What He's Been Missing

“Baybee!” Uncle Cat called from inside the room. “Come over to me. I have something to show you.”

“Make that thirty minutes,” Krista purred to me after hearing his call.

“I can’t,” I said. “Grandpa R. Kelly? Really?”

“I’ll get rid of him.” Krista said. “In about thirty minutes.”

About an hour later, Krista showed up in the ballroom with her shirt misbuttoned. I couldn’t believe Ian agreed to allow me to come to the wedding, but Xavier was right—it was hard for him to hold any kind of grudge. Also, as Xavier explained, my not being there would actually make this harder for him—then he’d have to tell Scarlet what happened and that would present a whole new set of problems. I just had to lay low and keep a smile on my face.

Krista surprised me and had gone through a final check with most of the vendors before she’d hooked up with Uncle Cat last night, so we just did a walk-through once they started arriving, connected with the hotel staff, and made sure every beautiful blush bow from Scarlet’s dream was tied.

“You sure you’re up to this?” Krista asked me again after we’d gone through the song list with the DJ and I was about to go up to my room to get dressed for the ceremony. “I really can handle this on my own. And about the ceremony, I can just tell everyone you’re sick.”

“No,” I said. “Time to put on my big-girl panties; gotta reap what I sow. Ian made his decision and I have to live with it. I’m just lucky he didn’t completely cut me off.”

Testing his speakers, the DJ began to play Celine Dion’s “Because You Loved Me.”

“God, I hate this song,” Krista said, playfully covering her ears.

“It’s Ian’s favorite.”

“Really? Mr. African American History likes Celine Dion?”

“We sang it together one time at a karaoke bar on spring break,” I said. “It’s been our special song ever since.”

“Oh,” Krista said, but she seemed distracted looking down at the song list.

“What?”

“Just that—I don’t know if you noticed, but, well, that’s the song they chose for their first dance. That’s their song,” Krista said.

All I could do was close my eyes and breathe deeply.

“I’m so sorry, Rachel,” Krista said. “Just the way you two were . . . no one would’ve thought he’d . . . choose her.... I’m so sorry.”

“You know what? No more sorries. Promise that. Forever.”

Krista slid her arm around my waist and gave me a half hug that said, “I’m sorry.”

I could hear Celine’s voice bellowing through the hallway behind me after I walked out of the ballroom to head back to my room.

Weddings, from beginning to end, have a rhythm, a beat that takes off on the morning of the ceremony, climaxes at the altar, and subsides somewhere at the reception when the couple has their first dance or tastes that first piece of wedding cake. And the rhythm can be anything. Jazz, hip-hop, salsa, blues, rock and roll, classical, even country. It depends on the couple, the place, the time of day, how the sun shines, if raindrops fall. Whatever it is, I can feel it hours before the couple takes to the altar to say “I do.” In my feet as I run around making adjustments; all around me, as I talk to the soon-to-be-newlyweds. And it’s so beautiful to experience. To sense the beginning, middle, and ending of this short song in the entire opus of their lives together. And knowing I’m a part of getting that song just right—like a classical conductor on her stand directing with the baton—is one of the biggest joys of what I do.

Standing in my hotel room, looking at my bridesmaid dress, steamed and lovely, hanging on the back of the bathroom door, I tried so hard to hear the rhythm of Ian’s wedding. All day, I’d gone about business as usual. Clipboard in my hand, I pretended everything was as fine as it could be. As fine as the world might have it after I’d taken the chance to gain something and nearly lost everything. All I heard was a dull, drab stream of white noise—whatever that sounds like. Nothing. I wondered if everyone else could hear it, too. If I’d put it there. If me chasing my needs had robbed Ian of the music of his big day.

I put the orange dress on with my bottom lip hanging so low from my face, I nearly got it caught in the zipper. In the mirror, I looked more like I was going to Ian’s funeral than his wedding. Maybe Xavier was wrong. Maybe I should’ve gotten my silly ass right on that first flight back to Atlanta. I was no good to Ian like this. I was no good to anyone at all. (Violins, please.)

I slid on my shoes, grabbed my clutch, and promised myself I’d stop at the hotel bar for a shot before I went to the bridal suite to get in line with the other bridesmaids. I remembered my toilet-bowl promise of hours earlier to stop drinking, but this was a special case. In fact, maybe I needed to stop at the gift shop for a flask.

Xavier was standing at the door when I opened it.

“I didn’t thi

nk you could get any more beautiful,” he said, looking so effortlessly debonair in his suit I wanted to slug him in the stomach for every girl’s heart he’d ever broken. “But here you are.”

“Thank you,” I said tightly. I’d thought about Tante Heru and her promise to send me true, perfect love—the man of my dreams; all that I’ve been missing—at sunup. What a waste of fifty dollars. A belly full of bourbon, eyes filled with tears, and a broken heart, I had wanted to believe in her and her little accent. That it could be that easy. Speak to the universe of love, shake a chicken foot at it, and voilà! But no! Xavier was no Mr. Right. Not even Mr. Right Now. More like Mr. All Wrong. And I could tell by how good he was looking in his suit. As Uncle Cat said, “Men like me are too pretty to fall in love.”

“ ‘Thank you,’ ” Xavier mocked me, making my voice sound like a robot’s. “Come on! I go to talk to my boy and get you back in the wedding and that’s all a brother gets? I thought we were allies!”