“So…” he said. “Can you not see me right now?”
“I can see you,” I said, maybe a tad more irritated than I needed to be. “You’re standing right there.”
“My face, I mean, though.”
I sighed. “I can actually see your face tonight. For the first time ever.”
Joe frowned. “For the first time ever?”
I thought maybe he was having a hard time with the idea that I’d been looking straight at him all these weeks—had touched him, talked with him, even kissed him—and had never seen his face. It was a tricky thing to comprehend, to be fair. I was just about to launch into a whole neurological explanation of how acquired face blindness worked when he jumped in.
“You never saw me before your surgery?” he asked.
I thought back. “There was that one time. In the elevator. When I overheard you talking about your one-night stand with the bulldog.”
Joe shook his head. “But I’ve lived in this building for two years.”
Okay. “But I only moved in not long before the surgery. So I was new.”
“But you’ve been using that space on the roof as a studio for a year.”
I frowned. “It’s weird that you know that.”
“I know that,” Joe explained, “because I helped you carry up your art supplies when you first moved in.”
I thought back. “You did?”
“All this time, you didn’t know that was me?”
I shook my head. “Was that you?”
“Are you sure you weren’t face-blind all along?”
I gave him a look, like, Very funny. But then I thought about it. “I remember the guy from that day. But he had a huge crazy beard.”
“Yeah. That was me.”
“Hell of a beard, bro. You could park your Vespa in that thing.”
“My wife had just left me. I’d abandoned all grooming.”
“Hence the baseball cap.”
“Exactly.”
But I was calling it: “I don’t think you get to mock me for not recognizing you from that day. You were basically ninety-eight percent beard.” I reminded myself to stay bitter. We were not friends.
“I’m just amazed that you didn’t know who I was,” he said. “That whole time.”
I conceded. “I did not know you were Art Supply Guy.”
“I said hi to you sometimes, even—but nothing.”
“Did you?”
“I’m just thinking about how it wasn’t until after you got face blindness that you started to recognize me.”
“I recognized the bowling jacket,” I corrected. “Not you.”
“How are you doing now?” he asked. Like he really wanted to know.
How was I doing now? “Better, maybe?” I said. “I had swelling in my brain right near the area that recognizes faces. They kept telling me I might get the ability to see them back once the swelling went down … but it kept not going down. Until recently.”
“And did you get the ability back?”
“Sort of?” I said. “Partly. I can see some faces, but not others.”
“But you can see mine.”
“Weirdly, yes. Even though I’ve never seen you before.”
“But as we’ve just established, you’ve seen me a lot.”
“Apparently so.”
“I guess your brain remembers me, even if you don’t.”
“I guess it must.”
“Well,” Joe said then, like maybe he was winding it down, “I really am sorry. I would have been nicer to you if I’d known.” And then, like an afterthought, he added the most wrong thing I’d ever heard anyone say. “Even after you dumped me.”
Even after I—what? What was he saying? “I didn’t dump you, dude. You dumped me.”
Joe looked at me like I was nuts. “I didn’t dump you.”
“You fully did,” I said. “You ghosted me.”
“I ghosted you,” Joe admitted, “but only after you dumped me.”
Wait.
Hold on.
“Joe,” I said. “I did not dump you. I’m madly in love with you. So, A, I would never do that. And B, I would definitely remember.”
But Joe stepped closer, looking into my eyes in wonder. “You’re madly in love with me?”
I looked away. “Was,” I corrected. “Past tense. Was.”
“Why did you break up with me if you were madly in love with me?”