“You are cuter than Sue said,” I said.
At that, Daniel laughed and gave me a side squeeze, and that’s when I looked up to see Joe watching us.
“Say something funny,” I said to Daniel real quick.
“Like what?” Daniel asked.
And then I burst out laughing like that was it.
Then Daniel laughed because I was laughing.
When we settled, Daniel said, “So. That guy who’s been watching you this entire time? Are you trying to make him jealous?”
Joe had been watching me this entire time? That felt like a sad little victory.
“Yes, please,” I said.
“Let’s go dance, then,” Daniel said, nodding at the empty floor.
“I don’t think it’s time for that yet,” I said, glancing over at Mrs. Kim, not wanting to mess up her schedule.
“Oh, it’s definitely not,” Daniel said. Then he gave me a nod. “Even better.”
And that’s how I wound up slow-dancing with Sue’s cute cousin, adding another kind of triumph to the evening, until the caterers started serving dinner. I then made my way toward the tables to find my place card and discovered that Mrs. Kim did not get the Joe memo—and she had seated us right next to each other.
The place cards were in Korean and English. The English on mine read Sadie. And the one in front of the empty chair next to me read Helpful.
Mr. Kim, you adorable troublemaker.
Joe walked up next to me, read his own place card, and realized the same thing.
We turned and met eyes.
Did I say he was heartbreaking from across the roof?
Up close, he was worse.
Those lips. That jaw. Those eyes. I’d seen them all before—in pieces. And here they were, miraculously together and adding up to far more than the sum of their parts.
“Sadie,” Joe said, acknowledging me with a nod.
“Joe,” I acknowledged back—noting how odd it was to know that for sure.
And so here he was. The man who had charmed me relentlessly with his sweetness and his thoughtfulness and his uncanny ability to rescue me. The man who’d shown up when I was at the most lost I’d ever been in my life—and cajoled me into crushing on him in a way I hadn’t crushed on anybody in years. Or ever.
And then he’d changed his mind.
Faced with an entire dinner seated next to him, I wanted to slump down into my chair.
But I didn’t.
I stood taller, damn it.
I stood straighter.
I summoned all the dignity I could access, took my seat, turned to Witt’s grandmother on my opposite side, and then made the best, most scintillating, most relentless octogenarian-themed chitchat of my entire life.
* * *
IT TURNS OUT, I am really good at ignoring people.
Who knew? Another unmarketable skill.
I ignored Joe through the salad course with gusto. And then through the main course with determination. And then all through dessert with a miserable kind of glee. If I had to pass him a bread basket, I didn’t even rotate my torso. If he dared to ask me for the sugar, I edged it toward him with the side of my hand and then leaned back in toward Grandma Kellner and demanded, “Tell me all about your garden.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
I hope Grandma Kellner enjoyed the attention.
I treated her like a movie star on Oscar night.
Was I dying inside?
One hundred percent.
Seeing Joe was like being struck by emotional lightning.
But can we also appreciate how I was racking up the triumphs? I wasn’t weeping. Or hyperventilating. Or vomiting.
I was handling myself. Poised. Gracious. And ignoring my hemorrhaging heart like a legend.
All I had to do was make it to the end of dinner—when, with any luck, Joe would suddenly realize that even though he’d been invited, he wasn’t really welcome.
With any luck, he’d be just as eager to leave as I was to see him go.
Then I could relax.
Then I could dance the night away with Daniel and his adorable friends.
Then I could let this whole weird chapter of my life go at last—and move the hell on.
Thirty-One
BUT JOE DIDN’T leave. He stayed.
He lurked around the party long after dinner and well into the dancing—watching me with such purpose as I boogied defiantly with Sue and Daniel and all their cousins that he felt like a predator stalking his prey.
I didn’t care that he was here.
I didn’t care that he was here, damn it.
He couldn’t just stare me down into giving up all my joy.
I had moved on. And bounced back. And if he didn’t understand what he’d lost, then I was better off on my own.
I was fine, I was fine, I was fine.
But you can dance your ass off with bold, hysterical, can’t-touch-this energy for only so long.
Eventually, you have to take a breather.
As soon as I stepped off the dance floor, Joe moved in for the kill.
I didn’t want to talk to him. That should have been perfectly clear. What other message could ignoring him all night possibly convey? And yet there he was, as soon as I’d separated from the herd, moving toward me—with purpose.
But I didn’t have to just stand frozen there like a gazelle and let him pounce. I wasn’t some prey animal. As soon as I saw him making his way toward me, I started making my way toward … what? We were on a roof. It wasn’t like I could catch a city bus and disappear into the night.
But I had to try, anyway.
I headed off toward the far corner, like maybe if I could dart around behind the mechanical room and break his line of sight, he might lose me.
As I sped up, he sped up.
I’d gotten pretty good at speed-walking in these postsurgery weeks, so for a minute there, I was actually starting to lose him … until he broke into a run.
“Sadie!” he called, like that might slow me down.
Wrong. It sped me up.
“Sadie! Wait!” he called again as I rounded the corner.
Rounding the corner did help—for about one second.
Until, as soon as I got there, I realized it was a dead end. A dark dead end with—actually—a fabulous view of the downtown skyline.
I didn’t come to this side very often.
I slowed down, defeated, and then walked to the far edge of the roof, leaning against the railing as if gazing at the view had been my urgent purpose all along.
No escape now, I thought as I heard Joe’s running footsteps approaching behind me.
I took a long-overdue deep breath, felt it swirl in my lungs, and willed it to give me peace.
And then … Joe showed up next to me at the railing.
I felt him land before I turned.
“Hey,” he said, a little breathless.
I pretended I didn’t hear him. Like that glittering skyline had so enraptured me that commonplace things like human interaction didn’t even register.
But he wasn’t deterred. “Could I talk to you for a minute?” he asked, standing so close and looking at me so hard, I had no choice but to respond.
He wanted to talk to me? Hadn’t this night been agonizing enough? “Do you have to?” I asked.
He frowned like he wasn’t sure how to answer.
“Why are you even here?” I asked. “Sue’s not your friend.”
“Mr. Kim invited me.”