Getting to his feet, he said, “You’re going to look like an idiot when Bobby walks out there without you.”
I watched him, but after that first look, he kept his gaze away from mine.He closed the commode.He scanned the floor.He moved over to an extremely uncomfortable chair and started digging around under the cushion.
“Keme—”
“How stupid are you?”he said.“Go!”
“Um, no?”
“Dash!”He gave up on the chair and moved a few feet farther down the hall to inspect a chest of drawers.“Can you please just—” He let out a frustrated sound that verged on tears.“You’re going to ruin everything.”
“You know what?”I said.“It’s my wedding day.Well, mine and Bobby’s.So, as long as we’re happy, it can’t be ruined.And they can’t start without me because I’m literally essential to this whole operation, which might be the only time in my life that I can say that.So if I want to spend a few minutes checking on you, I can.What’s going on?What’s wrong?”
He shook his head.But then he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
I don’t know why it took me so long.(Probably because I’d recently been considering the odds of tripping as I walked down the aisle and somehow ending up with my face planted in Bliss Wilson’s ample, uh, decolletage.) “Oh,” I said.“Oh, Keme.Hey.It’s okay.We’ll find them.”
Keme shook his head.His thin shoulders quivered.
“It’s okay,” I said again.He flinched when I touched his arm.“It’s going to be fine.It’s not a big deal.”
“Itisa big deal!”He took a wet breath.“I had them in my pocket.And then Millie wanted to see them, so I showed her, but I know she gave them back, and then we came in here, and—” He looked like he was fighting to hold back the words, but then he blurted—voice thick—“Please don’t tell Bobby.”
I rubbed his arm.“It’s okay,” I said.“I won’t say anything to Bobby.”
For some reason, this turned out not to be the right thing to say, because Keme dropped his hands and goggled at me like I was the biggest idiot he’d ever met.(Which might be true, honestly.) “You have to tell him!How are you going to get married without the rings?”
“I’ll figure something out,” I said.“But let’s not panic yet.Let’s look around and see if we can find them—”
“But you have to go out there!”
As though the universe had been waiting for this moment, the front door opened, and my dad called, “Dash?Kiddo?That’s your cue.”
The light in Keme’s eyes died.
“Just a minute.”Sometimes the muse is gracious.Sometimes the muse grants you exactly the right words.Sometimes, youcan’tsay or write or do the wrong thing.I choose to believe that’s why I then shouted, “It’s my tummy.”
Keme actually groaned and tried to disappear inside his blazer.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s work backward.Have you checked your pockets?”
Filled with self-recrimination or not, Keme had a surprisingly savage glare in answer to that.But in a particularly adolescent display of how-stupid-are-you, he shoved his hands in his pockets and said, “Yeah, I checked my pockets.They were right here, and now they’re—”
But he stopped.
And if you’ve never seen a teenage male brimming with testosterone-fueled self-righteousness suddenly have what I like to call A Moment, let me tell you: the taste is sweet.
His hands were shaking as he pulled out two rings.
“But I—” He stopped.“They were in the other—” And then, with something like despair, “But I checked!”
“It happens to me all the time—I put something in a different pocket and then forget.I’ve foundsomany Jolly Ranchers that way.”
Keme’s face suggested this was not as inspiring as I’d hoped.But then he crashed into me, crushing me in a hug.He held on for a good ten seconds—long enough to pulverize my ribs—and then he tried to knee me in the, um, apricots, and ran toward the door with a whoop of triumph.
5
I waited in the shadow of Hemlock House, the wind high and whipping and full of the smell of the sea and the summer grasses, and the music changed.
