the room, and in the back of my mind, on some weird subconscious level, I was impressed that Mark and Emily had gone with a band. Most people these days chose a DJ over a wedding band. But Mark and Emily weren't like most people. None of the Freeman clan were.

The singer, a middle-aged gentleman in a tuxedo—the whole band was wearing tuxedos—leaned down to talk to Michelle, and nodded emphatically before making his way around to each musician as they continued to play—a full sound with piano, guitar, horns, and drums. And when he finally stepped back up to his microphone, he used his hand to count the band down to the last beat of the song.

The guests clapped half-heartedly, more than likely because only half of them were really listening as they talked and sipped their drinks. Michelle had disappeared among them again, and it was only when the singer started speaking into the microphone that I realized I should probably find my seat.

I was still too stunned to think clearly.

"Ladies and gentleman, if I could have your attention please..."

Table 10. That's where Emily had placed me. There weren't too many people in attendance. Certainly not as many as I'd imagined, and I joined the lot of them as they all scrambled for their seats, scanning each table for the little number ten.

And when I found it, tucked into a corner furthest from the stage and furthest from the wedding party table, I suppressed a smile. The whole table was made up of older couples—not middle-aged. Elderly. And a woman I recognized sat just beside the only empty seat left.

"Hello again," the older woman from the hallway remarked as I sat next to her.

"Hello," I said, eyes swiveling to the entrance of the room, to see if she had come in yet.

She hadn't.

"You look a little less lonely, but no less pathetic," the little old woman said then, but she was smiling as she said it.

I couldn't help but grin as I looked at her. "Thank you for noticing."

The singer was speaking again, but I couldn't really pay attention to a word he was saying. For one thing, I was totally preoccupied with seeing Madelyn again, and what seeing her had already done to me. The way her lips had fallen open like they used to when I would kiss her in unexpected places—except this time, the sight wasn't completed with the sound: the soft "Oh" that always drove me crazy. How she'd flipped her hair out of her eyes, a new little quirk that surely resulted from having shorter hair. The way her chest had heaved, her breasts dramatically rising and falling, pushing against the pale pink fabric of her dress—leading me to think of all the times her chest had heaved in the past, all the ways I'd been able to drive her to panting...

"What's wrong with you now?" the old woman said, calling my attention back to what was going on around me.

For another thing, she was a bit of a distraction herself.

"Sorry?" I asked, throwing a napkin over my lap to hide the growing quiver in my trousers.

"You look a little... distraught," she said, her murky brown eyes scanning my face, the space where brows used to be pulling down between her eyes. "Who are you here for?"

"Er," I tuned in for a moment, as the first couple of the wedding party danced their way into the room to loud cheers and applause. Everyone was standing up again. Everyone but the old woman and me. "I'm friends with Emily and Mark. And you?"