Hello Stranger(71)

Joe kept shaking his head. “You thought I was talking about a one-night stand?” he said. “With a human woman?”

“What other kind is there?”

He shook his head in disbelief.

So I added, “You called it a one-night stand.”

“But I was joking.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Now all the pieces were clicking into place. “That’s why you posted pictures of her online?”

Joe nodded. “Petfinder dot com.”

“And that’s why you felt so free to liberally mock her appearance like she had no human dignity?”

“She has no human dignity,” Joe said. “She’s a dog.”

“You said some harsh things,” I said. “Even for a dog.”

Joe dropped his shoulders, like Come on.

“I see,” I said.

Joe pulled in a deep breath now as the full understanding hit him. “You thought,” he said, “that I had a one-night stand with a drooly, noisy, sheet-shredding actual human female and then made fun of her body the next day on the phone in a public elevator before posting sleeping photos of her online?”

I made my voice very tiny. “Kind of?”

“No wonder you were so mean to me.”

“Was I?”

“Yeah! And I deserved it!”

“Right?” I said, trying to draw a tentative alliance.

Joe sighed. Then he sighed again. Then he said, “For the record. I have not slept with anyone—at all—since I walked in on my wife hot-tubbing naked with Teague Phillips, the Planet’s Most Boring Wanker.”

But now we had a whole new topic. “Oof,” I said. “That’s a long time.”

“I’m aware.”

“A really long time.”

“Thank you.”

I shook my head. “I thought … you were a total player.”

“You thought I was a total douchebag.”

I hunched up my shoulders. “Sorry?”

“I’m not a player, Sadie. I’m a damned monk.”

I felt a buzzing realization that this, right here, was another of Joe’s problems that I had the power to do something about.

Joe sighed. “Look. Here’s the truth. There’s exactly one person in this entire building I have any interest in sleeping with. And I don’t even think she likes me very much.”

Please don’t let it be Parker. Please don’t let it be Parker.

My heart clamped closed. “Who is it?”

But Joe didn’t answer.

In my panic, I started yammering: “Anybody but Parker, okay? I wholeheartedly endorse any and all sexual escapades with literally any resident of this building—even the snake lady—just not Parker—okay?—because she really—”

But Joe didn’t want to talk about Parker.

Right then he reached for my painting smock, hooked his fingers through the apron tie, and tugged me closer to him. I stepped nearer, into the cove between his thighs, and then I felt his palms settle on my hips.

There was that cedar and juniper smell again.

“It’s not your evil stepsister,” Joe said.

I shook my head, like It’s not?

He pulled me a little closer. “And it’s not the snake lady, either.”

I hadn’t really thought it would be. But I felt a frisson of relief, anyway.

Joe leaned in a bit more. Sitting on the stool, he was just the same height as me. Our faces were just inches from each other. “Do you want me to tell you who it is?” he asked.

I nodded, watching his mouth like I was in a trance.

Finally he said, “It’s you.”

I’d hoped he would say that.

But just to double-check: “It’s me?”

The world had been so hard to read lately. It had somehow seemed just as possible that he might say Hazel from the coffee shop.

But it was me.

And so, when he nodded, I just said, “It’s you, too.”

It’s true, I couldn’t see his face right then. Not in the traditional way. Not in the way I was used to.

But as I looked at the pieces of it—the outline of his lips, the dimple in his chin, the sandpapery stubble along his jaw—it felt almost like I could see him better than I would’ve otherwise. Like not seeing the big picture let me grasp the details more clearly. It wasn’t like looking into a void. It was like looking with a magnifying glass. Like being closer than close.

That mouth, for example, I could definitely see. Plump and firm and practically demanding to be kissed. But for real this time.

All I had to do now was sway forward. It would be so easy to match my mouth to his. To claim him for myself like that.

Wasn’t that what kisses were for, after all? To light a little spark in someone else? A spark that would burn for you?

I wanted some part of Joe to burn for me.

And I guess he wanted that back.

I edged forward.

But then I hit that force field of hesitation again. I paused right there, my mouth just an inch from his.

And then, once again, Joe helped.

His arm skimmed up my back, and his hand found its way into my hair, and then he cupped the back of my neck with his palm and pulled me to him—shattering that force field like a glass door at a coffee shop.