WELL, THAT WAS sudden.
In the way that something that should’ve already happened can also be sudden.
I mean, sure—I’d already decided that we were fated to wind up together. But even for fate, this was pretty fast.
“Can you date patients?” I asked, in lieu of shouting Yes! Let’s get married!
“I mean, I can’t date Peanut,” he said. “But you’re not a patient.” Ah. “Good point.”
“What do you think?” he asked.
What did I think? Hello! I was ready to plan the honeymoon. That said … I hesitated.
It was one thing to charge boldly forth toward my happily ever after with my dashing veterinarian in theory. It was a whole other thing to make an attempt like that in reality.
In my current reality, especially.
I mean, come on. I was a mess. I had surgical scars in my hair. I was bursting into tears at random intervals for no reason. The whole world was a faceless blur. And every single thing that mattered in my life was disintegrating around me. Would this storybook perfect man want to date— or be anywhere near—a total disaster like that?
Definitely not.
I mean, I didn’t even want to hang out with me these days.
So how on earth could I expect this dreamy, perfect, animal-rescuing man to be any different? Was I, in this moment, in any way someone who would be attractive or appealing or fun to date?
No. No, this would never work.
Could I have just been honest with him? Could I have just told him what was going on? He was a scientist, after all. He might have found it medically fascinating. I’m sure he saw weird, crazy stuff all the time in his line of work.
But … he didn’t date that weird, crazy stuff. Dr. Addison shifted his weight.
My answer was taking too long.
So I gave the best reply I could think of: “I would love to go on a date with you,” I told him. And then I added, “In three weeks.”
I felt his frown. “In three weeks?”
I nodded like this was a totally reasonable request. “I am a portrait artist,” I told him, cherry-picking selective facts about my life to not blow my cover. “And I’m a top-ten finalist in a hugely prestigious juried portrait show three weeks from now—and so I’m really directing all my time and energy into completing my submission.”
How did that sound?
Dr. Addison gave me my answer. “You’re a finalist in a big competition?”
I nodded, like, Yep. “Top ten out of two thousand entries.”
“That means you beat out one thousand nine hundred and ninety other people.”
Told ya he was perfect. “That’s exactly what my best friend said.” “Nice,” he said, and I could feel him admiring me.
“But now I have to win,” I said. “So I just can’t have any distractions right now.”
Dr. Addison nodded like that made perfect, logical sense. I thought I was in the clear.
But then he said, “Of course if we just happened to run into each other at the same time in a coffee shop, that wouldn’t be a date. That would just be both of us self-caffeinating in close proximity.”
Ah. He wasn’t going to make this easy.
When I hesitated, he added, “Only if you want to, of course.” Was it a test? To gauge if I wanted to?
I wasn’t waiting to find out. “I want to,” I said. I could feel a smile take over his face.
So I added, “You have to caffeinate, right?”
And there it was. If I had to go on a coffee date with the world’s dreamiest veterinarian, then I guess I just had to.
 |
ONCE I’D GIVEN in, I planned our wedding the whole way home.
We had an appointment for simultaneous coffee now. And, somehow, not calling it a date made it feel even more like a date. Did that mean we were dating?
Pretty damn close! Right?
And, of course, once you started dating someone, you inevitably got married.
So we were essentially engaged.
Where to have the wedding? Maybe on the coastal rocks of Maine, near a lighthouse? Or on the gentle sand of a Hawaiian beach? Or—hell, as long as I was fantasizing—in some quaint, timeless English village? I’d have to google timeless English villages. Maybe the Cotswolds?
This was perfect, right? This was perfect.
I’d get this face thing solved, get Peanut healthy, win this competition, disprove everybody who ever thought I was worthless—and then go on a date with Dr. Oliver Frigging Addison. And start living the victorious life I’d always wanted.
That worked.
I was feeling so foolishly optimistic for a minute there as I basked in that fantasy that I decided to stop by Bean Street Coffee to grab a decaf latte on my way to the elevators. Life was good today. Good enough for a celebratory latte.
Hazel One was working there tonight. This was how hip Bean Street Coffee was: it had two different baristas named Hazel.
I ordered my latte and then waited by the pickup counter, as fully afloat as if these wedding fantasies were an emotional inner tube.
But that’s when I heard, “Sadie Montgomery?”
This—being recognized—had happened a few times since I’d been tricked by my evil stepsister, and I’d say, all in all, I managed okay. The big
goal was always to suss out who was talking to me, but I was also happy to settle for just having a pleasant interaction and not getting caught.
“Hey there!” I answered, more confident with my strategy now. There are no strangers. “How are you?”
“Great! How are you?”
Clues: Blond hair in a ponytail. Tall-ish. Blue jeans. Jangly bracelet. Also: This person knew my first and last name. Her tone of voice sounded as if she was glad to see me. She was in the coffee shop of my building at this hour of night, and she was holding—get this—a hairless Sphynx cat with a rhinestone collar. I mean, could she do that? Were cats even allowed in coffee shops? Was she a neighbor? Did I know her from the elevator? The last-name thing was a confounding variable, because, again, I really didn’t know anybody in this building well enough to have handed out my last name.
