Joe had rescued me so many times—and now I’d rescued him back.
But it felt better than I would’ve expected. Both the hug itself—touching him, slipping over close and pressing against him in so many places like that, setting off emotional sparks I didn’t see coming—but also the rescue.
The brain system that reads people? It revved right up at that moment. I could feel Joe’s relief at what I was doing. I could feel how grateful he was. It was palpable. His tension eased. His breath slowed. Even the feel of his arm as it came up around me in response was like a grateful caress.
Suddenly we were a team working together to pull off this moment. The two of us against the world. Or—more accurately—against Joe’s ex-wife.
The point is, I didn’t stop at the side hug.
While Skylar and Hot Tub Guy were still taking us in as a couple, I could just feel Joe’s brain replaying the betrayal all over again—almost like I was feeling it with him. And I just couldn’t resist the challenge of trying to take that pain away.
I didn’t think it through, that’s for sure.
I didn’t think at all.
Joe wasn’t the only person around here who could be pathologically helpful.
And at that I reached out, grabbed the collar of Joe’s shirt, pulled him down toward me, and kissed him.
By the way, his lips? In that moment? As I went in for the landing? I could see them just fine. Zeroing in on the lips was easier, in fact, than trying to take in a whole face. It felt like a relief.
It was meant to be a peck, but at the moment of impact, I heard Skylar make an astonished little gasp.
And that spurred me to keep going.
To push in closer, in fact. To go bigger.
And deeper. And softer.
I shifted my hand up to the back of Joe’s neck to hold him in place—not sure how he’d react to the shock of it all. The odds were fifty-fifty that he’d jump away, like What the hell?
But he didn’t jump away.
The opposite, in fact.
In a remarkable feat of surprise improv, as soon as he realized what I was doing, he went with it. He brought his hand to my back, pulled me tighter, softened his mouth, and kissed me right back.
Just like that, it went from fake to … something else.
We didn’t even need a hot tub.
I don’t know how long that little kiss lasted. Three seconds? Five? A hundred? All I know is, when it started, we were both entirely focused on the couple standing across from us … and by the time it ended, that focus had shifted.
Skylar and Hot Tub Guy were forgotten.
That is, until Skylar coughed and said, “Okay. Well. Great seeing you.”
It broke the kiss, but nothing else. Joe didn’t even look over or loosen his arm around me or say goodbye. He just stared into my eyes until after they were gone. And I was too dazed to even mind.
Then, in unison, we snapped out of the trance. We broke eye contact and stepped back.
Next, of course, it was awkward.
Joe coughed. I tucked my hair behind my ears. Joe checked his watch. I looked down at my shoes. Finally—what choice did I have?—I smacked him on the shoulder and said, “Stop trying to peek at the portrait.”
And much to my delight, that made Joe laugh. And that was something.
I looked off in the direction they’d just walked. “Your ex-wife, right?” I said, my eyes on her.
Joe nodded. “Bull’s-eye.”
“And Hot Tub Guy?”
Joe nodded again. “Teague Phillips.”
“That’s his name? Teague?”
“Yep. Valedictorian of his high school class.” Then Joe added, “It’s weird that I know that.”
“He seems very dull,” I said, maximizing my judgmentalness out of loyalty.
“Thank you,” Joe said then. “My plan was to never, ever accidentally bump into them.”
“How dare they come to our coffee shop?” I said. “No hot tubbers allowed.”
“What you just did was…” Joe started.
What? What was it?
“Very kind,” he finished.
Huh. Not sure about kind. Impulsive, maybe. Reckless. Brave.
“You really saved me,” Joe said.
I held my fist up for a bump—trying to reestablish equilibrium. “You’ve saved me a few times.”
“Not like that, I haven’t.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“That,” he went on, “was a heroic thing to do.”
“Do you think it worked?”
“Oh, it worked,” Joe said, like that might be true in more ways than one.
“Glad to be of service,” I told him.
Later, it would occur to me to worry about Dr. Addison. I was of course aware that we weren’t really engaged or even dating—yet. But we had an intention to start dating. What were the rules around kissing someone when you had a plan to start dating someone else?
I hadn’t technically cheated. That much seemed clear.
But what would Dr. Addison think about that moment, if he’d known about it?
I tried to revise the memory into a simple act of altruism. Joe had been in pain, and I’d seen a way to relieve that pain. Unselfishly.
For no personally gratifying reasons of my own.
It almost made me a better person, in a way.
Besides. Anyway. If Dr. Oliver Addison, DVM, didn’t want me offering pity kisses to hipster neighbors ambushed by their ex-wives, he should have found a way to make it to our date.
Nineteen
YOU KNOW THOSE days when it just feels like the universe is out to get you? And even though you know intellectually that the universe is way too busy to sit around planning your personal destruction, it still feels that way, anyway?
The next day was one of those days.
I hadn’t been awake an hour before I’d stubbed my toe, burned my toast, and watched Peanut throw up on my seagrass rug. Which happened sometimes. It didn’t necessarily mean he was sick, but I called the vet anyway. They said it was nothing to worry about, but we made an appointment for a checkup on Thursday, just to be safe. I was supposed to watch him until then and call if he seemed worse.
An appointment with Dr. Addison should have been a sunny patch upon the horizon.
But he still had never called to apologize after standing me up, so I really wasn’t sure at all how he felt about me.
I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about him, either.
Because that “fake, not fake” kiss with Joe kept popping into my head in flashes: The tension of his surprise, and how fast he’d melted into the moment. The tickle of his hair as I’d cupped his neck with my hand. His arm tightening around me, pulling me closer. The velvety smoothness of the skin on his lips.
If anybody at all had asked me anything about it—including Joe himself—I’d have sworn up and down it was one hundred percent platonic.
But those flashes of memory were full-body experiences. And when they appeared in my mind, I had to suck in a quick cool breath, and then stand up and walk around for a minute.
Dr. Addison needed to pick up his pace. I could feel Joe gaining on him.