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.”
But doing something nice for a stranger made me feel better. Running into Joe—and recognizing him sans bowling jacket—made me feel better. The prospect of eating a nice dinner made me feel better. Even, if I’m honest, the memory of having told Parker to fuck off made me feel better.
Huh. I could feel better. That felt like news.
Dr. Nicole had been insisting it could happen all along. But I’d never believed her.
Had she been right?
Maybe life was full of surprises. Maybe disappointments could turn out to be blessings. Maybe tonight would end up being fun, after all.
* * *
OR MAYBE NOT.
Because when we made it up to the rooftop so I could change, Sue, whose heart was absolutely in the right place but who could not seem to comprehend even the tiniest aspect of what this face-blindness situation was like for me … was throwing me a surprise party.
“Surprise!” Sue shouted when she saw Joe and me cresting the spiral stairs. Then her shoulders dropped at the sight of my coffee-drenched clothes, and she asked, just like Joe had, “What the hell happened to you?”
I felt my whole body go tense. There were fifty people on my rooftop, at least. Bulb lights. Music. Beer. “What’s going on?”
“It’s a party,” Sue said. “Duh.”
“You’re hosting a party? Here?”
“It’s the party we never got to have. You know. When you had your brain thingy.”
I glanced at Joe, who was standing attentively beside me. I hadn’t told him about my brain thingy.
“We’re celebrating,” Sue said when I couldn’t find any words. “You remember celebrating?”
“I mean, I remember it,” I said. The way you remember the stone age. Or the dinosaurs. They existed. Once. “But, I mean…” I tried to figure out how to protest something that was clearly already happening. “A surprise party?”
“It wasn’t meant to be a surprise, exactly. You just weren’t here when we arrived. It never even occurred to me that you might leave the house.”
“I leave the house,” I said.
“Not voluntarily.”
“Sue…” I said, astonished at the Grand Canyon–size distance between how she thought I’d feel about this forced party and how I actually felt.
“Where were you, anyway?” she asked.
“I had a date,” I said, glancing over at Joe. But dancing had broken out across the roof, and he was watching one of Sue’s friends do the worm.
That’s when Sue whispered into my ear, “With the vet?”
I nodded.
So then she whispered, “How’d it go?”
I shook my head. And then flared my nostrils. And then gave her a thumbs-down.
“Okay,” Sue said, swinging around to steer me by the shoulders toward the beer coolers. “Let’s table that. You’ve got a rooftop full of people here to celebrate with you.”
“What are we celebrating, again?” I asked.
“Hello? The North American Portrait Society? Top ten finalist? You haven’t forgotten, have you?”
I hadn’t forgotten. Of course. But I suddenly noticed how important timing was when it came to things like celebrating. Yes, we’d been about to celebrate the finalist thing a thousand years ago, before my life fell apart.
But then … my life fell apart.
Was it fair to say I just didn’t feel much like celebrating anything these days? I loved Sue so much, my extroverted friend. And I loved that she was trying. But what on earth about nonconsensually bringing fifty people into the vicinity of a person with sudden face-blindness felt like a good idea?
Not to mention, my mom’s birthday. But I hadn’t told Sue about that.
“You like parties!” Sue said.
“I like parties,” I corrected, “when I know the people at them. I do not like parties full of strangers.”
“Literally no one here is a stranger,” Sue said. Then she pointed at a group of faceless guys standing around the beer coolers. “That’s Stephan,” she said, running down the line. “And that’s Colin. And that’s Ryan. And that’s Zach and André, and oh—”
“‘Oh’ what?”
“Oh,” Sue said. “It looks like Ezra showed up.”
“You invited Ezra?”
Sue coughed in indignation. “Of course not. Somebody must’ve brought him.”
Great. One of the people here was my ex-boyfriend. But I had no idea which one.
“At least you showed up with some eye candy on your arm.”
“Eye candy?” I asked. Did Joe qualify as eye candy?
“You know,” Sue said, nodding in Joe’s direction. “Your male prostitute.”
Guess so.
“I might have been wrong about that,” I said.
Sue let her gaze linger. “Maybe he should be,” she said with appreciation. “He could make a killing.”
“Sue,” I said. “Let’s focus. This is a problem.”
“What?”
“The party! The people! My ex roaming loose!”
“Why?” she said. “Everybody here loves you.”
“But I can’t recognize anyone.”
“They won’t care.”
“They will care, Sue. They will think it’s super weird when they’re talking to me and I have no idea who they are.”
“Then let’s just tell them what’s going on with you.”
“NO!” I choked out.
“You don’t want to tell them?”
I leaned closer. “Never. I never want to tell anyone.”
“Why not?” Sue asked.
“It’s humiliating.”
“Why? It’s not your fault.”
“Trust me. Having your brain malfunction is humiliating.”
“If you say so.”
But Sue was realizing now that she hadn’t exactly thought this through.
“Look,” I said. “The only people in the entire world who know about this are you and my dad and Lucinda … and Parker.”
“Parker knows?”
“Lucinda told her.”
“Then it’s not a secret anymore. She’ll tell everyone.”
“Not yet. I think she’s enjoying lording it over me.”
“But she will.”
“Maybe it’ll fix itself before then.”