Celeste had enjoyed the morning service, but to be seeing everyone just being themselves completely melted away her worries. Some teens were squabbling over the last donut and all the adults were in small groups, laughing and talking. From the volume of the chatter and laughter, Celeste could barely believe she was in a church.
Randy turned his head toward the front, and then back again. “Hey, Adrian. We’ve got all our stuff cleaned up. Maybe you should do the same. At least wind your patch cord and knock down your stands.”
Adrian smiled. “Excuse me, Celeste. I’ll only be a few minutes.”
As Adrian left, another man joined them. Randy introduced him as Pastor Ron.
Celeste had never spoken to a real live pastor before. He wasn’t at all like she expected. He seemed so…ordinary.
When the pastor excused himself, a few more people from the congregation joined them, and Randy introduced them one by one. Before long, she’d talked to so many people she couldn’t remember their names.
By the time Adrian returned, the crowd was thinning. Randy noticed the same thing, and whispered to her that it was because the donuts were gone.
Celeste couldn’t help herself. She liked Randy. In fact, she liked all of Adrian’s friends. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed a day so much, if she ever had. Most important, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually been able to relax in a crowd.
Unfortunately, with relaxation came tiredness. Paul caught her stifling a yawn.
“Excuse me,” she muttered between her fingers. “I don’t know why I’m suddenly so tired. I should go, anyway. I have to be up early for work in the morning.”
Almost in unison, Adrian, Bob, Randy and Paul checked their watches, and Adrian said, “Let me walk you to your car.”
She said her good-byes and made her way out with Adrian at her side.
He waited patiently while she struggled to get the key turned in the lock the right way to open the car door.
“Thank you for a lovely day, Adrian.”
“You’re more than welcome. I hope to see you again soon.”
She nodded and quickly scooted into the car. “Yes,” she mumbled as she pulled the door hard enough to force it closed. “You’ll see me next Sunday morning. Bye.”
Chapter Three
Celeste shut down her computer. It had been a busy day at work and she would have liked nothing better than to go home and put her feet up, but the fridge and cupboards were bare. Knowing she wouldn’t have the energy to go out again after she’d settled down for the evening, she headed out to pick up her groceries on the way home.
List in hand, she trudged through the store. As soon as she had everything she needed in her grocery cart, she proceeded to the checkouts. One look at the long lines nearly made her groan out loud. At the same second she pushed her cart into what she hoped was the shortest line, a male voice sounded behind her.
“Hey, Celeste, fancy meeting you here.”
Her breath caught and her hand shot up to her throat as she spun around. She nearly sank to the floor with relief that it wasn’t anyone too familiar. “Adrian, you startled me. What are you doing here?”
He nodded at her shopping cart. “Same thing as you, apparently.”
His cart contained more than double the volume of her own.
She counted the people in the line ahead of her. “It looks like we’re going to be a while.”
“On your way home from work?”
“Yes. I guess you are, too,” she replied.
He nodded, but didn’t speak.
She tried to guess what he did for a living. His clothes didn’t give her an easy answer. Today, he wore tailored slacks that looked as though they belonged with a suit jacket, which he wasn’t wearing, a good-quality cotton dress shirt and a tie. She knew his job was in management, but she didn’t know what he managed. Obviously it wasn’t something that required manual labor or a uniform.
She turned her attention back up to his face. He was grinning. “I knew you were here. I saw your car.”
Her face flamed. She’d parked her mother’s car in the back corner of the lot, next to the garbage bin, far away from everyone else, in an effort to escape notice.
She didn’t want to hear that she could be so easily found. She tried to console herself by thinking no one she used to know would associate her with her mother’s car, even if they did see it. Her own car was by now halfway across the country with her mother in it.
“If you really must know, it’s my mother’s car, not mine. We traded so she could have something safe to drive on her vacation. She left last week.”
Adrian’s smile dropped. “It sounds like that old thing isn’t very dependable.”
“It’s not like it’s going to blow up or anything. The worst that will happen is it will stall.” She patted her purse. “If that happens, I got a cell phone on my lunch break today. All I have to do is call a tow truck.”
One eyebrow rose, but he said nothing.
The line moved them to the point where she had to begin unloading her groceries onto the conveyor belt. Having the length of the buggy between them made it impossible to talk softly, thus ending their conversation, which Celeste regretted. It had been so long since she’d had such a pleasant conversation about nothing in particular, she’d forgotten just how good it could be.
Adrian’s deep voice interrupted her mental meanderings. “That’s my favorite kind of ice cream. Do you share?”
She fumbled with the ice cream tub, then thunked it down before she dropped it. “I think it’s in the Ten Commandments somewhere that you’re not supposed to covet thy neighbor’s ice cream.”
He covered his stomach with his hands. “I haven’t had dinner yet. That ice cream is too tempting for me. What about you? Have you had dinner? We could go out somewhere.”
Celeste focused intently on unloading the remainder of her groceries onto the conveyor. “Sorry, not this time. There’s stuff I have to put in the freezer. Like this ice cream, for example.”
“I have an idea. I’ve got a frozen pizza. We can both go to your house, and you can put your groceries away. Then we can eat my pizza for supper, and your ice cream for dessert.”
“Frozen pizza?” Celeste hesitated, then placed the last of her groceries onto the conveyor belt. After praying about the situation with Adrian all week, she’d decided to trust that God really had sent her a potential friend. However, she wasn’t sure she was ready to open up the private sanctuary of her home.
But she had to eat.
When she was a teen and still living at home with her mother, Celeste had often had her girlfriends over for frozen pizza. The food had been horrible, but the evenings were fun.
Adrian wasn’t exactly one of her cheerleading buddies, but Celeste knew she needed a little fun.
She tried to smile, but thought it probably looked as fake as it felt. “I haven’t had a frozen pizza for years. Are they still just as bad?”
Adrian nodded very seriously. “Yes. I bought extra cheese.”
“In that case, I can’t refuse.”
They chatted very little as the clerk processed their orders, and soon they were at her car.
“You parked beside me.”
“Yeah. I did, didn’t I?”
Her heart pounded. Adrian wasn’t Zac.