Page 131 of Hello Stranger

Which I couldn’t even see.

So this conversation was destined to fail from the start.

But I still had to try.

I took a step closer, wanting to get really clear. “I guess the date’s not happening now?”

Joe gazed off at some far point on the horizon.

“That’s right, right? You’re not coming with me to this thing? Even though you said you would?”

Nothing from Joe.

“I guess I’m just really nervous to go by myself,” I went on, feeling my voice waver a little. “I don’t want to go at all. But I have to go, youknow? My painting. My life goals. And even though the portrait is not what they want, for sure—so I’m one hundred percent guaranteed to come in dead last—I suspect it might actually really be good. In an ugly duckling kind of way. Plus, there’s a good chance my horrible family will show up and make things a hundred times worse. And I’m going to have to do it all genuinely, totally alone.”

I held my breath for a second, trying to steady myself.

I never, ever asked for help. And if Joe’s behavior the past four days had made anything clear, he was in no mood to give it.

But I wasn’t asking for him, I realized.

This wasn’t about his answer. This was about my question.

And mustering the courage to ask it.

“The thing is,” I said then, my voice feeling like a balloon I might lose hold of. “The thing is… I’m scared to go alone. And I don’t know why, but it feels like you’re the only person I can say that to. You’re the only person Iwantto say that to. I just want so badly to have somebody with me. Anybody. And so I just have to ask if you might stay tonight. Despite everything.” I took a step closer, like that might seal the deal. “Can you postpone your plans,” I asked, “and come with me?”

If there was any hope for us at all, he’d sense my desperation—how badly I really, truly needed him—and rescue me this one last time.

But he didn’t.

He kept his face turned toward the horizon. “Are you asking me to be your anybody?”

“I guess that’s one way to put it.”

Now, at last, he turned toward me. “I’m not going to be anybody for you, Sadie. And I don’t want to see the portrait. And I don’t know why you think I’d care about any of this.”

But I shook my head. “I don’t understand what happened.”

I could feel a flash of anger in his expression like fire. “Really?” he said. “I don’t understand it, either, to be honest. But here we are.”

I took a deep breath. “Whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.”

But Joe shook his head likesorrywas the most useless word in the world.

Worse than useless, even. Insulting.

He turned to leave. Then he stopped and turned halfway back.

“I’m moving out, by the way,” he said then. “So stop coming by my place. And stop calling me. And for god’s sake… stop texting.”

Twenty-Five

THE FIRST INSULTof the art show—before all the injuries—was placement.

I arrived at the gallery to find my portrait hung in the worst conceivable spot—half under a staircase, fully at the back, right near the bathrooms, under an exposed air-conditioning vent that was literally dripping into a bucket. There was a moldy smell to the area—not to mention a tinge of Lysol.

You’d think that a bright, airy, recently renovated art gallery wouldn’t have a dank corner—but you’d be wrong.

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