Page 129 of Hello Stranger

Sort of.

Oh, well.

He was out of my life now, which was probably a good thing, I kept telling myself.

But I missed him anyway, is what I’m saying. Against my better judgment. I confess: I had moments when I felt tempted to call in sick to the art show.

I mean, how could you go to an art show that you were guaranteed to lose without any hope at all?

But on the other hand, how could Inotgo?

It’s one thing for dreams to shift slowly—for you to evolve and long for different things. It’s another thing to abandon your dream out of spite.

I thought about my mom. My courageous, kindhearted mom. She would have given anything to go to this exact show fourteen years ago. She would give anything to be here right now, fully alive, facing whatever life threw at her, and just cherishing it all.

Maybe the best way to hold on to her wasn’t to obsess over her paintings or wear her skates or listen to her music or copy her style or worry over what would happen when I finally lost Peanut. Maybe the best way to keep her with me was to embrace her spirit. To emulate her courage. To bring the warmth and love to the world that she always—fearlessly—had.

She had loved us without reservation. She adored us wildly. And laughed. And danced. And soaked it all up—every atom of her life—every moment of her time

She felt it all. She lived it all.

That’s what I loved about her. Not just that she was a great mom ora great wife or a great dog rescuer. She was a great person. She knew some divine secret about how to open up to being alive that the rest of us kept stubbornly missing.

She’d wanted me to know it, too. She’d wanted me to say yes to everything. She’d wanted me to go all in.

But when she died, I went the other way.

I’m not judging myself. I was a kid. I didn’t know how to cope with losing her—or any of the hardships that followed. But I guess that’s the great thing about life—it gives you chance after chance to rethink it all. Who you want to be. How you want to live. What really matters.

I did want to go to the art show. I’d earned my right to be there. I didn’t, of course, want to be humiliated. But it was looking like I couldn’t have one without the other. And I just wasn’t going to let the things I was afraid of hold me back anymore.

I had no idea how that decision would turn out, but I knew one thing for sure:

My mom would approve.

As the time approached, I zipped myself into her pink dress—much tighter and slinkier now. Sue had gifted me a makeover from her cousin who worked at Macy’s and a hair blowout from her cousin’s roommate.

I did it all.

If I had to go to this art show all alone, I would do my damnedest to look good.

There was, of course, still a chance that Joe might show up in a surprise twist and whisk me off like Cinderella. But as I clanked down the metal stairs from the rooftop in a set of gorgeous but actively painful heels, he was running out of time.

I walked down our long hallway, hoping to see him.

I rode down in the elevator, hoping to see him.

I walked out to the street in front of our building to meet my Uber, still hoping to see him.

Waiting there in the late-afternoon light—my hair done, a daisybehind my ear as an ode to my mother, and with so much mascara on that I could actually see my own eyelashes—I decided to try to text himone last time.

This would be it. My final attempt.

And then, when he didn’t reply, I’d call it:Time of death for my thing with Joe. Saturday night, sevenP.M.

Then I’d go ahead and let myself mourn.

But after the art show.

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