Just My Type(15)

Considering that’s exactly how Ember sees me after listening to those transcriptions, this is already a foregone conclusion. I’m fucked if I don’t figure out a solution.

“As much as I don’t want to do this thing, I don’t want to come across as an idiot. Also, there was some weird glitch with the transcription company, which led me to start communicating with Ember, the transcriber, and she makes me laugh, so don’t make a big thing about it.”

She’s going to make a fucking big thing about it.

I wait a few beats for her to say something, but she’s still staring down at her phone.

“Did you even hear what I said?”

“Oh, I heard you.” She nods, still scrolling through something on her phone. “I’m just googling Ember Hastings to make sure she isn’t a creepy cat lady who’ll take your kidney and leave you in a bathtub full of ice. Ooooh, she’s got a great Facebook profile picture.”

“That’s a major invasion of privacy, Blake.”

Said the creepy guy who has that great Facebook profile picture saved on his phone.

A woman with wavy, blonde hair down past her shoulder blades is facing away from the camera, looking out toward the sun rising in the distance. She’s standing in a field surrounded by wheat and pumpkins, wearing a black tank top, a pair of jeans, and scuffed, brown cowboy boots. One of her hands is up resting behind her head, and her other arm is down at her side, clutching the brim of a cowboy hat. It’s a fucking beautiful shot. And her ass is hot as hell in those jeans. It doesn’t even matter that I can’t see her face. Every time I get an email from Ember, I picture that woman standing in a field of pumpkins, with the sexy-as-fuck body, and all that blonde hair.

“Holy shit, Baker, she lives in Chicago!” Blake shouts excitedly, turning her phone around so I can see the Whitepages listing she found.

You know, the Whitepages listing I already found by googling Hastings Pumpkin Farm—the only information that wasn’t private on Ember’s Facebook page—which told me the farm was in Montana. It then helped me narrow down the Ember Hastings on my Whitepages search to the only one connected to Montana, which shows she moved from Montana to Chicago a year and a half ago.

Just because I’m a guy, doesn’t mean I can’t be freaked the fuck out about talking to someone on the internet who may or may not be a female serial killer. I’m allowed to fear for my life and conduct my due diligence, goddammit.

“Wow, Chicago, huh? What are the odds?” I shrug, feigning nonchalance. As I glance out the office window of the gym, and my perfect view of Chicago’s Navy Pier and Lake Michigan.

It’s the reason I wanted the gym in this location. To give the people who come here something beautiful and endless and hopeful to look at while I try to help them get back their humanity. It’s also now the reason I get an even bigger smile on my fucking face whenever I get an email from Ember. Ever since I went down the rabbit hole of Google and found out she lives in Chicago, I’ve realized there’s a distinct possibility I might get to meet the woman who put a smile on my face for the first time in months. Which was why I was in the middle of asking Ember if we could meet, when Blake interrupted me.

“You can’t mention serial killers in the same sentence you ask this woman to meet you in person,” Blake informs me, annoying me all over again when she mentions the email she read over my shoulder.

“Wasn’t your first conversation with Rachel about the Zodiac Killer’s crime scene photos?” I question with a smirk.

“My wife and I share a mutual obsession with crime scene photos; that’s why we’re soul mates, thank you very much. And it was the Black Dahlia’s crime scene photos, and it was our second conversation on the dating app, dipshit,” Blake says with a huff.

Spinning my chair away from her so I’m facing my desk again, I reopen my laptop and erase the last line of the email I was drafting to Ember. Reaching my hand under the desk, I rub my sore knee distractedly while I try to come up with something better than, I know you said I shouldn’t google you, but I did. You have a great ass. As long as that’s you in your Facebook profile photo. Oh, God, I hope it’s not your mom or something. My deepest apologies if it is. I’m certain it’s not your mom, though. You’re thirty-two. And that is definitely not a fifty-plus-year-old ass in that photo. Don’t worry, I found your age elsewhere. Your Facebook page is still private and gives nothing away. Very safe of you. Good job. There are a lot of creepers out there. Anyway, doesn’t meeting me in person sound like a great idea?

“Is your knee okay?” Blake asks softly from behind me, when I didn’t even realize she’d gotten down off the desk.

“It’s fine,” I bite back, wincing at the harshness of my words as I yank my hand away from my knee and poise my fingers over the keyboard.

That’s another reason I need to meet the woman behind the emails. The one who makes me laugh and forget about my goddamn knee. She doesn’t pity me. She doesn’t worry about me. She doesn’t put me up on a fucking pedestal I don’t deserve, just because I’m doing something that should be done.

She makes fun of me. She calls me on my shit. She treats me like a normal human being. Something she might not do if she googled me. Which is why I haven’t told her my last name. The first hit when you google Baker Matthews? Chicago Wounded Army Vet, Local Hero.