Page 54 of Hello Stranger

I held still.

“But don’t worry,” Parker added then, raising her hand for another high-five attempt. “Given your whole brain-damage situation… you will literally never know I’m here.”

Eleven

PERFECT. BETWEEN JOEthe Weasel and Parker, I pretty much had to dread every single elevator ride.

Another reason to never leave the rooftop.

And yet Parker wasn’t wrong. I really didn’t notice she was there. Other than that our top-floor hallway suddenly started smelling like cat pee, which had to be that creepy Sphynx cat’s fault. Maybe she worked all the time—what kind of terrible job would a person like Parker even have?

Or maybe she was moving around me all the time, unseen, like a ghost.

Either way, she was surprisingly forgettable.

The Weasel, however, was the opposite.

That red-and-white bowling jacket was as hard to miss as a stop sign. And he wore it all the time. Other people changed their clothes, their shoes, their hair. Sometimes they wore workout gear. Sometimes a suit for work. Sometimes jeans. It was normal human behavior to wear different clothes for different occasions and I applauded it. Of course, it made it almost impossible for me to know who was who, but at least the world was still lumbering along much as it always had.

Anyway. Not this guy.

He really must have loved that jacket.

I saw him in it almost every evening. Getting coffee at Bean Street from Hazel One or Two. Locking his Vespa at the bike rack. Crossing that same crosswalk where I’d almost been flattened by a VW Beetle. Doing normal things, mostly. But with a spotlight on him because of that jacket.

Just my luck.

Everybody looked the same except for the last guy I wanted to see.

Noticing him like that did, however, confirm my initial diagnosis: he was definitely some kind of epic player.

My first confirmation came when I saw him stumbling drunk down the hallway with the sexiest woman in our building. I was waiting to step into the elevator as they lumbered out, arms pretzeled around each other, after what had clearly been a wild night of drinking. She looked worse than he did, for sure, and as they lurched past me, I wondered if she might be in danger.

Had he roofied her? That was the first question that came to mind. Just how terrible was this guy? Was he just a douche, or was he a monster?

I wanted to ask her if she was okay, but I didn’t know her name.

Sue and I always just called her Busty McGee. Which sounds terrible, now that I think about it. But I’m telling you, most of her outfits were very… cleavage-forward. We weren’t noticing something she didn’t want us to notice. Actually, she’d make a great friend for me now, because she was highly recognizable, even without a face. I’d know that chest anywhere.

And I very much admired her confidence. I, who hadn’t bought new bras in so long I couldn’t even tell you how long it had been.

But look, as identifiers went, those were hers. If you needed to mention her to anyone in this building, all you had to say was “the lady with the boobs,” and you’d be set.

Not that you would say that. But youcould.

Anyway, I hesitated on her name—and then I made do with “Hey.”

“Hey!” I called, catching up to them. “Are you okay?”

Leaning against the Weasel, she stopped, turned in my direction, and said, “He’s got me.”

At that, Joe un-paused them and they continued on toward her apartment door. Should I stop them? Should I call the police? What would I even say? A fat-shaming jerk is taking a very sexy neighbor of mine back to her apartment—and he might be up to no good?

That wasn’t a 911 call. People got up to no good all the time.

In the end, all I could think to do was shout after them: “Make good choices!”

They kept going—no acknowledgment.

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