“I didn’t break up with you!”
“You told me you liked someone else.”
Someone else? Fine. Okay. Full confession time: “I did like someone else—briefly. And by ‘like,’ I mean I briefly decided I had a desperate, obsessive crush on my veterinarian. And okay, whatever, I may have spent some time googling Nordic locations for our destination wedding and fantasizing about taking his last name. But I really think it was more about trying to manufacture something to look forward to during the craziest low point of some very crazy weeks. It was never real, you know? It was just a fantasy.”
But Joe was shaking his head. “Your veterinarian?”
“Yes, okay? My dashing veterinarian.”
“Who?”
“Who? Are you, like, going to give him trouble or something? It doesn’t matter—”
“Who?” Joe demanded.
I blinked for a second. “He saved Peanut for me, okay? He brought him back from death’s door. His name is Dr.—”
And then, in unison, we both said, “Oliver Addison.”
I frowned. “You know him?”
But Joe had already slapped his forehead and spun around to start pacing the roof. “Oliver Addison?” he said, almost more to himself than to me. “You dumped me for your veterinarian, Oliver Addison?”
My voice got quieter. “Sounds like you do know him.”
I mean, obviously he did. What exactly had I done? Was this Joe’s ex-bully from high school? Or his best friend from college? Or maybe his secret twin brother?
He was clearly somebody important. Joe was still pacing around.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Joe was taking deep breaths now. Then he came over to me and put his hands on my shoulder. “You broke up with Oliver Addison…”
I nodded.
“At his vet clinic … during a workday … out in the side yard…”
I nodded again. How did he know this? Were they friends?
“And you told him that you liked somebody else.”
Another nod from me.
“Was the somebody else that you liked”—even as he was saying it, he was shaking his head—“me?”
I sighed. Was he really going to make me say it? I met Joe’s eyes. “Yes. Obviously. Of course it was you.”
Joe let go of my shoulders and dropped his head, in a gesture like, Unbelievable.
Then he reached behind his neck and rubbed it absentmindedly as he looked around the roof like nothing made any sense.
A gesture that looked oddly familiar.
I felt compelled to explain. “Broke up is too strong!” I said. “I wasn’t even dating Dr. Addison! Honestly! We just had a plan to go on a date. We never really went. He stood me up, actually. It was that day we bumped into each other at Bean Street and I was covered in spilled coffee—remember? And he never called after that or apologized, so I couldn’t technically have dumped him because we weren’t even dating. But after—you know—after that epic, life-changing kiss with you … I just wanted to make things really clear with him—that nothing was going to happen—because I really, really liked you, and I wanted to keep all the boundaries totally clear.” I could feel my chest welling up, but I kept going. “I felt like…” I took a breath. “I felt like, with you, I’d found something genuinely special … and I just wanted to protect that. You know?”
I was done with the speech before I realized how much I’d accidentally confessed.
Damn it.
Joe took a step closer. “Sadie,” he said, meeting my eyes, “the person you dumped … was me.”
Hadn’t we been over this? “I’m telling you, I didn’t dump you!”
“Sadie,” Joe said again, waiting this time until he had my full attention. “I am Dr. Oliver Addison.”
But that didn’t make any sense.
“Um,” I said, like I was awkwardly correcting him. “You’re Joe.”
“I’m not Joe,” Joe said. “You’ve been calling me Joe for weeks, but that’s not really my name. My name,” he said again for posterity, “is Dr. Oliver Addison.”
He was going to have to give me a minute for my brain to explode.
“I’m sorry. Wait. Are you Joe—or Dr. Addison?”
“I am both,” Joe said. “Those two people are the same guy.”
Now it was my turn to pace around like nothing made any sense.
“Hold on,” I said. “You’re saying … you’re saying the guy who lives downstairs—the guy who fed me dinner at his place when I got locked out, and talked me through a panic attack during a party, and kissed me senseless not that long ago … that guy is the same person as the guy at the vet clinic who rescued Peanut?”