Page 70 of Hello Stranger

But doing something nice for a stranger made me feel better. Running into Joe—and recognizing himsans bowling jacket—made me feel better. The prospect of eating a nice dinner made me feel better. Even, if I’m honest, the memory of having told Parker to fuck off made me feel better.

Huh.I could feel better.That felt like news.

Dr. Nicole had been insisting it could happen all along. But I’d never believed her.

Had she been right?

Maybe life was full of surprises. Maybe disappointments could turn out to be blessings. Maybe tonight would end up being fun, after all.

OR MAYBE NOT.

Because when we made it up to the rooftop so I could change, Sue, whose heart was absolutely in the right place but who could not seem to comprehend even the tiniest aspect of what this face-blindness situation was like for me… was throwing me a surprise party.

“Surprise!” Sue shouted when she saw Joe and me cresting the spiral stairs. Then her shoulders dropped at the sight of my coffee-drenched clothes, and she asked, just like Joe had, “What the hell happened to you?”

I felt my whole body go tense. There were fifty people on my rooftop, at least. Bulb lights. Music. Beer. “What’s going on?”

“It’s a party,” Sue said. “Duh.”

“You’re hosting a party? Here?”

“It’s the party we never got to have. You know. When you had your brain thingy.”

I glanced at Joe, who was standing attentively beside me. I hadn’t told him about my brain thingy.

“We’recelebrating,” Sue said when I couldn’t find any words. “You remember celebrating?”

“I mean, Irememberit,” I said. The way you remember the stone age. Or the dinosaurs. They existed. Once. “But, I mean…” I tried to figure out how to protest something that was clearly already happening. “A surprise party?”

“It wasn’t meant to be a surprise, exactly. You just weren’t here when we arrived. It never even occurred to me that you might leave the house.”

“I leave the house,” I said.

“Not voluntarily.”

“Sue…” I said, astonished at the Grand Canyon–size distance between how she thought I’d feel about this forced party and how I actually felt.

“Where were you, anyway?” she asked.

“I had a date,” I said, glancing over at Joe. But dancing had broken out across the roof, and he was watching one of Sue’s friends do the worm.

That’s when Sue whispered into my ear, “With the vet?”

I nodded.

So then she whispered, “How’d it go?”

I shook my head. And then flared my nostrils. And then gave her a thumbs-down.

“Okay,” Sue said, swinging around to steer me by the shoulders toward the beer coolers. “Let’s table that. You’ve got a rooftop full of people here to celebrate with you.”

“What are we celebrating, again?” I asked.

“Hello? The North American Portrait Society? Top ten finalist? You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

I hadn’t forgotten. Of course. But I suddenly noticed how important timing was when it came to things like celebrating. Yes, we’d been about to celebrate the finalist thing a thousand years ago, before my life fell apart.

But then… my life fell apart.

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