Damn it. Who could it be?
“Love your sundress,” she said then. “It reminds me of one you had in high school.”
We knew each other from high school? I didn’t keep in touch with anyone from high school.
“Wasn’t it yellow?” she said then, thinking back. “You wore it to the ninth-grade picnic?”
Okay, now this was getting creepy.
“And then I’m pretty sure you stole it from me after you got kicked out and sent to boarding school.”
Fuck.
It was Parker.
How, how, how had I not recognized her voice—again? Dr. Nicole had said not everybody was great with voices, that it might take some time to tune into them better … but Parker? I should know that voice anywhere.
It was the voice of doom.
And, yes. I had stolen that yellow sundress from her.
But she’d stolen my entire family from me, so we were hardly even. “Are you kidding me right now?” I said.
“What?” Parker said, putting on a baffled, innocent voice. “Why are you messing with me—and why are you even here?”
“I’m messing with you because it is never not fun, and I’m here because: Hello! I just moved in.”
That didn’t compute. “Moved in to what?” “The building.”
“The building? This building?” I demanded, pointing at the floor. Then I pointed at myself. “My building?”
“Top floor, baby!” She lifted her hand for a high five. I ignored the hand. “You can’t move in here.”
“Pretty sure I just did. A cute guy helped me carry my scratching post.” “This is my apartment building. I live here.”
“It’s not only your apartment building,” she said. “Lots of people live here. Including me. As of today.” Then she waved her still-raised hand in my face. “You can see this, can’t you? I’m high-fiving you!”
I smacked her hand out of the way. “I’m not fucking high-fiving you, Parker. Get out. You’re not welcome here.”
“I think the guy who carried my scratching post might disagree. I got a definite vibe.”
Of all the pets I’d have picked for Parker, I wouldn’t have chosen a cat.
A tarantula, maybe. A tank of piranhas. A hive of wasps.
Just then, Hazel One called my name. My latte was ready. “Did you come here on purpose?” I demanded.
Now Parker dropped her voice a little. “Do you think I’m hunting you down or something?”
“What else could possibly be happening?”
“Wait,” she said then, her voice starting to ooze with delight. “Am I sensing that you still haven’t moved on from high school?”
Were we talking about this? I guess we were talking about this.
“That’s a hell of a question from you,” I said. When she didn’t stop me, I kept going. “A hell of a question from the person who framed me for stealing Madame Stein’s French exam. The person who started the rumor that I slept with Kacy’s boyfriend. The person who started a fire out by the field house and then put a can of lighter fluid in my locker. And let’s not forget the person who bullied Augusta Ross to the brink of suicide and then pinned it all on me.”
She wrinkled her nose in faux sympathy. “Not over it, then.”
“Of course not,” I said. “You methodically and viciously dismantled my life. Augusta Ross had been my best friend since second grade, but six months after you showed up, her parents were hauling her off to Seattle, never to return. You got me kicked out of school. You turned my own father against me. And all for what—so you could have our bedroom to yourself?”
I thought maybe holding her actions up to her in the mirror might evoke … something. Remorse, maybe. Regret?
Instead, Parker just said, “You forgot ‘stole your boyfriend.’ Which was why I needed the bedroom to myself.”
Whoa. She was worse than I remembered.
Parker was loving this, though. She leaned in. “Is it all still haunting you this much? I mean, I knew I won. But I didn’t know I won this epically. Sweetie, in two years, we’ll be thirty! Let it go.”
“Don’t call me sweetie” was all I could think of to say.
Remember when Dr. Nicole thought it was so perplexing that I would think that people would want to use your weaknesses against you? That there was some compelling reason to endlessly hide your vulnerabilities from the world?
Well, meet the entire reason I believed that—right here, in the flesh.
Holding a cat in a coffee shop.
Hazel One called my name again. I ignored it. Screw the latte.
“You can’t live here,” I said.
“I’m no landlord,” Parker said, “but I don’t think you can stop me.” “Why?” I asked then.
She pretended the question made no sense. “Why what?”
I tried to bend her to my will with a don’t-mess-with-me tone of voice. “Why are you doing this, Parker?”
She gave a big shrug, and then she didn’t fight me—and I suddenly realized she’d wanted me to ask this question all along. “I heard about you and my mom hanging out,” she said, and then her voice got theatrically pouty, “and I thought, Are they having fun without me?”
“We were not having fun,” I said. “I don’t ‘have fun’ with Lucinda.” “She paid you a visit, though,” Parker said. “At your roof-hovel.” Hey. Only I got to call my hovel a hovel.
“Now we can all have fun together,” Parker went on—her voice shifting to menacingly perky.
“I don’t want you here,” I said, starting to feel a panic of helplessness.
“Aww, I know,” she said now—lacing her voice with fake sympathy. “This is kind of your worst nightmare, isn’t it?”
She waited, like I might confirm it. I held still.
“But don’t worry,” Parker added then, raising her hand for another high- five attempt. “Given your whole brain-damage situation … you will literally never know I’m here.”
