Which I couldn’t even see.
So this conversation was destined to fail from the start.
But I still had to try.
I took a step closer, wanting to get really clear. “I guess the date’s not happening now?”
Joe gazed off at some far point on the horizon.
“That’s right, right? You’re not coming with me to this thing? Even though you said you would?”
Nothing from Joe.
“I guess I’m just really nervous to go by myself,” I went on, feeling my voice waver a little. “I don’t want to go at all. But I have to go, you know? My painting. My life goals. And even though the portrait is not what they want, for sure—so I’m one hundred percent guaranteed to come in dead last—I suspect it might actually really be good. In an ugly duckling kind of way. Plus, there’s a good chance my horrible family will show up and make things a hundred times worse. And I’m going to have to do it all genuinely, totally alone.”
I held my breath for a second, trying to steady myself.
I never, ever asked for help. And if Joe’s behavior the past four days had made anything clear, he was in no mood to give it.
But I wasn’t asking for him, I realized.
This wasn’t about his answer. This was about my question.
And mustering the courage to ask it.
“The thing is,” I said then, my voice feeling like a balloon I might lose hold of. “The thing is … I’m scared to go alone. And I don’t know why, but it feels like you’re the only person I can say that to. You’re the only person I want to say that to. I just want so badly to have somebody with me. Anybody. And so I just have to ask if you might stay tonight. Despite everything.” I took a step closer, like that might seal the deal. “Can you postpone your plans,” I asked, “and come with me?”
If there was any hope for us at all, he’d sense my desperation—how badly I really, truly needed him—and rescue me this one last time.
But he didn’t.
He kept his face turned toward the horizon. “Are you asking me to be your anybody?”
“I guess that’s one way to put it.”
Now, at last, he turned toward me. “I’m not going to be anybody for you, Sadie. And I don’t want to see the portrait. And I don’t know why you think I’d care about any of this.”
But I shook my head. “I don’t understand what happened.”
I could feel a flash of anger in his expression like fire. “Really?” he said. “I don’t understand it, either, to be honest. But here we are.”
I took a deep breath. “Whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.”
But Joe shook his head like sorry was the most useless word in the world.
Worse than useless, even. Insulting.
He turned to leave. Then he stopped and turned halfway back.
“I’m moving out, by the way,” he said then. “So stop coming by my place. And stop calling me. And for god’s sake … stop texting.”
Twenty-Five
THE FIRST INSULT of the art show—before all the injuries—was placement.
I arrived at the gallery to find my portrait hung in the worst conceivable spot—half under a staircase, fully at the back, right near the bathrooms, under an exposed air-conditioning vent that was literally dripping into a bucket. There was a moldy smell to the area—not to mention a tinge of Lysol.
You’d think that a bright, airy, recently renovated art gallery wouldn’t have a dank corner—but you’d be wrong.
And that’s where they stuck me.
At the art gallery equivalent of a restaurant’s sucker table.
Worst of all, the spot was hard to get to, but because of the U-shaped layout of the gallery, it was easy to see. Everybody entering the building could get a full view of my indefensibly tragic situation.
So any and all humiliations to come would be on full display.
And there were plenty of humiliations to come.
Starting with the fact that no one was there.
Oh, people were there—at the show. The show itself was packed. Just—no one came to my shadowy, mildewy, forgotten corner.
I stood courageously next to my portrait, under the cold, damp, blowing air of that drippy vent, feeling as exposed as a hermit crab out of its shell—as I watched the entire gallery milling with eager art patrons.
Everywhere—except where I was.
No one came up to me and said hello. No one talked to me at all. Only a few freakish outliers even glanced at my portrait, which was clearly, easily, the big loser of the night from minute one. I scanned people’s outfits and hair and gaits for identifying clues, but I did not recognize one person.