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"San Antonio?"

"No"

"Austin? Amarillo? El Paso?"

"No, no, and thank God, no"

"Dallas, then," I said regretfully "Too had You're practically a Yankee"

Nick had led me outside, where we'd sat on the doorstep and talked in the freezing cold for two hours

We had fallen in love very fast I would do anything for Nick, go anywhere with hi to marry him I would be Mrs Nicholas Tanner Haven Travis Tanner No one was going to stop me

When I finally had"Accentuate the Positive" with silky cheerfulness Nick had gone to the bar with my brothers Jack and Joe, and he would meet me in the house later

Nick was the first ht home, the first man I'd ever been in love with Also the only one I'd ever slept with I had never dated much My mother had died of cancer when I was fifteen, and for a couple of years after that I'd been too depressed and guilty even to think about having a love life And then I'd gone to a woreat for my love life

It wasn't just the all-fe relationships, however Lots of wo extra courses at Harvard or MIT The proble people, for giving and receiving love easily Itaway the people Iso to coax a bird to perch on your fingerit wouldn't happen unless you stopped trying so hard

So I'd given up, and as the cliché went, that hen it happened I met Nick, and we fell in love He was the one I wanted That should have been enough for my family But they hadn't accepted hi questions they hadn't even asked, saying things like "I' in econoe party" Their lack of interest in hiravated ment in itself, this ominous silence

"I knoeetie," my best friend, Todd, had said when I called to coe of twelve, when his family had moved to River Oaks Todd's father, TiMoMA in New York and the Kimbell in Fort Worth

The Phelans had always etarians, the first ones I had ever ar styles predolish Country and Tex-Mediterranean — the Phelans had painted each room of their house a different color, with exotic stripes and swirling designs on the walls

Most fascinating of all, the Phelans were Buddhist, a word I'd heard even less often than "vegetarian" When I asked Todd what Buddhists did, he said they spent a lot of ti the nature of reality Todd and his parents had even invited rin, my parents said no I was a Baptist, Mother said, and Baptists didn't spend their ti about reality

Todd and I had always been so close that people assu We hadn't ever been ro between us wasn't strictly platonic either I'm not sure either of us could have explained ere to each other

Todd was probably theI had ever seen He was slim and athletic , with refined features and blond hair, and his eyes the opulent blue green of the ocean in Caribbean travel brochures And there was a feline quality about hier of other Texan ay, and he had said he didn't care if someone was a man or a woman, he was more interested in the person's inside

"So are you bisexual?" I had asked, and he had laughed at my insistence on a label

"I guess I'm bipossible," he had said, and pressed a warm, careless kiss on my lips

No one knew me or understood me as well as Todd did He was my confidant, the person as always onmy side

"This is exactly what you said they would do," Todd said when I told hi my boyfriend "So, no surprise"

"Just because it's not a surprise doesn't "

"Just remember, this weekend's not about you and Nick It's about the bride and groom"

"Weddings are never about the bride and groos are public platforms for dysfunctional families"

"But they have to pretend it's about the bride and grooo with it, celebrate, and don't talk to your dad about Nick until after the wedding"

"Todd," I had asked plaintively, "you've met Nick You like him, don't you?"

"I can't answer that"

"Why not?"

"Because if you don't already see it, nothing I say could make you see it"

"See what? What do you mean?"

But Todd hadn't answered, and I hung up feeling mystified and annoyed

Unfortunately, Todd's advice went by the wayside as soon as I started a foxtrot with Dad

My father was flushed fro this wedding to happen, and the news about s were going his way I was pretty sure he had visions of grandchildren dancing in his head, generations of malleable DNA all at his disposal

Dad was barrel-chested, short-legged, and black-eyed, with hair so thick you could hardly find his scalp beneath All that and his Ger man, if not a handsome one He had some Comanche blood on his mother's side, and a bunch of Ger back in their native countries So they had co for cheap, winterless land that only needed their labor to bring forth prosperity Instead they got droughts, epidemics, Indian raids, scorpions, and boll weevils the size of their thumbnails