But the woman said, “I don’t have time. I have to get to the airport.”
I shook my head. “You can’t go like that.”
We both stared at her coffee-drenched clothes. “I have to go,” she said. “I’m late to pick up my boyfriend.”
“You can’t pick up a boyfriend like that, either,” I said.
She started crying harder. “I know.”
“Okay,” I said. “Two minutes. Let’s get this solved,” and I pulled her by the hand behind me toward the bathroom.
There I toweled her off while she just stood there like a little kid. And I thought—as I often did—about how my mom would handle this situation. “Let’s switch outfits,” I said. “We’re about the same size.”
She hesitated like I was nuts.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I live right upstairs. I’ll just pop up and change.”
She wasn’t sure, but there was no time to argue, and before she fully knew it, we were in our underwear in side-by-side stalls, flopping our clothes over the divider.
“Are you sure?” she asked as I watched my dress slither away and disappear on the other side.
“I’m sure,” I said, wincing a bit as I slid my arm into her cold brown linen sleeve. “And, anyway, there’s no time to argue.”
“But … you looked so pretty in this.”
“Ha!” I said, the way women do, like she couldn’t possibly mean it, just as her compliment took its place as the best moment of my entire night. Then I went on, trying to stress how totally okay it was for her to walk out of the Bean Street bathroom in my favorite dress. “That dress was twenty dollars at Target,” I said. “It was on super clearance.”
“That just makes it more valuable,” she protested.
Good point, in fact. She wasn’t wrong.
When we stepped out, I covered how wet and cold I now felt with massive enthusiasm for the sight of her in my dress. “You look phenomenal!” I practically sang. “You were born to wear that dress!”
“I’ll return it to you,” she said. “I’ll have it dry-cleaned and bring it back.”
But now I’d been swept away by the general joy of generosity—and the specific high of channeling my mother’s wisdom and kindness. “Keep it,” I said. “It really does look amazing.”
I mean, anybody would look amazing in my favorite dress. But still.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” I said, missing it already, even as I nodded.
We both turned to give her a final once-over in the mirror.
“I look better than I did before,” she said, looking herself over. Then she turned to me. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
“You weren’t even the one who knocked me down,” she said.
But then something occurred to me. “It’s really okay,” I said. “It’s nice to have a reason to do something nice.”
And I meant it.
Fourteen
ANYWAY, THAT’S HOW I wound up walking out of the Bean Street Coffee’s ladies’ room in a wet, coffee-stained, clingy-in-all-the-wrong-places outfit—and running smack into Joe.
Except for a second I wasn’t sure it was Joe.
Because he wasn’t wearing his bowling jacket.
So all I knew for a second was that a man—some kind of man—walked up to me and said, “What the hell happened to you?”
I smiled like I knew him and said, “Coffeetastrophe,” and then I made chitchat warmly and enthusiastically while quietly deducing who he was.
It didn’t take that long. Just a few seconds. The hipster glasses and the floppy hair were kind of a dead giveaway, once I got my bearings.
“Where’s your bowling jacket?” I asked then as confirmation—aware of the one percent chance he’d have no idea what I was talking about.
“Gave it the night off,” Joe said.
“How’s your back?” I asked, for two-factor authentication.
“Magically healed.”
Mystery solved. Officially Joe.
“Should we get some dinner?” Joe asked next.
I nodded. That sounded like a perfect thing to do.
Getting stood up could really make a person hungry.
“Would you like to change first?” Joe asked next.
I nodded again.
And suddenly things just felt … better.
If you’d asked me at the apex of my getting-stood-up misery how this day was going to end, I’d have answered with a cuss-word-laden version of “not good.”