Page 91 of Hello Stranger

“I’m not a big crier,” I said, pulling out a tissue to blow my nose.

“If you say so.”

I stuffed the tissue in my pocket and took the box from him. “Seriously.”

“I eavesdropped on your conversation,” Joe confessed. “Not on purpose, at first—but then I got hooked.”

“It’s fine.” Who cared, honestly? Eavesdropping was so low on my triage list.

“Sounds like your best friend just eloped? For two weeks? Leaving you without a model for your portrait project?”

I nodded and started crying again.

Joe waited until I slowed down, and then he pulled a tissue out of the box for me. “I’ll be your model.”

I dabbed at my face. “What?”

Joe shrugged. “How hard can it be?”

“I can’t ask you to be my model, Joe,” I said.

But he shook his head. “You just have to sit there, right?”

“It’s more than that,” I said. “This is kind of a special project.”

“Wait—” he said then. “Is it anakedportrait? Is this like a Burt-Reynolds-on-a-bearskin-rug deal? I’ll need to grow some better chest hair.”

I tolerated that. “People aren’t ‘naked’ in art. They’re ‘nude.’”

But Joe was grinning at me like he had my number now. “You’re going to make me take my clothes off, aren’t you?”

“No!” I said. “This is a completely normal, non-naked portrait. No clothing will be removed.”

“So what’s the problem?”

I looked down, trying to figure out how to explain it. It didn’t make a lot of sense if he didn’t know about the face blindness—and I was already doubling down on never telling him about that. The more appealing he became, the more he did not need to know how messed up my life was.

But how to explain it without explaining it?

“Sue and I were going to try some unconventional techniques,” I said.

“That’s fine,” he said.

“I’ve been trying to push myself as an artist,” I said next. Not untrue. “And so I need to try some new strategies.”

“Areyouthe one who’ll be naked?”

“No one’s getting naked.”

“Then I don’t see the problem.”

“It’s just…” I tried again. “I’d have to touch you.”

“Touch me?”

“I’d have to draw a grid on your face. So there’d be a fair bit of touching. And staring. And studying. For a long time. It could be very… intimate.”

“But you wouldn’t bepunchingme, right?”

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