Hello Stranger, page 21
What I mean is, the whole experience was full-immersion pleasure—both physically and creatively. Shimmering with possibility. Rich and buttery with satisfaction. Igniting my attention in some very special way. Pulling me through the moment with a mounting sense of longing.
Each thing I did, each move I made, made me want more of whatever that was.
When I felt ready to start painting, I followed my instincts.
I sketched out Joe’s torso—his outline leaning into the frame with that kind of friendly, Labrador retriever energy he had. I found myself so immersed in rendering his body—those shoulders, the pecs and forearms, the trim angles of his fingers, resting on his jeans—that I didn’t work too hard on the face. I wasn’t avoiding it, exactly. I was just following the parts that called to me. The neck, the earlobes, the flop of the hair.
Everything I’d tried to do since the surgery had been about trying to get to the product. But now I settled into the process. I just painted. I kept my eyes closed to “look” at Joe, but I opened them in front of the canvas. I wanted to see the colors. I wanted to watch the brushstrokes happen. I wanted to see the painting appear in front of my eyes.
No matter what else might happen with this painting, the process of making it was bliss.
That counted for something.
At last, when I finally worked up the courage to sketch his face, I didn’t try to make it make sense.
I wasn’t thinking, What would Norman Rockwell do?
I was thinking about what I would do. What I needed to do—with each mark and each line—to render my experience of Joe’s face.
I was following my own compass. Wherever it would lead.
And it turned out, Sue was right. That was a win in itself.
* * *
I PAINTED—AND TOUCHED, and painted and touched—Joe for two solid hours that night.
He was endlessly patient. Didn’t check his phone or fall asleep or even ask for a glass of water. He just stayed with me the whole time, taking it all in.
When I’d done everything I could do for the night and I had a pretty full, dynamic early painted sketch, I thanked him, like he could go.
“Anyway,” I said, washing my hands at the sink. “I really appreciate you doing this for me. Congratulations. You’re almost free.”
“Free from what?” Joe asked.
“From me. Once the art show is over, we won’t have to see each other anymore.”
“Why wouldn’t we see each other?”
“I’m just saying. I’ve taken up a lot of your time.”
“I was hoping you’d give me roller-skating lessons.”
“But how would Dr. Michaux feel about that?”
Joe frowned. “Why would Dr. Michaux feel anything about that?”
“Aren’t you … you know?”
“What?” Joe took a swig of water. “Didn’t we talk about this?”
“You said you weren’t dating. But I figured you must be hooking up.”
Joe coughed. “What?”
“You’re always … coming out of her apartment,” I said. And a bunch of others.
“Yeah? So?”
“So aren’t you guys … together?”
“Wait—you thought we were—what?”
My fingers were still tingling from touching him. I shrugged.
Joe started laughing then, but I didn’t think it was funny. He leaned his head back and let out a big sigh. “I’m not dating Dr. Michaux. I am pet-sitting her snakes.”
Now it was my turn to be befuddled. “You’re what-sitting her whats?”
“Her snakes,” Joe confirmed. “Remember? Herpetologist? She has a whole den of snakes in there. Even an Indonesian flying snake. It’s pretty complicated, keeping them healthy.”
Okay. I could freak out about a penthouse full of flying snakes later.
First things first.
I needed to get this straight: “You’re … a snake sitter?”
“Pet sitter,” Joe corrected. “Why do you think I was feeding Parker’s cat?”
“That’s what you do for a living?”
I could feel Joe frowning, like that question was really odd. “It’s one of the things I do for a living,” he said.
“All that time … you were going in there to feed snakes?”
Joe nodded. “
“And so the brown bags were full of…?”
“Live mice,” Joe confirmed.
“Oh my god.”
Joe shrugged. “Food chain.”
“But,” I said as I tried to snap the pieces into place, “what about that time I saw you stumbling drunkenly into Dr. Michaux’s apartment?”
“Do you mean the time she had a stomach virus? And I was helping her down the hall from the elevator?”
“You weren’t hooking up?”
Joe shook his head.
“You were just helping her? Just being a Boy Scout? Kinda like when Parker pretended to faint?”
“I’m not a Boy Scout,” Joe said. “But, yes, I was helping.”
I was still working to take it in. “That’s what you’ve been doing? All this time?”
“Yep,” Joe said. “Mostly cats on this floor. And one bunny. Wait. Did you think that I was sleeping with all those people?”
“I mean, I hoped it was something else. But I couldn’t imagine what that would be.”
“You have a very limited imagination.”
“Well, I definitely wasn’t picturing flying snakes.”
“I don’t know if I should be flattered that you think all those people would want to sleep with me—or offended that you think I’m a man-whore.”
“Sue and I prefer the archaic term mutton muncher.”
Joe just stared.
“What?” I said. “You have to admit it’s suspicious behavior.”
“For the record, I have never slept with anybody in this building. Other than my wife. Back when she used to live here—and used to be my wife.”
But that didn’t track. “Wait—” I said, pointing at him. “What about the lady you fat-shamed in the elevator?”
