Chapter One

      Today, I was desperate for tater tots.

      Chloe stared at her blinking cursor, her finger hovering over the enter key on her laptop. One second, not even that, was all it would take for that sentence to be sent to him, no way to take it back. Would he think she was dumb or would he think she was funny?

      It shouldn’t matter. The man was no more than a series of words on a screen, a modern-day pen pal. She wrote to him with BallerinaBaby as her user name. He wrote back as DifferentDrummer. A freebie conversation app had matched them up months ago and they’d been writing back and forth ever since, but Chloe knew that wasn’t the same as being real friends in real life.

      It shouldn’t matter, but it did. She wanted to make him laugh. Something about his notes lately made her think her anonymous correspondent had been having a hard week. He had talked to her through all the crazy months she’d been bouncing from one place to another. He’d listened to all her thoughts and worries and hopes. It was the least she could do to help him out if he was tired and overworked. Friends and lovers ought to take care of each other. Chloe believed emotional support was just as important as physical compatibility in a relationship, so—

      Chloe snatched her finger away from the enter key. She was looking at nothing more than the basic white screen of an outdated app, yet she was worrying about emotional parity in a relationship. She needed to keep the proper perspective on this...this...whatever it was.

      What should she call it when her digital pen pal felt like a better friend than the living human beings around her? Borderline insanity?

      She didn’t know any of the human beings around her, that was the problem. She didn’t know anyone in the entire state of Texas. She was newly arrived in a new town for a new job. All her stuff was still in boxes. The only constant was her pen pal. She didn’t want him to think she was dumb, because if she lost him, too...well, she’d lose the most reliable presence in her life for these last five months.

      Her cursor was still blinking. Tots.

      Tater tots. Was that what she was going to talk about? She was going to talk about tots when what she was honestly feeling was lonely?

      “Roger that,” she said out loud, and hit Enter.

      The alarm on her wristwatch went off. Time to get ready for work.

      Chloe carried her laptop with her and set it by her bathroom sink so she could keep an eye on the screen. If Different Drummer was online, he would answer immediately. It was one of the things she loved about him. She smoothed her hair back and twisted it into the low, tight bun that she was required to wear every day.

      Her cursor blinked in silence.

      Tots!

      Men didn’t really joke about food cravings, at least not the men in her world, and there were plenty of men in her world. They talked about women, especially their breasts, and they talked about drinking, especially beer, but they didn’t joke about food cravings.

      The cursor kept blinking.

      Food cravings. What had she been thinking?

      She’d probably, finally scared off Different Drummer. There were so many jokes about women and food cravings, he might think she was confessing some kind of hormonal thing, a craving like pregnant women were supposed to get. Worse, maybe he thought it was a monthly craving. Guys were so squeamish about things like that. A definite turnoff.

      She hadn’t been trying to turn him off. She hadn’t been trying to turn him on, either. It wasn’t like anyone could seduce a man with a line about tater tots.

      She jabbed a few extra bobby pins into her bun. Seduce him. Ha. She didn’t even know what he looked like. The simple little app didn’t have the capacity to send photos. She scowled at her reflection in the mirror. With her hair pulled back tightly, her face devoid of any makeup—she’d just sweat it off at work, anyway—she didn’t look like any kind of seductress.

      She pulled a sports bra over her bun carefully, then wrestled the rest of the way into it. Good thing she was flexible. It was the kind of bra that didn’t let anything show, even when she was soaked in sweat, the kind of bra that kept a girl as flat as possible, because bouncy curves were frowned on in her profession.

      She pulled on her comfy, baggy pants and zipped up her matching jacket, checking her laptop’s screen between each article of clothing.

      He had to be offline. If he was online, he would have answered her...unless he was turned off by a ballerina who was obsessed with tater tots. Which she wasn’t.

      She yanked on her best broken-in boots. If there was anything she needed to stop obsessing over, it was him, the mystery man who always seemed to get her sense of humor, who always seemed as happy to chat with her all night as she was to chat with him. It was too easy to forget it was all an illusion. She wasn’t really Ballerina Baby; he wasn’t really a unique man who marched to the beat of a Different Drummer, a mystery man who sent her long notes and found himself hopelessly charmed by her words.

      Was he?

      Today, I was desperate for tater tots.

      Blink, blink.

      Nope. He wasn’t hopelessly charmed. It was time for Ballerina Baby to join the real world.

      Her fingertips had just touched the laptop screen, ready to close it before leaving her new apartment, when a sentence in blue magically appeared.

      You crack me up.

      He got it. She’d made him laugh. Mission accomplished.

      The next blue sentence appeared: Or am I not supposed to laugh? The word desperate sounds rather...

      Desperate? she typed one-handed. Then she stuffed her wallet in her pocket, but not her car keys. She knew from experience that if she started chatting to Different Drummer, she’d lose track of time and forget that she had to be somewhere. She bit down on the metal ring of her key fob, holding it in her teeth to leave two hands free for typing. She wouldn’t forget about work as long as she had her car keys in her teeth.

      Another blue line appeared on-screen. They say most men lead lives of quiet desperation.

      Chloe raised one eyebrow. They slipped in famous quotes now and then, just to see if the other person would identify the quote, their own little nerdy game. This one was no challenge. How very Thoreau of you. (Too easy.)

      He replied, You, however, are not like most men. (I knew it was easy.)

      For starters, I’m a woman. Her words showed up in hot pink as she typed—the app’s choice for female users, not hers.

      He sent her a laughing-face emoji. I was thinking more along the lines that you don’t seem to lead a quiet life. You also never sound desperate. I don’t think you’d be quiet about it if you were.

      She was typing while holding car keys in her teeth. Quietly desperate? He didn’t know the half of it.

      Were you able to procure