Page 115 of Hello Stranger

“You have a very limited imagination.”

“Well, I definitely wasn’t picturing flying snakes.”

“I don’t know if I should be flattered that you think all those people would want to sleep with me—or offended that you think I’m a man-whore.”

“Sue and I prefer the archaic termmutton muncher.”

Joe just stared.

“What?” I said. “You have to admit it’s suspicious behavior.”

“For the record, I have never slept with anybody in this building. Other than my wife. Back when she used to live here—and used to be my wife.”

But that didn’t track. “Wait—” I said, pointing at him. “What about the lady you fat-shamed in the elevator?”

Joe shook his head like maybe he hadn’t heard me right. “What?”

“I definitely overheard you talking about a one-night stand in the elevator. A woman with a lot of belly fat who shredded your sheets and was a real breather.”

I could definitely feel how Joe was staring at me. Like he could not in any universe imagine what I was talking about.

“She dry-humped you in the parking lot?” I prompted. “And threw up in your entryway?”

But Joe just waited.

“She slept in your bed,” I went on, “and you almost suffocated under a ‘mountain of blubber.’”

That’s when Joe lifted his head. Recognition.

“Now you remember,” I said.

Joe put his face in his hands. “I remember,” he said. “But that wasn’t a lady.”

Really? We were getting into semantics now? “I definitely heard you—”

“That,” Joe went on, dropping his hands to make his point, “was a bulldog.”

I frowned, like he’d just said something impossible. “Abulldog?”

“A rescue bulldog,” Joe confirmed. “Named Buttercup.”

“You had a one-night stand with a bulldog?”

Joe nodded. “I did. A bulldog who was abandoned after she ate a tree branch the length of her entire body and her owners decided she was too much trouble. I fostered her for one night—actually, it turned into three—before taking her to a rescue group.”

“So…” I said, my voice quieting as I let this one piece of information rework all my eavesdropping, “when you called her a bitch, you literally meant…a bitch?”

Now he was offended. “I can’t believe you thought I was talking about a person.”

Suddenly I couldn’t believe it, either.

Joe kept shaking his head. “You thought I was talking about a one-night stand?” he said. “With a human woman?”

“What other kind is there?”

He shook his head in disbelief.

So I added, “Youcalled ita one-night stand.”

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