Joe shook his head like maybe he hadn’t heard me right. “What?”
“I definitely overheard you talking about a one-night stand in the elevator. A woman with a lot of belly fat who shredded your sheets and was a real breather.”
I could definitely feel how Joe was staring at me. Like he could not in any universe imagine what I was talking about.
“She dry-humped you in the parking lot?” I prompted. “And threw up in your entryway?”
But Joe just waited.
“She slept in your bed,” I went on, “and you almost suffocated under a ‘mountain of blubber.’”
That’s when Joe lifted his head. Recognition.
“Now you remember,” I said.
Joe put his face in his hands. “I remember,” he said. “But that wasn’t a lady.”
Really? We were getting into semantics now? “I definitely heard you—”
“That,” Joe went on, dropping his hands to make his point, “was a bulldog.”
I frowned, like he’d just said something impossible. “A bulldog?”
“A rescue bulldog,” Joe confirmed. “Named Buttercup.”
“You had a one-night stand with a bulldog?”
Joe nodded. “I did. A bulldog who was abandoned after she ate a tree branch the length of her entire body and her owners decided she was too much trouble. I fostered her for one night—actually, it turned into three—before taking her to a rescue group.”
“So…” I said, my voice quieting as I let this one piece of information rework all my eavesdropping, “when you called her a bitch, you literally meant … a bitch?”
Now he was offended. “I can’t believe you thought I was talking about a person.”
Suddenly I couldn’t believe it, either.
Joe kept shaking his head. “You thought I was talking about a one-night stand?” he said. “With a human woman?”
“What other kind is there?”
He shook his head in disbelief.
So I added, “You called it a one-night stand.”
“But I was joking.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
Now all the pieces were clicking into place. “That’s why you posted pictures of her online?”
Joe nodded. “Petfinder dot com.”
“And that’s why you felt so free to liberally mock her appearance like she had no human dignity?”
“She has no human dignity,” Joe said. “She’s a dog.”
“You said some harsh things,” I said. “Even for a dog.”
Joe dropped his shoulders, like Come on.
“I see,” I said.
Joe pulled in a deep breath now as the full understanding hit him. “You thought,” he said, “that I had a one-night stand with a drooly, noisy, sheet-shredding actual human female and then made fun of her body the next day on the phone in a public elevator before posting sleeping photos of her online?”
I made my voice very tiny. “Kind of?”
“No wonder you were so mean to me.”
“Was I?”
“Yeah! And I deserved it!”
“Right?” I said, trying to draw a tentative alliance.
Joe sighed. Then he sighed again. Then he said, “For the record. I have not slept with anyone—at all—since I walked in on my wife hot-tubbing naked with Teague Phillips, the Planet’s Most Boring Wanker.”
But now we had a whole new topic. “Oof,” I said. “That’s a long time.”
“I’m aware.”
“A really long time.”
“Thank you.”
I shook my head. “I thought … you were a total player.”
“You thought I was a total douchebag.”
I hunched up my shoulders. “Sorry?”
“I’m not a player, Sadie. I’m a damned monk.”
I felt a buzzing realization that this, right here, was another of Joe’s problems that I had the power to do something about.
Joe sighed. “Look. Here’s the truth. There’s exactly one person in this entire building I have any interest in sleeping with. And I don’t even think she likes me very much.”
Please don’t let it be Parker. Please don’t let it be Parker.
My heart clamped closed. “Who is it?”
But Joe didn’t answer.
In my panic, I started yammering: “Anybody but Parker, okay? I wholeheartedly endorse any and all sexual escapades with literally any resident of this building—even the snake lady—just not Parker—okay?—because she really—”
But Joe didn’t want to talk about Parker.
Right then he reached for my painting smock, hooked his fingers through the apron tie, and tugged me closer to him. I stepped nearer, into the cove between his thighs, and then I felt his palms settle on my hips.
There was that cedar and juniper smell again.
“It’s not your evil stepsister,” Joe said.
I shook my head, like It’s not?
He pulled me a little closer. “And it’s not the snake lady, either.”
I hadn’t really thought it would be. But I felt a frisson of relief, anyway.
Joe leaned in a bit more. Sitting on the stool, he was just the same height as me. Our faces were just inches from each other. “Do you want me to tell you who it is?” he asked.
I nodded, watching his mouth like I was in a trance.
Finally he said, “It’s you.”
I’d hoped he would say that.
But just to double-check: “It’s me?”
The world had been so hard to read lately. It had somehow seemed just as possible that he might say Hazel from the coffee shop.
But it was me.
And so, when he nodded, I just said, “It’s you, too.”
It’s true, I couldn’t see his face right then. Not in the traditional way. Not in the way I was used to.
But as I looked at the pieces of it—the outline of his lips, the dimple in his chin, the sandpapery stubble along his jaw—it felt almost like I could see him better than I would’ve otherwise. Like not seeing the big picture let me grasp the details more clearly. It wasn’t like looking into a void. It was like looking with a magnifying glass. Like being closer than close.
