And we were off.
Next thing I knew, we were motoring through the deserted nighttime downtown streets, my arms snug around him. If you go exactly 20 miles per hour in downtown, you can time it so you never hit a red light. And so we just cruised along, slaloming a bit in our lane, the wind caressing us and the motor vibrating beneath, never having to stop or wait, just swept up in a current of motion.
It was highly relaxing—for such a dangerous thing.
It didn’t take me long at all to melt into the moment. Joe clearly knew this scooter back and forth, and everything he did had the ease of muscle memory.
We didn’t talk.
We just flowed along. Summer in Texas is deathly hot, but spring is cool and lovely. The March air felt like rippling water over my skin. We took a road that curved along the bayou, and we positively floated along it. We passed street art, the Dandelion Fountain, and the Downtown Aquarium, with its light-up Ferris wheel. It was a little like drifting through a dream.
How long had it been since I’d had someone to hold on to?
The dessert place was open—packed, in fact, with folks gathering for sweet treats and coffee after their evening’s activities, crowded at tables both inside and out on the sidewalk. I’d passed this place a million times. I’d just never had a reason to come in.
A bright, bustling, cheery place. It felt like a party.
Now, we ordered slices of cake—mine, a yellow diner slice with chocolate icing; his, death by chocolate—and then we wedged ourselves into a small table in the middle of it all. Joe had insisted on paying, and he must have told them we were celebrating a birthday, because when the slices arrived at the table, the waiter lit two giant sparkler candles, stuck them in the slices, and shouted, “Everybody! Let’s sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to—”
And then he looked at me.
“Nora!” I shouted—and it felt so great to just shout my mom’s name.
And so the whole room began to sing. And I swear I had never thought of the “Happy Birthday” song as anything particularly special until that moment—but sitting in front of that sparkler candle as the entire room launched into a rich rendition of it, I suddenly wondered why that song didn’t bring me to tears every time. Maybe it was how crowded the room was, or the acoustics, or the sound of all those people singing warm wishes to my long-lost mother: Happy Birthday, Dear Nora …
But my voice got too wobbly to sing.
I spent the second half of the song just taking it all in.
Savoring it, the way I know she would have.
It was nothing like what I usually did to celebrate my mom’s birthday.
But maybe different wasn’t so bad.
* * *
THERE WERE LOTS of upsides to that night.
It had felt surprisingly good to help out the girl in the coffee shop, and it had been surprisingly satisfying to tell off Parker. Sue, while woefully off target, had at least been sweetly trying to cheer me up. Joe had turned out to be great at anti-panic back rubs. And creating power outages. And I had celebrated my mom’s birthday not alone for the first time since she died.
But what, in the end, was my takeaway?
None of the upsides. Just the one crushingly disappointing downside: I got stood up.
That was the sentence that ticker-taped through my head all the next day.
I got stood up. By my future husband. On our very first date.
How would we spin that to the grandkids?
I mean, fine. He’d had a work emergency. I got it. I wouldn’t have wanted him to have left some Saint Bernard dying alone in the clinic.
He’d been busy doing something noble. It was a fair excuse.
But here was the problem. It was now the next day, and the admirable, flawless, and perfect Dr. Oliver Addison, DVM, had not called to apologize.
I mean, if you leave a lady sitting in a coffee shop, even for a good reason, you should call the next day and grovel a little bit. Right? Make some voice contact? Stress in real time how sorry you are? Maybe demonstrate enthusiasm by setting a new date to try again?
Nothing from this guy. Crickets.
Which forced me to wonder something horrible: Maybe this perfect man wasn’t so perfect after all.
Not fair. Hadn’t I already decided he was supposed to solve all my problems?
He was supposed to make things better, not worse. He was supposed to ease my worries, not create more of them. He was supposed to make me feel good—not frigging terrible.
Maybe he hadn’t gotten the memo?
I knew of course that people weren’t perfect. Life was messy. He didn’t even know how much I was counting on him to be the fantasy-man mirage that kept me moving through my personal emotional desert.
I couldn’t legitimately resent him.
But I resented him, anyway. Illegitimately.
He was just so disappointing.
All day long, as he continued to disappoint me, I made excuses for him—maybe he’d been up all night and fallen asleep exhausted?—while resenting the fact that I had to make excuses for him.
And while I waited, my mind drifted more and more to Joe.
Because if Dr. Oliver Addison had been disappointing … Joe, if I’m honest, had been the opposite.
Joe had been surprising. Surprisingly nice. Surprisingly attentive. Surprisingly not at all like what I would have expected a person I’d nicknamed the Weasel to be.
Sixteen
ON THE AFTERNOON before Sue was coming over for our second—and final—make-or-break attempt at her portrait, I took Peanut out for his first long walk since he got sick.
We’d been cleared for little walks almost from the beginning. But before Peanut could do his signature long, rambling, sniff-everything-in-sight stroll, we had to make sure his strength was back.
I didn’t mind. It gave me some time to think.
I’d been hoping—so hoping—that the edema would magically resolve before I really got down to the wire and had to paint this portrait for the show. Every morning I woke up and shuffled to the bathroom mirror, squeezing my eyes closed for a silent prayer before finally peeking to see what I could see.
And every morning, of course, my own face was just a jumbled pile of disconnected features.
I missed it. I missed seeing my face.
But I’d been instructed not to give up hope, and I was nothing if not obedient.
It would come back, I kept telling myself. There was a very good chance, at least.
But now I was at the point, with just over two weeks before the portrait deadline, when I had to trudge forward—fusiform face gyrus or no. I mean, even if I magically resolved my face blindness tomorrow, I’d still need time to paint the painting.
It was a make-it-work moment.