Page 84 of Hello Stranger

“Yep.”

“And then for you to just… live in a mausoleum.”

Joe stopped chewing and assessed me. Then he made a decision. “She cheated on me. With a guy from work. And then she left me and moved in with him. And now they’re getting married.”

I squeezed my whole face up like that really smarted. “Oh god.”

“Yeah.”

“How did you find out?” I asked.

“I surprised her on a work trip and found them together at her hotel. Naked. In her private hot tub.”

“Oof.”

“She got home from the trip, packed a suitcase without a word, and went to a hotel. She came back a few days later to get the rest of her stuff… and brought him with her. Shebrought him with her.To our apartment. She kept saying, ‘I thought you’d be at work,’ like that made it better. And then—long story short—I wound up beating the crap out of him.”

He paused, like I might think that was a bad idea.

“Good,” I said, holding up my hand for a high five.

“Yeah, well. I’m not normally violent. Just so you know.”

I looked at his forkful of linguine, resting lukewarm and forgotten in his hand.

Why had I pushed to talk about this? Poor Joe. Now I’d made him lose his appetite.

“Hot tubs,” I declared, like this might make him feel better, “are just crawling with bacteria.”

He went on. “It’s pretty cliché stuff when you think about it,” he said. “Happens every day.”

“But not to you.”

“No…” he said quietly. “That was a new one for me.”

But suddenly I was feeling mad for him. “What’s wrong with her, anyway? What could she be thinking?”

With that, I could feel myself signing up for Team Joe. If he was the terrible person I’d originally thought, he was hiding it really, really well.

Maybe there was a good explanation.

Whatever I’d heard in the elevator, it just couldn’t have been what it sounded like.

“You’re very handsome and nice!” I declared then, going all in. “She should’ve been thanking her lucky stars!”

“You don’t have to say that,” Joe said.

I mean, did I know for sure he was handsome? No. But who cared? Sue said he was—and she was picky. “It’s true,” I insisted. “Shesquanderedyou.”

“I’ll bounce back eventually,” Joe said. “I just… haven’t found a good reason to.”

I pointed at him. “Yet.”

He sighed.

“Come on. Say it with me. You haven’t found a good reason to—yet.”

His shoulders sank as he resisted—like my forcing this optimism was just insulting. “Yet,” he finally said. And then he stuffed that whole forkful of cold linguine in his mouth, made himself chew it, and swallowed it down.

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