Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(92)

Nope.

She wrote:

@OwenYouSomething Yes.

His reply was almost instant.

@Noramal Follow me and I’ll DM you

@OwenYouSomething Done.

And then, because her fifth-grade teacher had been fond of saying that discretion was the better part of valor: @OwenYouSomething How do I know you’re for real? I’ve heard from some serious weirdos.

@Noramal He shoved another guy who tried to kiss you, after. And we ran like bats out of hell and he never asked your name.

Because he didn’t want to know your name, a little voice in her head reminded her. And he probably still doesn’t.

@OwenYouSomething How did you figure out who I was?

@Noramal A friend just tweeted me to say she’d gone on FB after a year off it and seen something about it.

@OwenYouSomething That’s crazy. I put stuff out on Twitter and FB but no one knew who he was.

@Noramal He’s my friend Miles. Good guy. Can totally vouch for him.

Miles, she thought. Nice name. But I have promises to keep. And Miles to go before I sleep.

She recognized that the surge of excitement she was feeling would translate as desperation in a tweet, so she kept her response low-key.

@OwenYouSomething I’d like to see him again.

@Noramal Call him. Miles Shepard, 216-555-2760.

@OwenYouSomething Seriously?

There was a long silence at the other end, and she wondered. Whether Miles knew that Owen was tweeting her. Or whether Owen was acting on his own recognizance. The silence seemed ominous, either way.

@OwenYouSomething He doesn’t know you’re talking to me, does he?

@Noramal Just call him.

@OwenYouSomething Should I not mention our little conversation?

@Noramal Up to you.

@OwenYouSomething I won’t get you in trouble?

@Noramal I can take care of myself.

@OwenYouSomething Thank you. I really appreciate this.

@Noramal Just … be good to him.

@OwenYouSomething You’re a good friend.

@Noramal Let’s hope he thinks so, too.

Amen to that, she thought. She saved the phone number to contacts, then got up, went to the kitchen, and poured herself a glass of red wine. She stood in the circa-1970 kitchen, sipping the wine and trying to pretend that she wasn’t desperate to call him. As if there were an invisible TV audience, ready to respond with applause or a laugh track.

She took a slug of the wine, set down the glass, and picked up the phone.

Her thumb played over the swipe bar on the iPhone, waking it. She could call him. Right now.

Native caution, which had been peculiarly absent on New Year’s Eve, forbade her to dial the number. Instead, she tapped open the Facebook app. Typed Miles Shepard into the search window.

Miles Shepard. 1 mutual friend.

No effing way. How was that possible? Social media was supposed to be the connector, and she’d spent weeks back in January trying to find him, when all along he’d been one degree of separation away. Not knowing his name had been the deal breaker, apparently.

She clicked through, and her breath caught at the sight of Miles standing on the beach with several friends, his arm carelessly flung around another guy’s shoulder. He wore a T-shirt and board shorts and was grinning, squinting slightly into the sun. The light glinted off the water behind him. The grin made him look like a different man entirely. Someone mischievous and fun. The juxtaposition of that Miles with the dark serious one who’d kissed her so thoroughly on New Year’s Eve— It was sort of Oreo-esque in its awesomeness. Or like that advertisement for peanut butter cups, which claimed that peanut butter and chocolate were the best combination since Saturday and Sunday.

Like finding out that the guy you’d been drunk sex-tweeting with was the hot guy at the bus stop.

She flipped through some of his status updates. More photos of the beach trip with guys who turned out to be his college buddies. A kayaking trip with friends. Frequent photographs of funny signs, most of which made her giggle. A lettered roadside sign: CAMPING & ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE SUPPLIES. A hacked traffic sign: PREPARE TO BE ANNOYED. Side-by-side shops: KIMBERLY’S KANDY SHOP and ROBERT P. TRUST, DENTIST.

He’d posted several work-y updates from a conference for—she Googled it—people who ran nonprofits. She clicked on his profile. He was the executive director of a nonprofit that helped kids get three meals a day. She tried not to get all swoony about that. She wasn’t supposed to exult in his awesomeness, because he wasn’t hers in any way, shape, or form.

He hadn’t posted a status update since last fall. Nothing too outrageously weird about that. She was a sporadic Facebook user, too. On-again, off-again, as her life got busy, sometimes not posting for as long as a year at a time.

Their mutual friend was Stacey Heany. Nora sighed. It would have been more helpful if it had been someone she knew well. Stacey was an acquaintance from her teaching master’s program, someone she’d been friendly, but not friends, with.

Still, Stacey knew Miles, so Nora swallowed her pride and messaged her.

Hey, Stacey. It’s been ages—how are things with you? Weird question—you know Miles Shepard?

The answer came back right away. miles! how do you know miles?

Met him at a party. Sorry to be a weird stalker, but I didn’t get his name and just tracked him down and I wanted to make sure he was—I dunno, not scary.