Hearts in Harmony

She couldn’t remember ever meeting someone who could be so helpful to a stranger when there was nothing in it for them. She wished she had met him at a different point in time. If she had, her life might have been entirely different now.

But that was just foolishness. Nothing would change her past, or who it had made her. All she could do was continue on, and hope her past would never catch up with her future.

As she walked from the house to the car, Celeste studied her new neighborhood. The houses were older and fairly small, but well-cared for. Most of the people made tending the grass and flowers in their yards weekend projects. A few of her neighbors had waved at her as she hurried by, recognizing her as her landlord, Hank’s new tenant.

She smiled and breathed the fresh green scents deeply. This neighborhood had been a good choice for a new beginning, everything was beautiful and taken care of with pride.

The only ugly thing here was her mother’s car.

Gritting her teeth, she pulled the car door open, hoping the creaking hinge didn’t draw too much attention, and slid in. The four-wheeled monstrosity started with a chug and a backfire, but it did start. Celeste arrived at Adrian’s house in under two minutes.

Adrian lived in a small brightly painted bungalow with a well-kept yard. Celeste recognized his shiny black car in the driveway. Beside his car sat a small sporty blue model.

Taking a deep breath for courage, Celeste knocked on the front door and waited.

A deep male voice called from inside. “Hey! Adrian! There she is!”

The door opened. Adrian stood tall in the doorway as he smiled down at her. In the middle of the living room stood a rather handsome blond man about the same age. The man smiled as well and cocked his head to one side.

Celeste squirmed. She felt strange enough with Adrian looking at her. She didn’t want to be analyzed by his friend, although she didn’t know why she cared. After today, she would never see him again.

“Hi, Celeste. Or should I say Miss Mind?” Adrian grinned. She could see his eyes focusing over her shoulder, taking in her mother’s scrap heap of a car parked on the street.

Celeste lowered her head and quickly reached into her pocket for his license and credit card. “I’m really sorry about this. Thanks again for your concern this afternoon. Bye.”

Without giving him a chance to respond, she shoved the two cards into his hand, turned and ran back to the car.

“Wait!” Adrian’s voice sounded from behind her.

The second she inserted the key into the ignition, he appeared at the car door. With her heart in her throat and grateful for the shelter of the car, Celeste rolled the window down at the same time as she started the engine.

Adrian ducked his head toward her. “May I see you again?”

Celeste had to force herself to breathe. She would have been a fool if she didn’t know what he wanted. She wasn’t ready for that kind of relationship. She wanted to trust him, but she didn’t know if she had it in her to do so. Maybe she never would. But even if she did, for now, she still needed time to hide and lick her wounds.

Celeste cleared her throat. “I don’t think so, but I’m flattered that you asked.”

Adrian stiffened and stepped back, ramming his hands into his pockets. “I had to try. Take care of yourself, Celeste. If you ever need a hand again, you know where to find me.”

She drove away subdued. She didn’t want to live her life as a recluse—that wasn’t why she had moved so far from all that was familiar. However, meeting new people had turned out to be much more difficult than she thought it would be. The people she met at her new job were safe, because she would only see them at work. But this was different. Starting something with Adrian, even if it was only friendship, was too close to home. Literally.

When she pulled in front of her house, Celeste didn’t get out of the car. She turned off the engine and stared at the home that had been hers for only four days. God had provided a way for her to start again—she had a new job and a new place to live. She’d also prayed for God to send her some new friends, people she could trust and with whom she could be safe.

God had put what had appeared to be a trustworthy man in her path, but she’d let fear get the best of her. He’d offered what could be the beginning of a friendship, and she’d turned and run. Now she couldn’t go back without looking desperate.

Celeste lowered her forehead to the top of the steering wheel and shut her eyes.

God, I’m so sorry. I said I trusted You, but I blew it. I couldn’t do it. But I really need a friend, I really do. The next time You show me someone I can trust, I promise I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, just because I know You’re giving me what I asked for, and You know best.

Celeste sighed, picked up her purse, and went inside.

First she’d promised God, and now she promised herself that the next time God provided an answer, she would listen.

Adrian strummed the last chord of the final song for the service. As the pastor approached the microphone, Adrian placed his guitar on the stand. Along with Paul, Bob and Randy, his friends on the worship team, he quietly exited the stage.

Every Sunday he sat with his friends during the pastor’s sermon, but this time, when they shuffled into their usual seats near the front, Adrian kept walking.

