Page 66 of Hello Stranger

It was the lethal combination of the hope with the disappointment, I decided.

I’d walked in, all fresh and bright with my green leaves lifted hightoward the sun… and it took only an hour to render me flopped sideways, limp and melted over the edge of my pot.

Emotionally, I mean.

The point is, untold numbers of innocent napkins gave their lives during that hour of waiting. All for nothing.

At the one-hour mark, with no text from him, I called it.

I was done here.

I stood up, feeling like the whole room of people must be watching me and shaking their heads, and started picking up all the napkin shreddings off the table—deliberately, self-consciously. Careful not to screw this up, too.

But that’s when the outside door opened again, and this time a breeze burst in with it, and that breeze sent the napkin pieces scattering off the table onto the floor—all my efforts destroyed, as so often happened, by some totally unrelated outside force. And despite everything, I smiled like a movie star at whoever was coming in, just in case.

It was Pavlovian at this point.

But it wasn’t Dr. Addison coming in the door. It was a lady.

So I turned my attention now to the floor and the tragic heartbreak confetti now covering my section of it, squatting to start picking it all back up.

That’s when a pair of shoes appeared in my field of vision.

And from the fumes of evil radiating off them and the sudden waft of Dior’s Poison, I could take a pretty good guess: Parker.

I stood up.

“You look like a girl who just got stood up,” she said.

It wasn’t the voice I recognized. It was the viciousness.

Definitely Parker.

Nobody else on earth could make me feel that shitty that fast.

“Hello, Parker.”

“How did you know it was me?” she asked, sounding overly delighted—almost sarcastically so—to be recognized.

I sighed. “By the cruelty. It has a distinct frequency.”

“I saw you here an hour ago on my way out,” Parker said then, enjoying a chance to savor my misery. “Now I’m back, and here you still are—wearing lipstick and everything—but still just utterly, completely alone.” I could feel her gleeful pout. “It’s so heartbreaking.”

“What do you want, Parker?”

“I want to ask you about that super-cute guy on our floor.”

“What guy on our floor?”

“The one who stares at you in the elevator.”

There was a guy who stared at me in the elevator?

“The one with the bowling jacket,” she said, like,Hurry up.

“Joe?” I asked. Joe stared at me in the elevator? Something about knowing that felt really… nice.

Parker had no idea she’d just made me feel nice. She snapped her fingers at me. “I need his number.”

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