Page 107 of Hello Stranger

But then Joe said, “The kiss.”

The kiss?

“Right?” he went on. “It must be the kiss. You were just trying to help me out, and then I turned it into a whole other thing. I don’t have an excuse for that. I just—I guess it was the surprise of it. And I hadn’t kissed anybody in a long while. And there was definitely some sweet revenge mixed in. But mostly it was just… so unbelievably nice.”

Really?That’s what he thought I was mad about? A swoony kiss?

Who gets mad about a swoony kiss?!

In that second, my goals shifted. He wanted to have this conversation? Fine. We’d have this conversation.

It might ruin everything. But I guess that’s the thing about anger. I suddenly didn’t care.

“Not the kiss,” I said.

“Not the kiss?”

“What else might I be mad about?”

Joe hesitated.

I was going to force him to say it now. He’d started this, and I was going to finish it. “Rack your brain,” I said.

But Joe just shook his head.

And that just made me madder. “What am I mad about? What am I mad about? It wasn’t the very nice accidental sweet-revenge kiss.” I took a second to shake my head incredulously. “It was your walk of shame.”

“My walk of what?”

“Out of Parker’s apartment. This morning. At the crack of dawn.”

Joe thought back. Then he remembered. Then he protested. “But that wasn’t—”

“Are you saying you didn’t slink guiltily out of Parker’s place this morning?”

“I mean, I walked out. But I didn’tslink.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Is that what you’re thinking? That I got up to no good with your evil stepsister?”

“Prove me wrong.”

But Joe was just shaking his head. “How could you think that? How dumb do you think I am?”

“All men are dumb when it comes to Parker.”

But Joe was still indignant. “I wasn’t messing around with the stepsister who ruined your life,” he said. “I was feeding her cat.”

Confirmation. “You were feeding Parker’s evil cat? The one that keeps peeing in our hallway?”

Joe nodded. “Yep. Its name is Elvira.”

I took that in. “But you were wearing your pajamas.”

“Exactly!” Joe said. “People don’t do walks of shame in their pajamas.”

He had a point.

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