But he didn’t.
A smile warms my face as I read his response. Last night, it made me light up like the family Christmas tree after Dad’s thrown every single light on that sucker that he can. And tonight, it makes me glow all over again.
MR. REDDIT: Alright, then CATwood. Tell me what to read.
MCAT: Seriously? You’ll read a romance novel?
MR. REDDIT: I will. Where should I start?
I scroll through the list of recommendations I gave him （I may or may not have gotten a little carried away and listed my very favorites in order, but I’m a bookseller—recommending books is my joy!）。 When I get to the end of our chat, with Mr. Reddit’s usual Sleep tight, MCAT, I bite my lip and war with myself. My fingers hover over the keys, aching to type what I’ve debated writing so many times the past few months, since my mind started wondering, What if?
What if my online friendship with Mr. Reddit became a real-life friendship? And then, what if, one day, it became something more? That hope—for the possibility of more with him—has crept up on me gradually since I broke up with Trey.
Knowing how I work, it hasn’t been entirely surprising, after a year of talking daily with Mr. Reddit and growing so close, that some nights, when the rare wave of longing washed over me, it’s been the thought of him that got me off—the warmth that I imagined filling his voice, the thoughtfulness guiding his every question and curiosity about my answers.
Each time it happens, I feel a little more ready to ask him: Do you think we should meet?
But as I stare at my screen, my courage fails me, especially in light of his silence tonight. What if he only wants to be my friend? What if I’d ruin this good, safe, comforting connection we have by asking to explore our potential to become more?
So in the end, I don’t type what I want. I don’t dare risk confessing what Marianne does—that poor, hopeless romantic:
“If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.”
Chapter 3
Playlist: “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” Lindsey Stirling, Sabrina Carpenter
On my walk to work, I manifest a positive attitude. Today is going to be better. Even though I tossed and turned, worried about Mr. Reddit and why he hadn’t messaged, and then, when I turned to a historical romance audiobook like usual to mellow me out until sleep kicked in, I had the disturbing experience of reading a book whose hero was a dead-ringer for Jonathan Frost.
As I listened from the heroine’s perspective, my imagination refused to conjure anyone but him—this grumpy, no-smiles jerk of a hero who smelled like wintry-forests Jonathan and sounded like gruff, surly Jonathan and looked like broad, muscly Jonathan.
Even worse, while still listening to my romance audiobook, I finally fell asleep. That’s when my dreams took over.
Caught in a weird limbo of a Regency England romance novel filtering through my headphones and the wicked work of my subconscious, I was a feisty bluestocking hiding from the crushed ballroom in her family’s library with a penny dreadful. Jonathan was the serious, broody, duke whose radically favorable views on industrialization scandalized the other gentry, even though their agricultural wealth was fast dying, so he came slinking into that same library I was hiding in to escape his intransigent aristocratic peers and find himself a bracing pour of my father’s finest single-malt whiskey.
But instead he found me. And asked what I was reading. Which, hello, with me, that’s how you hop in the fast lane on the expressway to friendship: talk to me about books. One thing led to another. Banter was bantered. Bluestocking Gabby was playful rather than pissy. Ducal Jonathan was curious as opposed to cantankerous. Instead of our dynamic’s real life hostility, we were combustible.
Off came cravat and corset, petticoats and placket, and then it was his big, strong body heavy over mine, his stern mouth whispering filthy things in my ear as he made me writhe and gasp beneath him. It was so vivid, a fire roaring, soft abandoned clothes beneath my back, as he filled me, touched me, coaxing me expertly to pleasure, like he’d mapped every inch of me and knew exactly how to drive me wild—
A horn blares, wrenching me from my thoughts. I’ve walked into the middle of oncoming traffic, which has a green light.
“Watch where you’re going!” a cab driver yells.
Thankfully their voice and interspersed honking is muffled by my noise-cancelling headphone earmuffs. Loud sounds like that hurt my brain. I lift my hand in apology and hurry across the street. “Sorry!”
Speeding up, I hustle along the sidewalk. I’m running late again because I woke up so flustered from my dream, so turned on I could barely put my clothes on right. Then I walked out the door without my bag before I realized I hadn’t put on my boots. I’m a mess.