No Good For Anyone (6 page)

But after a few weeks, sorting through all the winks had gotten tedious, and she usually just deleted the messages without even reading them.

A few months later, around ten o’clock on a warm summer night, Lindsay was trying to catch up on her word count for the day when she heard a pinging sound come from her computer speakers. She minimized her word document and clicked on the safari window to see what it was.

A message. From RedSoxChace, a user on the dating site. She must have forgotten to sign out last time she signed in to delete her winks, and now this guy was using the site’s instant message service to communicate with her.

“I love romance novels,”
the IM said. “
Glad to see you like Susan Elizabeth

Phillips, too, She’s one of my favorites!”

Lindsay rolled her eyes. Men were always giving her shit about the fact that she wrote romance books. She couldn’t count the number of times guys asked her if she was going to write them into a book, or thought she was into kinky sex just because she wrote love stories.

Usually Lindsay would have ignored a message like that, but it was late, and she was avoiding her manuscript.

She typed out a quick response.
“Glad to hear it -- what’s your favorite book of

hers?”

The reply came almost immediately.
“MATCH ME IF YOU CAN. I just love

sports agents. They’re so sexy.”

She laughed out loud. Yeah, it was a little cheesy, but the guy got major points for looking up a Susan Elizabeth Phillips book before he messaged her. It showed a willingness to make an effort.

“Does that mean you’re a sports agent?”

“Nah, just a boring hedge fund manager.”

“So you’re the one responsible for the financial collapse?”

She expected him to come back with something defensive, about how not all financial guys were the monsters the media made them out to be.

But instead he said:

“Well, not me personally. But I know the guy who is. His name’s Bob, he

works on the sixth floor of my building.”

Lindsay laughed.

“Can you tell Bob he owes me lunch?”
she wrote back.
“That’s about how

much I had in my 401k when the market collapsed.”

“Will do. But with interest, that probably equals dinner by now.”

She hovered the cursor over his name, thinking she should probably check out his profile. But why? Any guy who was this cute and funny had to be completely unattractive. Otherwise, why would he be messaging people? And furthermore, why would he be messaging her? Lindsay knew she wasn’t ugly, even considered herself pretty on a good day. But she’d seen the women on this site – a lot of them were posing with their cleavage hanging out, their bleach blonde hair tumbling over their tight tank tops as they flashed a perfect white smile at the camera.

Not that Lindsay cared about what this guy looked like – first, looks had never been that important to her. And second, it wasn’t like she was ever going to meet him. It was just a distraction, a little harmless internet flirting while she worked on her book.

She clicked. His profile popped up, and Lindsay actually gasped out loud. That’s how hot this man was. He had short dark hair, piercing dark eyes, and a smile that made him look like he was flirting with you, even on the computer screen. It wasn’t one of those posed pictures that Lindsay hated so much. This was a picture of him out on a boat, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, a drink in his hand, the sun setting behind him. His nose was slightly sunburned, and he looked like he was having a fun day out on the ocean with his family.

She took in a deep breath. There was no way a guy like that would ever seriously want to date a girl like her. Of course, that’s probably why they were talking on the internet – if they were in a bar, he probably never would have started talking to her.

But since she was here, safe in her bedroom, where he had no idea she was wearing an I HEART NY T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants with a hole in the knee, he’d initiated conversation. A cyber conversation, but still.

“Hello?”
he was saying.
“Did I scare you off?”

“No, sorry,”
she said.
“I was just doing some online research.”

It wasn’t really a lie. She
had
been doing some research. Some research on him.

“Am I interrupting your work?”

He was, but something about him had her intrigued. Either that, or she was just way too bored from being alone with her characters all day.

They ended up talking for hours. Chace was at a conference in New York City, working on some kind of deal that sounded ridiculously complicated. He had a lot of work to do, too, and so they’d stop their chat for a little while to work, then come back online to check in and do a little flirting.

Finally, when the sun was starting to come up, Lindsay wrote:

“Wow, we stayed up all night. You’re great for my word count.”

“You’re great for my work, too. Can’t remember the last time I

had so much fun working on international finance.”

“Probably in college, when you were studying it after banging

some sorority girl.”

“Ha! Touché!”

“Just kidding

”

“Anyway, I should probably go – I need to get some sleep before

my meeting at ten.”

“Wow, that’s only a few hours away. Sorry I kept you up.”

“You didn’t! You were the only thing keeping me going.”

He was waiting for her to say goodnight, and even though she was exhausted, she didn’t want to. It was crazy, but for some reason, she wanted to make sure she was going to talk to him again. The logical side of her knew it was just an internet conversation, but it was the best conversation she’d had with a man in a long time.

She told herself not to over think it, and so finally she said,
“Well, if you’re

around tomorrow night for a little more motivation, I’ll be here, just me

and my characters.”

She cringed at that last part, because, honestly, could she have sounded any more pathetic? She’d be here, just her and her characters? It was worse than being a crazy cat lady. At least crazy cat ladies spent time with actually living things. She was talking about hanging out with people who existed only in her head.

“Good night, Lindsay,”
he’d written back.

