Just My Type(16)

I’m not a hero. I’m just a normal guy. Who wants a woman to call him on his shit and not get all flustered or respectful or over-the-top flirtatious when she finds out who he is and what he does for a living. I want her to still call someone Skanky Giggler in front of me, and joke that I’m nothing special. Not fall all over me, thanking me for just being a decent human being.

“Just help me out with this, will you?” I ask Blake, hoping that by requesting her help, she’ll forget I acted like a little bitch when she asked me about my knee.

“Nana Grand Funk? Seriously?” Blake asks with a snort, leaning over my shoulder to read more of the email I’d started to Ember.

“That’s not helping. And it was funny, shut up,” I mutter.

“You’re really going to need to butter her up to soften the blow that you’re a stalker who knows everything about her,” Blake informs me.

“I don’t know everything about her. Just a few minor details to prove she isn’t a psycho.”

“So, her name, her age, where she lives, and a picture of a woman with a hot-as-hell ass proves to you she isn’t a psycho killer?” Blake questions with humor in her voice.

“Name me one famous female killer with a great ass.”

“Darlene Gentry, Jodi Arias, Amber Hilberling—”

I interrupt her with a sigh. “Seriously, the amount of knowledge you have of gruesome things is astonishing. You know what? I’ll just blame you.”

I start tapping my fingers against the keyboard, my smile growing with each word I type.

“Older sisters are so fucking annoying. I’m sure she’ll buy it.”

That earns me a smack on the back of the head, but hopefully it will be worth it when Ember agrees to meet me.

Skanky Giggler, you might just come in handy after all.





CHAPTER 7





Ember

Shut Your Whore Mouth


“Read that last part again,” Brooklyn orders.

Propping my phone against an unlit jar candle in the middle of my coffee table so Brooklyn can still see me over the FaceTime call, I go back to my laptop. Scrolling up through the recent email Baker sent, I reread the last part.

“My sister googled you. I’m sorry. I called CPS and told them to take her away, but they don’t want a thirty-six-year-old, mouthy little shit with no personal boundaries. This is where I tell you not to freak out that I also live in Chicago.”

My voice gets a little higher pitched and frantic when I get to that last part.

“Stop freaking out,” Brooklyn orders. “You’ve already read that part to me ten times, and each time, your voice sounds like it’s about to shatter a few windows when you say Chicago. We’ve already established that you live in the same city. We are moving on from freaking out about that. Read the part after that.”

I can’t even be mad that she’s getting pissy with me. I don’t know if I’m freaking out because this is just some guy I met on the internet and it’s weird as hell that we just randomly happen to live in the same city, or if I’m freaking out because, after just a few email exchanges, he’s not just some guy I met on the internet. He makes me laugh. And he makes me not want to be such a worthless slug, sitting around on my couch on a Friday night like a miserable loser. And he wants to meet me.

Clearing my throat, I read the rest of Baker’s email.

“It brings me great sadness to have to tell you this, but Skanky Giggler is no longer interviewing me. I’ll give you a minute to compose yourself over the loss of such a stunning interviewer. The magazine requesting this interview read the first transcript and agreed it was complete shit. Don’t worry. I removed all of your jolly and helpful notes first. The magazine apologized and asked me what I wanted to do. I told them I might know someone locally with a take-charge attitude who could ask the hard-hitting questions. I’m in a real fucking bind here, Ember. I know you don’t really know me, and I know you definitely don’t trust me from any other stranger on the street, but I need help with this. It’s important. What do you say?”

I take a deep breath when I finish rereading Baker’s email.

“And how much is he offering to pay again for you to interview him personally?” Brooklyn asks.

I look away from the email to glance at my best friend’s face on my phone screen.

“Five times what I would normally make for this job, on top of what I’m already making for it, because he’d still need me to type everything up,” I remind her, my happiness starting to come back to me, when it was in the toilet at the start of this phone call.

Brooklyn FaceTimed me to tell me she’s pregnant. My best friend and my brother are going to have a baby. And I live over a thousand miles away and can’t afford to go home constantly to touch her belly as it grows, and make fun of her in person when she bitches about being miserable, and be there for her when she has this baby.

But I could with the money I’d make from this job.

Baker’s email showed up right when I was getting ready to hang up with Brooklyn so I could cry about the unfairness of everything in peace. Like a creepy stalker angel from heaven, he made me laugh, and he magically provided me with an answer to my problems.

“And he wants you to meet him in the middle of the day, in a super public place in the city, right?” Brooklyn asks.