SUBJECT: I’m a bloody idiot
Darling Kate,
How appropriate that I am a father to chickens because there is no bigger chicken than me.
I want you too bad. I don’t want anything to change. I’m so afraid of what you will do when you discover who I am.
I am the biggest of chickens.
Pleasedon’t let this change things. I like you so much. I won’t be able to handle not talking to you every day. I want to tell you all my secrets. I want you to know everything about me. I just keep picturing your face when you learn the truth …
I just couldn’t take it if knowing who I was changed things between us. I would rather have this friendship than nothing at all.
I can’t send this …
8
Ten Months Ago
Kate
I moved my mouse,just barely keeping my screen awake so Gail wouldn’t notice I’d been completely zoned out the last ten minutes.
This time I wasn’t sidetracked by things in a fictional world. I had been replaying a recent conversation with RealCharlie, or RC as I referred to him in my head. I wish he’d tell me his name. Maybe I should persist. It’d been over a year of talking every day now, and while I felt like I knew so much about him, I didn’t know anything important.
Well, nothing that would help me to cyberstalk him online, and that was probably the point.
Somewhere over these months, he’d transformed in my head from a lonely man hobbling around in a bowler on his grand estate into a silver fox, the likes of which I compared to the current Bond. And yet he’d never crossed any lines. Never made me uncomfortable. Never felt pushy; if anything, he seemed shy. He’d never asked about my relationship status. Because he probably didn’t care. At least not in any way that I secretly hoped for.
He had gently declined video chat. I understood his reasoning, but it was impossible not to feel disappointed. We still talked every day. He still knew more about my life than any other person. Tiny details that wouldn’t make sense to anybody else. We had inside jokes and we teased and bantered.
“Hey, Kate,” Gail said, and I jumped so hard she gasped in response.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, a hand pressed to my chest.
“You were really out there, weren’t you?” She smiled, arms crossed.
There was no denying it. I had been fully lost in thoughts of RC and our exchanges.
“Sorry,” I repeated.
She laughed and waved me away. “Wanna have lunch while we go over the schedule for the week? I’ll order some sandwiches from Zullo’s?”
“Sounds good.”
An hour later, I sat on the couch in Gail’s office, eating lunch with my laptop open on my lap.
“Kate, I hope you don’t mind my saying so but you seem happier lately.”
I flushed and pretended to type something on the computer. “Oh?”
“Yes. More relaxed, if not a little more distracted.” Her tone was gentle.
“I’m sorry. If it’s impacting my performance—”
She held up her hand. “No. No. It’s a good thing. You seem lighter.”
I couldn’t fight the smile. “I am.”
