Hello Stranger(43)

And with that, I did know what to do: Just smile—and positively radiate warmth and availability—at every single man who walked in through the Bean Street doors as if he were my future husband.

Not my usual strategy in life.

But not that hard to do, either.

I mean, Dr. Addison had a job to do here, too—right? He would recognize me. Sure, I looked a little different with my hair up and my passionfruit lips. But I could rely on him to know me when he saw me.

Anyway, I’d just have to put my faith in destiny.

What was meant to be was meant to be.

Except maybe it wasn’t meant to be … because an hour—an actual hour—went by, and Dr. Addison didn’t show up.

There’s a very specific slow-burn heartbreak to getting stood up as the realization slowly comes into focus: No one’s coming. In that one interminable hour of looking up each time the doors opened and watching every single one of them sweep on past me like we were total strangers—which we must have been—I felt myself wilting like a time-lapse version of a neglected houseplant.

It was the lethal combination of the hope with the disappointment, I decided.

I’d walked in, all fresh and bright with my green leaves lifted high toward the sun … and it took only an hour to render me flopped sideways, limp and melted over the edge of my pot.

Emotionally, I mean.

The point is, untold numbers of innocent napkins gave their lives during that hour of waiting. All for nothing.

At the one-hour mark, with no text from him, I called it.

I was done here.

I stood up, feeling like the whole room of people must be watching me and shaking their heads, and started picking up all the napkin shreddings off the table—deliberately, self-consciously. Careful not to screw this up, too.

But that’s when the outside door opened again, and this time a breeze burst in with it, and that breeze sent the napkin pieces scattering off the table onto the floor—all my efforts destroyed, as so often happened, by some totally unrelated outside force. And despite everything, I smiled like a movie star at whoever was coming in, just in case.

It was Pavlovian at this point.

But it wasn’t Dr. Addison coming in the door. It was a lady.

So I turned my attention now to the floor and the tragic heartbreak confetti now covering my section of it, squatting to start picking it all back up.

That’s when a pair of shoes appeared in my field of vision.

And from the fumes of evil radiating off them and the sudden waft of Dior’s Poison, I could take a pretty good guess: Parker.

I stood up.

“You look like a girl who just got stood up,” she said.

It wasn’t the voice I recognized. It was the viciousness.

Definitely Parker.

Nobody else on earth could make me feel that shitty that fast.

“Hello, Parker.”

“How did you know it was me?” she asked, sounding overly delighted—almost sarcastically so—to be recognized.

I sighed. “By the cruelty. It has a distinct frequency.”

“I saw you here an hour ago on my way out,” Parker said then, enjoying a chance to savor my misery. “Now I’m back, and here you still are—wearing lipstick and everything—but still just utterly, completely alone.” I could feel her gleeful pout. “It’s so heartbreaking.”

“What do you want, Parker?”

“I want to ask you about that super-cute guy on our floor.”

“What guy on our floor?”

“The one who stares at you in the elevator.”

There was a guy who stared at me in the elevator?

“The one with the bowling jacket,” she said, like, Hurry up.

“Joe?” I asked. Joe stared at me in the elevator? Something about knowing that felt really … nice.

Parker had no idea she’d just made me feel nice. She snapped her fingers at me. “I need his number.”

All I could think to say was “Why?”

“Because I’ve decided he’s my future husband.”

Hey. That was my thing. I was the person with a future husband.

“Future husband?” My body was suddenly filled with tiny firecrackers: a flash of jealousy; a flash of protectiveness; and then a final flash of Hell, no.

Now, I didn’t know Joe all that well. And it’s fair to say I’d had a lot of conflicting feelings about him since that red-and-white bowling jacket of his came onto my radar. And my jury was still out on whether he was a good guy or the full opposite.

But I would never in a million years sic Parker on him.

That was just basic human decency.

“I think he’s dating someone,” I said.

“So?”

“So, I think he’s taken.”

“So?”

“So…” The fact that I had to explain this was the exact reason why she was never getting his info. “It would be morally wrong of you to pursue a man who’s already seeing someone else.”

Parker did not take kindly to my obstructionism. “Are you the cheating police?”

“I’m just not going to help you with anything, Parker. Ever. For any reason.”

I could feel more than see Parker narrowing her face in suspicion. “You like him, don’t you?”