During the short break when the children had been dismissed into Sunday School, he’d done a quick double-take as he looked into the congregation. Sitting almost at the back, if he wasn’t mistaken, he’d seen Miss Never Mind.

He’d been thinking about her all week. She’d hummed along to his favorite CD. For a couple of the songs, she’d actually mouthed the words to the choruses. That meant she’d heard them before, often enough to repeat them.

He’d taken it as a sign from God when she finally got inside the car. But then, the tiny tiger who had walked for hours rather than get in the car had turned into a frightened rabbit. He’d been almost afraid to look at her, for fear that she would fling herself out the door at fifty-five miles an hour to get away. He’d ended up chattering like a dripping tap, just so there wouldn’t be silence in the car.

Things hadn’t gone any better when she’d showed up at his door. She’d disappeared so fast he was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with him.

Now, here she was in church. He felt as though God was giving him another chance.

As he approached, her eyes fixed on him.

She wore a nice skirt and blouse with matching shoes, a far cry from the dusty jeans, T-shirt and battered sneakers she’d worn the last time he’d seen her. Some kind of pink fabric thing that matched her blouse adorned her hair. But what really made him take notice was the Bible beside her.

He stopped, then crouched down to speak to her. “Hi, Celeste. It’s great to see you here today. Is this seat taken?”

Her pretty eyes widened at the question, holding his attention with their vivid jade-green color.

In the blink of an eye, she lowered her head, scooped up her Bible and the bulletin and stiffened. Her voice came out in a tight squeak. “No, it’s not taken.”

At the first scripture reading during the sermon, Adrian leaned closer to Celeste. “I left my Bible up at the front with my friends. Can I peek at yours?”

She paged to the correct passage and held her Bible between them. He could have read it better if it hadn’t been shaking so much, but Adrian didn’t dare move to steady it.

During the sermon, he tried his best to pay attention to the pastor’s words, but Celeste’s presence distracted him.

She was still scared of him. He wanted to know why, but this wasn’t the time to discuss it, not in the middle of the service. However, if he waited till it was over, he’d be back up front, with the worship team, and she would be out the door before he had a chance to find out what was wrong.

When Pastor Ron drew his sermon to a close, just before everyone was instructed to bow their heads for the closing prayer, Adrian touched Celeste’s arm. He tried not to feel hurt when she flinched. “Please,” he whispered as he leaned closer to her. “I’d like to talk to you after the service. I have to go up to the front now for the closing hymn. Promise me you’ll wait. Don’t be so nervous. I don’t bite.”

Her eyes drifted to the front, then back to him. “All right,” she whispered.

He was the last one to arrive at the front, and he played terribly. Paul kept turning away from the congregation and toward him, going as far as nodding his head in rhythm to get Adrian to slow his tempo to match everyone else.

Adrian fought to slow his pace, repeating in his head that the music was to help everyone in the congregation center their thoughts on God; they didn’t want to be distracted by an impatient guitar player.

Still, instead of watching his music, he watched Celeste. The closer they got to the end of the song, the more Celeste kept glancing at the door. On the last repeat of the chorus, she began shuffling in her chair.

After the last chord, Pastor Ron closed the service and dismissed the congregation. Adrian should have kept playing as the sanctuary emptied, but he dropped his guitar into the holder and walked off as his friends stared at him. This time, he couldn’t let her get away.

He arrived beside Celeste just as she tucked her bulletin inside her Bible. Her purse was already slung over her shoulder. All the bravado he’d worked up dissolved into a little puddle at his feet.

She looked up at him. “I really enjoyed the service. Your pastor is quite a dynamic speaker.”

Adrian nodded. A neutral topic. Perfect. “Yes, he is. Since this is your first time here, I’d love to introduce you to him.”

“Maybe another time. I think it’s time for me to leave.”

Adrian stepped aside, but he couldn’t let her go. He cleared his throat. “If you’re not busy, why don’t you join me for lunch? My treat. So we can talk.”

The chatter, background music, the scraping of chairs, and the voices of little children echoed behind Adrian, but between the two of them, the silence was almost tangible. She looked up into his eyes and studied his face as he’d never been studied before.

Finally, she gave him a weak smile. “That would be nice. I’m new to the area and obviously new to this church. I do have some questions.”

He tried not to appear too eager or too relieved. “Great. I just have to go get my guitar before we leave.”

Back on the stage, Adrian mumbled a quick apology for not helping pack up the sound system, slipped his guitar into the case and hurried away.

This time, Celeste’s old car was running fine, and she insisted on meeting him at the restaurant. Since he’d left the building sooner than he’d ever left before, they arrived before most of the regular church crowd, and got a table right away.

