Page 155 of Hello Stranger

“Yep.”

Why was he bringing this up? “And?”

“And… I didn’t realize you were going through such a hard time. I’m sorry.”

Wow. So little and so late. I made my voice flat. “It’s fine.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“I thought for sure you’d ignore it. Like you ignored all my other voicemails.”

Joe let that dig go as he edged closer to me.

So I turned toward him. He wanted to do this? Fine. We could do this. But once we were facing each other, I realized there was a lot more to that verb than I’d ever noticed before.

“So…” he said. “Can you not see me right now?”

“I canseeyou,” I said, maybe a tad more irritated than I needed to be. “You’re standing right there.”

“My face, I mean, though.”

I sighed. “I can actually see your face tonight. For the first time ever.”

Joe frowned. “For the first time ever?”

I thought maybe he was having a hard time with the idea that I’d been looking straight at him all these weeks—had touched him, talked with him, even kissed him—and had never seen his face. It was a tricky thing to comprehend, to be fair. I was just about to launch into a whole neurological explanation of how acquired face blindness worked when he jumped in.

“You never saw me before your surgery?” he asked.

I thought back. “There was that one time. In the elevator. When I overheard you talking about your one-night stand with the bulldog.”

Joe shook his head. “But I’ve lived in this building for two years.”

Okay. “But I only moved in not long before the surgery. So I was new.”

“But you’ve been using that space on the roof as a studio for a year.”

I frowned. “It’s weird that you know that.”

“I know that,” Joe explained, “because I helped you carry up your art supplies when you first moved in.”

I thought back. “You did?”

“All this time, you didn’t know that was me?”

I shook my head. “Wasthat you?”

“Are you sure you weren’t face-blind all along?”

I gave him a look, like,Very funny.But then I thought about it. “I remember the guy from that day. But he had a huge crazy beard.”

“Yeah. That was me.”

“Hell of a beard, bro. You could park your Vespa in that thing.”

“My wife had just left me. I’d abandoned all grooming.”

“Hence the baseball cap.”

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