Joe thought back. Then he remembered. Then he protested. “But that wasn’t—”
“Are you saying you didn’t slink guiltily out of Parker’s place this morning?”
“I mean, I walked out. But I didn’t slink.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Is that what you’re thinking? That I got up to no good with your evil stepsister?”
“Prove me wrong.”
But Joe was just shaking his head. “How could you think that? How dumb do you think I am?”
“All men are dumb when it comes to Parker.”
But Joe was still indignant. “I wasn’t messing around with the stepsister who ruined your life,” he said. “I was feeding her cat.”
Confirmation. “You were feeding Parker’s evil cat? The one that keeps peeing in our hallway?”
Joe nodded. “Yep. Its name is Elvira.”
I took that in. “But you were wearing your pajamas.”
“Exactly!” Joe said. “People don’t do walks of shame in their pajamas.”
He had a point.
“Parker wasn’t even there! She left at three A.M. on a flight to Amsterdam!” he said—and now it was his turn to be mad. “You think that I kissed you last night and then turned around to have some kind of illicit tryst with your worst enemy?”
I mean, yes.
Worse things happened all the time with Parker. But his outrage was humbling.
“It wasn’t a real kiss,” I finally said.
“It was real enough.”
I shrugged, still half thinking I was right.
“How could you think that?” Joe said.
“I don’t know. People are terrible.”
“People may be terrible,” Joe said. “But I’m not.”
He really felt kind of hurt.
Maybe it was time to level with him a little. “I’m sorry,” I said then, “I’m having a very weird month.”
“Okay,” Joe said, listening.
But how much to say, standing here in the doorway of his empty apartment? Maybe just the basics.
I took a breath and went for it. “About a month ago,” I said, “I had what they call a nonconvulsive seizure in the crosswalk in front of our building. And apparently a Good Samaritan pushed me to safety just before I got mowed down by a Volkswagen Beetle. At the hospital, they did a brain scan for the cause of the seizure and found a little malformed blood vessel. They said I needed surgery to correct it, so I had surgery.”
Joe shook his head, like What? “You had brain surgery?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“A month ago?”
I nodded to confirm. Then, like a kid showing someone a boo-boo, I leaned forward and pulled my hair aside so he could see the scar behind my ear.
He peered in at it. “Wow.”
I hadn’t shown anybody my scar yet. Not even Sue.
“Yeah,” I said. “And it’s been”—here, a tremble found its way into my voice—“a weirdly hard month. Nothing’s quite right. Things that used to be easy are now … not. Especially painting.”
Joe nodded.
“The day of the seizure, I’d just had my first big career break. And I was all set to win it.” I looked down at my hands. “But I’m having trouble painting now.”
“That’s why you’re trying new techniques.”
I nodded. I was not, not, not going to tell him about the face blindness. But maybe I could tell him about what it felt like. “My whole life, my brain was always just so … reliable. But now, not as much. I keep getting things wrong. I can’t trust myself. The whole world looks different. And so the version of me that you’re getting right now is … kind of a mess. Much more of a mess than usual.”
If Joe had any sense of what a big deal it was for me to admit to anyone ever that I wasn’t A-okay, he did not show it. “You’re not that much of a mess,” Joe said, his voice softer.
“I smashed a glass door today.”
“That was a mess,” Joe conceded.
“Anyway, I’m really sorry,” I said. “Getting super mad at people over wrong assumptions is not normally my thing.”
“It’s fine. You can make it up to me.”
“How?”
Joe gave a shrug. “Just un-cancel the portrait.”
“Funny you should ask,” I said. “That’s exactly what I came here to do.”
Twenty-One
BY THE TIME Joe showed at my place for the final portrait attempt, it was do or die.