The waitress quickly took their orders and left them with a decanter of coffee. Adrian folded his hands on the table, and smiled at Celeste. “Welcome to the neighborhood. I think you’ll like it here. It’s very peaceful. The residents are mostly people who have owned the same homes for years and have retired here, or younger families starting out with their first home.”

She nodded. “That sounds nice. Have you lived here long?”

“It depends what you call ‘long’. I bought my house five years ago, and I’m still here. Maybe I’ll be the next generation to stay until I retire.”

“What about your church? What’s it like?”

Adrian smiled politely. He felt more as though he was being interviewed than having a friendly chat. At least now, unlike a week ago, Celeste was talking openly. Interview or not, anything was better than the scared rabbit she’d been last time they talked.

“It’s a good church, with good people, good fellowship and the pastor delivers a strong message. It’s a church plant, started from the big church where I grew up, not far from here. We’ve only been in this building a few months, but I guess I’ve been with the same crowd all my life. As I understand it, my mother brought me to my first service at the parent church when I was one month old. I became a Christian when I was twelve. When they started the church plant, the associate pastor at the old church, who is now the only pastor here, asked me and my friends if we would go with the core group and put together a worship team, because we all grew up together in the church and all play an instrument.”

Her eyes widened. “Wow… You’ve been a Christian for seventeen years. And always been with the same people.”

He almost asked how she figured out the time frame, but then he remembered she’d been in possession of his driver’s license. The math was easy. He tried not to be flattered that she’d memorized his birthday.

“For the most part, yes, it’s really been a great church family. All of us guys on the worship team grew up in this neighborhood. We’ve been together all our lives, except Paul, briefly. He moved away for a while, but came back. Do you remember him? He was at my house when you dropped by with my driver’s license.”

Celeste nodded. “Yes. He’s the one who plays the bass guitar right?”

“Bob and Randy live close by, too. Bob’s the drummer. He’s as Italian as he looks.” Adrian grinned, thinking of his friend. “But don’t tell Bob I said that.”

Her eyes widened, and Adrian hoped he hadn’t given her the wrong impression. All the guys teased Bob endlessly with jokes about his large family and ethnic roots, but Bob, being Bob, took it all in stride.

“Randy’s the one on the keyboard. I should probably warn you about him.”

“Warn me? Why?”

“He tends to fool around a lot, and most people don’t take him seriously, but he’s a great guy. He just needs to settle down a bit.”

Since he’d mentioned Bob’s ethnicity, he tried to think of some way to set Randy apart. If he had to narrow it down to one thing, he would have said that Randy’s most striking feature was his blue eyes. Personally, Adrian didn’t think Randy’s eyes were a big deal, but women seemed to be drawn to them. That was exactly the reason he was not going to draw Celeste’s attention to Randy’s big baby blues. Besides, Randy was just… Randy.

“That’s so nice that you and your friends are on the worship team together. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what do you do for a living?”

Now, more than ever, he felt as if he was being interviewed.

Adrian stiffened. “Actually, my job is changing. Last year they promoted me to management, and they’re changing my job description again, so I don’t know what I should call myself.”

She kept staring at him. Fortunately, before she had the chance to ask him anything else, the waitress appeared with their lunches.

Adrian folded his hands in front of him on the table. “Would you like me to lead with a word of prayer before we eat?”

She turned her head from side to side, taking in the people at all the nearby tables. “Here? In a restaurant? You would do that?”

Adrian’s mouth opened, but no words came out. He’d never thought about not praying just because he was in a public setting.

Before he could think of something to say, she broke out into a wide smile. “I think that’s a great idea.”

Abruptly, she folded her hands in front of her on the table, bowed her head, closed her eyes and waited.

Adrian’s mind went blank. He cleared his throat to give himself time to compose his thoughts.

“Thank you, dear Lord, for the food we’re about to eat. Thank you also for new friends with whom we can share. I ask for Your continued blessings in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”

He’d barely finished his first bite of fries when Celeste started again with the questions. “If you came with the same people from the other church, and you’ve been attending for so long, this must be a really nice group of people. Stable and everything? No surprises?”

Adrian nodded while he swallowed his mouthful. “I’ve got an idea. If you actually want to meet some of the people, rather than just sitting next to them, come to the evening service. Attendance is always lower, but it’s a great opportunity to talk in a more relaxed setting. If you’re nervous, I could pick you up.”

Time stretched on forever as she glanced at him, then over his shoulder to the door, then back to him.

