Page 37 of The Emerson Effect
“I have,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “But you’re trying to get their love, not their lust.”
“So I shouldn’t open with a line?” I ask, a picture of perfect innocence. “How about this one?”
I clear my throat in an exaggerated manner, and she rolls her eyes.
“Are you tired?”
“Because you’ve been running through my mind all day,” she cuts in, and I laugh.
“You’ve heard it before?”
“Everyone has heard that one before,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“Okay, how about this one? I’d like to take you to the movies, but they don’t let you take your ownsnacksin.”
“Oh, my God,” she says with a laugh, and I smirk.
“That one got you all hot and bothered, didn’t it?”
“Absolutely not,” she says, still laughing.
“Seriously, though,” I say, “tell me what you’d like to hear from a guy reaching out for the first time.”
She sobers, and her nose scrunches in concentration. It might be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Something simple,” she says slowly. “Something true.”
I think for a few minutes, then slowly type out a message on my tablet. Twila doesn’t interrupt, quietly waiting on the other end of the call for me to send something through to her. If she doesn’t like it, we can always delete the message and try something else.
I finish typing the message, then re-read it to look for any typos before tapping the little arrow that’ll send it to Twila. I look at my phone and see her stare down at her own tablet as it chimes in notification.
“Hey. I hope you don’t mind my reaching out, but I love your content. You’re smart and funny. And I think you’re really pretty.”
When she finishes reading aloud, I see her throat working as she swallows thickly. Her eyes lift back to her phone, and her lips are pressed together in a tight smile.
“What?” I ask. “You hate it, don’t you?”
“No,” she says quickly. “I lo–– I mean, it’s good. Really good.”
“Really?” I ask. Without waiting for her to reply, I add, “What are you going to say back?”
She looks down at her tablet again, and she nibbles her lip as she taps something out. Her eyes move as she reads what she wrote, then she taps the screen. A moment later, her reply pops up on my end.
Thanks, Emerson. I think you’re really pretty, too.
My chest expands as I read the words again, and I have to mentally slap myself. This isn’t real. Not for her, anyway.Shit. Not for me, either.
It’s fake. For both of us.
“Is that okay?” she asks when I take too long to respond.
“It’s perfect,” I say, staring into my phone’s camera lens. “I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ll screenshot this and obscure your identity before posting it. Everyone is going to lose their minds. My secret crush is, at the very least, attracted to me, too.”
“She is,” she says, so softly, I almost miss it.
Almost.
Pretending I didn’t hear anything, I say, “I’ll post this as soon as I get something filmed.”
