Love Online

Another reason I needed to tread very carefully.***A week later, it was Friday afternoon when the China itinerary landed in my inbox. My father had scheduled two full weeks of meetings there for me. I’d be leaving in a month.

I hadn’t booked a ticket back to St. George yet. Even though I wanted to see Eden badly, work had been so freaking busy. Maybe she was right. Maybe this couldn’t work, no matter how much I wanted it to.

As I stared at my inbox, a new message came in. It was from Ollie.A message from Ollie Shortsleeve using VoiceText300:Ryder,Last night I heard crickets outside. I thought maybe you came back. But when I went to the window, I called your name and you weren’t there. It was just crickets.OllieP.S. Are you coming back?That squeezed at my heart. My fingers lingered at the keyboard for a while, but I didn’t know what to tell him. So I held off on responding, vowing to send him a message later.

It was 5:30, and I decided I’d had it for the day, so I got in my car and took off.

My original plan was to head home and catch up on the sleep I hadn’t been getting.

When I got to my exit, though, I passed right by, staying on the freeway.

I told myself I might have accidentally missed the exit, but I knew damn well it was intentional.

I was headed straight for the airport.CHAPTER SIXTEEN* * *EDENOllie was finishing off a glass of warm milk, something I often gave him close to bedtime.

“I emailed Ryder today,” he announced. “But he didn’t write back like he normally does.”

My heart sank.

“Well, I’m sure he was just busy. Maybe he didn’t get it yet.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Ollie now anticipated Ryder’s emails every day. As much as I hadn’t wanted Ryder to engage with my brother because I didn’t believe he could keep it up forever, it was so sweet to see Ollie’s face light up whenever he told me about the messages. You’d think it was Gilbert Gottfried himself emailing or something.

Ollie’s app had a button he could press that read aloud any emails he received. It always amused me to hear the robotic voice sounding out Ryder’s words.

The problem was Ollie could be a bit obsessive. He didn’t realize how busy Ryder was back in L.A., and Ryder had now trained Ollie to expect an email every day. It wasn’t realistic to expect that to continue infinitely. Though I could certainly relate to unrealistic hopes.

“It’s getting late,” I said. “We’d better get you to bed.”

“But I want to wait to see if he writes back.”

“You can’t wait all night. Maybe if you go to sleep, you’ll wake up to an email.” As much as I hated getting his hopes up like that, I couldn’t have Ollie staying up too much past his bedtime because I needed to start my show. I always waited until I knew he was asleep, so some nights I started late as it was. I was lucky my brother wasn’t a light sleeper. The few times he had woken up during my show and knocked on my door, I’d paused it to attend to him. But overall, he slept through almost anything.

Suddenly, my doorbell rang. That was odd for this time of night. Even though I probably should have peeked out the window first, I opened the door and immediately regretted it when I found a man I didn’t recognize standing there.

My heartbeat sped up, and I instinctively shut the door a tad so only my head was peeking out. “Can I help you?”

He smiled, displaying prominent dimples. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Christian. I just moved across the street. It looks like I got a piece of your mail. I wanted to return it.”

When he handed it to me, I was mortified. The packaging was open. It was a dildo I’d ordered.

Mortified.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I opened it before I saw that the name on the package wasn’t my grandmother’s.”

I looked down at the hot pink silicone rod, noting the words on the box: Ribbed for your pleasure.

“Well, this is embarrassing.”

Christian’s face turned a little red. “Don’t be embarrassed. Please.”

Upon closer look, I could see he was only a little older than me. He had beautiful, big brown eyes and a nice smile. He was actually pretty cute.

“Where exactly across the street do you live?”

He pointed. “The gray house right there.”

“That’s Mary Hannigan’s house. Did something happen to her?” Mary was a woman in her nineties who’d lived across the street for more than sixty years. She and my mother had been close.

“Oh, no. I’m sorry to scare you. I’m her grandson. I live a few hours north of here, but I work remotely, so I can spend my time wherever I like. I moved in with her temporarily to keep an eye on her. She’s been slowing down lately.”