She thought she might have a hard time falling asleep, but she hadn’t, and by the time she woke up, the whole thing felt like some kind of weird dream. The light of day turned something that had seemed scandalous and intimate the night before into something that just seemed silly. So she’d been up all night talking to a stranger on the internet. Hello, lonely loser.

She’d spent the morning writing, then met her friend Hillary for lunch, came home and cleaned her apartment. At around eight, she sat down to email her agent about something, when she saw she had a notification alerting her to a message from RedSoxChace.

Hey, nightly inspiration,
it said,
you around? I have a lot of work to do, and

don’t know how I’m going to get through it without you.

She immediately logged on.

And for the next two weeks, while Chace was in New York, it became their nightly ritual. Sometimes they’d end up going to bed around midnight, but more often than not, they’d stay up all night, taking breaks from their respective work to chat and flirt.

They got to know things about each other. She told him about her dad, how he had been a total asshole, how her sister Jamie annoyed her but they were still best friends.

He told her his mom had died when he was little, how his dad had recently married a new woman who had a daughter a little younger than him, and how he was glad his dad had finally found love again.

She thought it was a sweet story, and they joked about her using it in a book someday.

She looked so forward to the chats that her word count was growing exponentially. She finished the book she was working on, and even had time to write up a new proposal for her agent. There was something comforting about him being on the other end of the computer, cheering her on, making her feel good.

When it was time for him to leave New York and come back to Boston, she felt a little sad that their late night chats were coming to an end.

So, he said the night before he was scheduled to leave New York, when I get back to Boston, you up for doing some in person work together?

Her face flushed, and her hands froze on the keyboard. She didn’t know what to say. Of course she’d imagined what it would be like to meet him, to see him, to actually spend time with him. At the same time, she was so enjoying the fantasy that she didn’t know if she wanted to ruin it.

What if you’re a psycho stalker?
she stalled.

She knew he wasn’t. Well, that wasn’t quite true. Anyone could be a psycho stalker these days, even the people you’d never suspect. But she’d googled him, and he’d checked out. His job, his family, everything.

“How do I know
you’re
not a psycho stalker?”

“Oh, I am.”

“I think I can handle you.”

She hesitated.

“Okay,”
she typed finally.
“Let’s do it.”

They made plans to meet up the first weekend he was back. But then the email came. He was being sent to California. He didn’t want her to think it was a lie, so he was forwarding the email his boss had sent.

She was equal parts disappointed and relieved. It was one thing for her to be charming and cute on the computer. It was quite another to be that way in person, when she had to worry about things like whether or not her Spanx were showing, or if she had spinach in her teeth, or if he was expecting her to sleep with him at the end of the night.

They could still have their nightly inspiration sessions, he said.

She agreed.

But the first night he was in California, he suggested talking on the phone.

Her heart was racing as she dialed his number.

“Hey, Inspiration,” he said when he answered. Her pulse sped up. His voice was deep and sexy, the exact kind of voice you’d expect to belong to a man that looked like he did.

“Hi,” she said.

“You have a cute voice,” he said. “I knew you would.”

“How’d you know?”

“Just had a feeling,” he said. “I’ve learned my instincts are usually very dead on.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said. “What are your instincts telling you right now?”

“That you and I are going to be on the phone for a very long time.”

He was right. They talked for hours that night, about everything and nothing.

She told him how she got started writing, how she’d always wanted to be a writer, how it had taken her three years and seven books before she sold something, but how she’d never once entertained the possibility of giving up. He told her how he hated finance. It paid the bills, but his dream was to move out to the country with a couple of dogs and live off the land.

When they finally hung up, she was so wired she couldn’t sleep. So she stayed up all night writing. He was doing wonders for her productivity.

They talked every night while he was in California. The time difference worked out perfectly. He’d call her when he got home from work at around eight his time, eleven hers. They’d talk for a couple of hours, and when he went to sleep, she’d stay up late writing.

The book she wrote during that time was, in her opinion, the best one she’d ever written, and she was sure Chace had a lot to do with that. Every time she’d hang up the phone, electricity would be zinging through her body, and her stomach would have those butterflies you got when you had a crush on someone. She was able to channel that into her writing. She’d never been a night writer, but during that time, it was what felt natural.

Still, she knew there was more than a chance that it would be different when they finally got together. It was an internet relationship. No matter how good their chemistry was on the phone, it didn’t guarantee there would be chemistry in person. She loved his laugh, loved his voice, loved the jokes he told, and the way he spoke about politics and sports and movies. But that was much different than being in someone’s presence, seeing the way they moved, the way they held themselves, how they looked when they were thinking about something or the way their hand felt when they held yours.

Of course, she spent her days and nights writing romance novels. She was conditioned to believe in happy endings, that there was a person out there for everyone.

But part of the reason she loved writing books where everything always worked out was because she knew it didn’t usually happen that way.

When Chace got back from California a couple of weeks later, he wanted to hang out immediately. She agreed, mostly because the anticipation had been building for so long she kind of just wanted to get it over with.

She spent way too much money on a pair of Seven Jeans and a cute, off the shoulder sweater that dipped down in front and showed off her cleavage. She got her hair highlighted, bought new shoes, and even went for a pedicure.