That mouth, for example, I could definitely see. Plump and firm and practically demanding to be kissed. But for real this time.
All I had to do now was sway forward. It would be so easy to match my mouth to his. To claim him for myself like that.
Wasn’t that what kisses were for, after all? To light a little spark in someone else? A spark that would burn for you?
I wanted some part of Joe to burn for me.
And I guess he wanted that back.
I edged forward.
But then I hit that force field of hesitation again. I paused right there, my mouth just an inch from his.
And then, once again, Joe helped.
His arm skimmed up my back, and his hand found its way into my hair, and then he cupped the back of my neck with his palm and pulled me to him—shattering that force field like a glass door at a coffee shop.
As soon as my mouth touched his, he tightened his other arm around me, and I let my arms wrap themselves around his neck.
For a minute, the warm, blissful shock of it was enough.
The electric softness of his mouth. The comfort of being pressed against him. The relief of giving in to all that longing. The crazy joy of being connected like that at last. Of wanting someone so badly—and being wanted back. Of touching. Of feeling good and happy and connected, and like there was so much to look forward to.
This wasn’t like the fake kiss from before. This wasn’t a performance for some onlooker. This kiss was just for the two of us. Because those words he’d said just made everything real. Every feeling, every glimmer, every sparkle—the veritable weather system of emotions that had been building around me ever since Joe first pissed me off in the elevator … as soon as he said, It’s you—it all became palpable.
Before I knew it, I was crawling up on the stool, perching on his thighs, grasping tighter and more madly, kissing him in a way that felt like melting into another reality.
He pulled back for a second to look at me. I forced myself to look back. No matter what I could or couldn’t see, I wanted to give him the soul-deep answer we’re always searching for when we look into someone’s eyes.
Was this happening? Were we doing this? Should we keep going?
Yes. All yes.
But maybe we already had our answers.
He leaned in again and captured my mouth with his, and it was like a wave of bliss crashing over me and knocking me off-balance—all softness and silk and rhythm and touch.
He stood up next and carried me toward the bed, my legs wrapped around his waist, our mouths never parting, and he laid me back against the blanket, pressing himself down over me as we sank further and further into the moment, and the feeling of being tangled together, and lost with each other.
As if staying this way could make everybody else on earth disappear.
Until … almost like the universe just wanted to prove us wrong—in a moment of bad timing worthy of the Guinness book—there was a knock at my door.
Twenty-Two
SPOILER: IT WAS Lucinda.
A human cold shower if ever there was one.
We froze at the sound. I squeezed my eyes shut, but Joe craned around to peek at the door.
“It’s a middle-aged lady,” he whispered. “I can see through the glass.”
“Does she look like Martha Stewart?” I whispered back.
“Yes,” Joe whispered.
“With kind of a sourpuss face?”
“Yes,” Joe confirmed.
“And a vibe like she maybe sucks the fun out of everything?”
“Not sure, but maybe?”
“It’s my stepmother,” I confirmed. “Just ignore her.”
I pulled his mouth back down to mine. But at that, Lucinda started knocking again.
“That’s going to be challenging,” Joe said.
Lucinda talked through the glass pane in the door, her voice muffling its way into the room. “I need to talk to you,” she said. “Stop ignoring me. I can tell you’re in there.”
She could certainly kill a mood, I’d give her that.
I sighed. Was I really about to shut down the best kissing of my life for Lucinda?
The knocking continued. And continued.
I guess I was.
“Promise me,” I said then, looking deep into Joe’s eyes, “that we are not done here.”
“We are not even close to done here,” Joe said. “I promise.”
And so we shut it down.
Joe found his shirt and his jacket. I straightened the apron we hadn’t even had time to remove. We steadied our breath. Shifted gears.
And then, with dread, I opened the door.
“How did you even get up here?” I said as Lucinda walked in.
“Mr. Kim gave me your new passcode. Because it was an emergency.”
Kindhearted Mr. Kim. We’d have to have a talk about Lucinda.
“What emergency could possibly exist between me and you?” I asked.
But Lucinda was sizing up Joe. “Is this the man you stole from Parker?” she asked then.
Stole? From Parker? “I have never stolen anything from Parker,” I said.
“That’s not the way I heard it,” Lucinda said.
“That’s never the way you hear it,” I said.
Joe cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but Sadie’s right. I was not stolen.”
“Look,” I said to Lucinda. “We’re kind of in the middle of something.”
“I can see that,” Lucinda said.
“Please don’t come over here and peep through my windows, Lucinda,” I said in a tone like we’d been over this a million times.
“I wasn’t peeping. I was knocking. I couldn’t see anything but feet, anyway.”
“Lucinda,” I said, “I’m busy.”
But Lucinda remained righteous about her choices. “You left me no other options! You wouldn’t answer my calls. You wouldn’t respond to my texts. Do you think I wanted to trudge over to your hovel in the middle of the night? I did not. But I need to speak to you!”
