Page 99 of Hello Stranger

Next, of course, it was awkward.

Joe coughed. I tucked my hair behind my ears. Joe checked his watch. I looked down at my shoes. Finally—what choice did I have?—I smacked him on the shoulder and said, “Stop trying to peek at the portrait.”

And much to my delight, that made Joe laugh. And that was something.

I looked off in the direction they’d just walked. “Your ex-wife, right?” I said, my eyes on her.

Joe nodded. “Bull’s-eye.”

“And Hot Tub Guy?”

Joe nodded again. “Teague Phillips.”

“That’s his name? Teague?”

“Yep. Valedictorian of his high school class.” Then Joe added, “It’s weird that I know that.”

“He seems very dull,” I said, maximizing my judgmentalness out of loyalty.

“Thank you,” Joe said then. “My plan was to never, ever accidentally bump into them.”

“How dare they come to our coffee shop?” I said. “No hot tubbers allowed.”

“What you just did was…” Joe started.

What? What was it?

“Very kind,” he finished.

Huh. Not sure aboutkind. Impulsive, maybe. Reckless. Brave.

“You really saved me,” Joe said.

I held my fist up for a bump—trying to reestablish equilibrium. “You’ve saved me a few times.”

“Not like that, I haven’t.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“That,” he went on, “was a heroic thing to do.”

“Do you think it worked?”

“Oh, it worked,” Joe said, like that might be true in more ways than one.

“Glad to be of service,” I told him.

Later, it would occur to me to worry about Dr. Addison. I was of course aware that we weren’t really engaged or even dating—yet. But we had an intention to start dating. What were the rules around kissing someone when you had a plan to start dating someone else?

I hadn’t technically cheated. That much seemed clear.

But what would Dr. Addison think about that moment, if he’d known about it?

I tried to revise the memory into a simple act of altruism. Joe had been in pain, and I’d seen a way to relieve that pain. Unselfishly.

For no personally gratifying reasons of my own.

It almost made me abetterperson, in a way.

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