“I’ve never been to an evening church service; that sounds like a good idea, but if you don’t mind, I think I’ll take my own car.”

Adrian felt his smile drop, but he quickly forced it back. He tried to convince himself that it was better she came on her own, because he had to be early to set up and practice. However, unless he picked her up, he couldn’t be assured she would actually go. He hoped she would keep her promise.

They made pleasant small talk for the remainder of lunch. When they went their separate ways in their separate cars, Adrian couldn’t help but smile. She’d been careful to avoid telling him exactly where she lived, but he knew her car. He couldn’t miss that eyesore of a vehicle, no matter where it was, unless she parked it in the garage every single time she got home.

Starting Monday, it would be a good time to change his route when he took out his bicycle. Instead of the bike trail at the park, he might just cruise the neighborhood. Slowly.

But for now, he had never anticipated attending the evening service so much.

Celeste walked into the foyer quietly. Instead of standing alone in the growing crowd, she made her way immediately to the sanctuary. She sat in approximately the same place she had that morning and waited for the service to begin. She’d only been sitting a couple of minutes when Adrian looked up at her and smiled brightly.

Easily recognizing the other men from Adrian’s descriptions, she watched them as they practiced, but she paid the most attention to Randy, the one on the keyboard.

Randy seemed to be the only one obviously having fun. He would try different things, and with trying something new, he often made a mistake. Whenever that happened, Adrian also made a mistake, and then they both did the worst thing musicians in a group could do—they both paused at the same time in the middle of a song. Every time that happened, Paul, the bass guitarist, shut his eyes and kept playing until they recovered, while Bob, the drummer, struggled not to laugh. Randy would shrug his shoulders, play what he was supposed to for just a little while, then the cycle would start again.

Watching Randy on the keyboard sent a wave of longing through Celeste. Randy wasn’t bad. He was just a little too adventurous for his own good.

She shook her head and turned away.

She was in church to worship God, the God who had pulled her out of the pit. She wasn’t here to critique the band.

To distract herself, Celeste turned her attention to the others in the sanctuary. Almost everyone there was close to her own age. The evening crowd was about a third of the number who attended the morning service. Hardly any children were present. The majority of the people wore jeans, including the men of the worship team. Even the pastor was dressed casually. There wasn’t a tie to be seen in the entire crowd.

What appeared to be the youth group occupied an entire section. In keeping with the informal setting, the worship team played only contemporary music, making Celeste guess the evening service was geared to the teens and young adults.

Adrian and all his friends, this time, joined her during the pastor’s message, though they all returned to the front for the closing. The second the pastor announced coffee and donuts at the back, most of the seats in the church emptied.

It didn’t take Adrian long to appear at her side.

“If you want a donut, you’d better hurry. The youth group gets them pretty fast. Sometimes, it’s a real free-for-all.”

Adrian’s friendly smile did little to quell her rising uneasiness. All he was doing was offering her a donut, and nothing more. She really was trying to follow what she thought was God’s direction. Adrian could have been a poster child for trustworthiness. Unlike her, he was stable enough to have bought his own house as a single man, while she was barely in a position to rent. He worked at a job he’d had for a long time. He even visited his mother often.

Since they’d parted that afternoon, Celeste had told herself over and over that all he’d been was…nice. He’d given her no reason to doubt his sincerity, and no reason to think he was anything other than what he appeared to be.

Adrian escorted her to the back. No one approached them, although she did notice a few people taking second glances, as she was probably the only stranger in their midst.

She had just bitten into a powdered sugar donut when the other three men from the worship team circled around her.

Randy, the man who had played the keyboard, stepped closer. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” he asked as he waggled his eyebrows.

Celeste nearly choked on her donut. When she’d first told people she knew that she’d started attending church, everyone had asked her the same question, except no one called her nice. Celeste tried her best to wipe the powdered sugar from her mouth discreetly.

Adrian sighed. “Celeste, I’d like you to meet my friends. Except if they keep it up, they won’t be my friends for much longer.” He paused. No one refuted him, so he continued. “This is Randy.”

Again, Randy grinned. Celeste had never seen such an adorable boyish grin on a man his age, and Randy’s blue eyes were positively striking.

“I believe you saw Paul briefly at my house.”

The tall blond man nodded politely. “Charmed,” he said, and his expression made her think he actually meant it.

Celeste felt herself blushing, something she hadn’t done for many years. It felt strange.

“And this is Bob.”

The drummer’s eyes narrowed slightly as he studied her. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you here before. Welcome to Faith Community Fellowship. It’s good to have you here.”

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.