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After a long moment, I sighed and told Ian—Isaiah—the God’s honest truth:
My name isn’t Nick either. And I’m afraid to tell you more because I’ve got a lot to lose if someone else finds my account.I paused, took a deep breath, and added,I’m also not sure you’d believe me.
I wouldn’t believe you? How do you figure?
It’s hard to explain.I hesitated, then,I think it would be best explained in person.
More starting and stopping. More heart pounding.
Is that a roundabout way of saying you want to meet?
My pulse surged, and I had to catch my breath. My face was burning, which made the throbbing in and around my lip intensify, and I was thankful no one was here to see how red I undoubtedly was. It once again took a few tries to formulate an answer.
And once again, I went with the truth:
Yes.
Oh, God. We were really going to do this, weren’t we? I was finally going to meet the man on the other side of all the thousands upon thousands of messages over the past four years.
Apparently so, because Isaiah’s response wasLet’s do this.
The surge of excitement, adrenaline, and nerves rivaled the feeling of stepping out onto the ice for a critical playoff game. So much potential for the outcome to be incredible or heartbreaking. So much pressure.
My hands weren’t quite steady and didn’t want to cooperate as I replied,How do you want to play this? Since we don’t want photos attached to our accounts?
Well, one of us could wear a green carnation. LOL.
I chuckled, which was a relief even when it tugged painfully at my stitches. And as we worked out the logistics of when and where to meet, my pulse was going wilder than it would have during that hypothetical playoff game.
I just prayed like hell this didn’t end in heartache.
Chapter 5
Isaiah
Not gonna lie—thiswas giving me some spy movie vibes.
Nick—or, well, “Nick”—and I had agreed to meet by the fountain at Point Park, the park at the northwestern tip of downtown Pittsburgh where the Ohio River split into the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. I’d told him I’d be wearing a blue jacket, and he said he’d have on a Yellow Jackets hoodie.
It reminded me of all those movies where gangsters met assassins in parks, because I was a giant dork, and I was also a nervous wreck.
Because today…
Today I was going to find out what he really looked like.
More to the point,hewas going to find out whatIreally looked like.
I’d been so caught up in wanting to meet him and see his face, I hadn’t really gotten to the part where I internally panicked because he’d be seeing me, too. I sure was there now, though, and I was queasy with nerves. What if he took one look at me and left? What if he never even approached me out here, and he just ghosted me on social media?
That was stupid. Deep down, I knew it was stupid. But it was a relentless worry that I couldn’t shake now that the clock was ticking down.
It didn’t help that I was early. I was always early, and in an effort to beat traffic, find a place to park, and… just be chronically early because that was who I was, I’d arrived at the fountain at three, fully thirty minutes before Nick and I had agreed to meet. There probably wouldn’t even be much traffic today, since, hello, it was aSundayand there was no football game. But I was always early so I wouldn’t be rushing to get to my destination, all the while muttering, “Shit, shit, shit,” at the steering wheel while I imagined the person waiting for me deciding to hell with it and leaving.
Now that I’d appeased that facet of my anxiety, and now that Nick would be here in—I checked my phone for the fiftieth time—twenty-five minutes, I could dwell on that other inevitable mini-freakout that came with meeting someone new.
I tried hard to ignore the tumble of thoughts and the queasiness turning in my stomach, but I knew it wouldn’t go away completely until Nick and I actually met face to face. It was the same feeling I had whenever I was going on a date with someone I hadn’t met in person yet. Which was stupid, because for all my ridiculous feelings over my online friend, this wasn’t a date. Nick and I were friends, and we’d agreed to meet as such. Anything else that developed would just be a pleasant bonus.
But it was still hard to shut off that voice in the back of my mind. Honestly, it happenedanytime I was meeting someone new, even if the person was a professional connection or a friend. I liked to think I was decent looking, and I’d had the occasional student’s mom flirt with me during parent-teacher conferences (soawkward), but I wasn’t exactly magazine cover material. I looked after myself and even coached a few school sports specifically to keep active. I also had the odd beer and ate at the arena concession stands more often than I probably should have, and I looked the part. I was hardly God’s gift to the male form.
