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I don't do real.
Real means names attached to mine. Access I'm not willing to give. People who want something I don't intend to share. So I keep what I want where I can control it. Behind screens. Behind masks. Anonymous, on my terms, ended whenever I'm done.
That's my only rule.
Never trace them. Never make it real.
Until her.
She's quick. Sharper than the women who usually find me online. The kind who pushes back when she should fold, who asks questions that make me want to open up.
I tell myself she's a distraction. I tell myself I can shut it down whenever I'm ready.
I can't.
So I do the one thing I've never done: I trace her.
Twenty minutes at a keyboard, and the rule I built my life around is gone.
What I find is the woman who has been sitting ten feet outside my office for the past year.
The employee who has been testing me in person is the same one I can't stop thinking about online.
Now I know who she is. But she doesn't know who I am.
Every day I let her keep believing we're equal, I'm running a relationship she didn't consent to.
Knowing who she is wasn't the risk.
Telling her who I am is.
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Real means names attached to mine. Access I'm not willing to give. People who want something I don't intend to share. So I keep what I want where I can control it. Behind screens. Behind masks. Anonymous, on my terms, ended whenever I'm done.
That's my only rule.
Never trace them. Never make it real.
Until her.
She's quick. Sharper than the women who usually find me online. The kind who pushes back when she should fold, who asks questions that make me want to open up.
I tell myself she's a distraction. I tell myself I can shut it down whenever I'm ready.
I can't.
So I do the one thing I've never done: I trace her.
Twenty minutes at a keyboard, and the rule I built my life around is gone.
What I find is the woman who has been sitting ten feet outside my office for the past year.
The employee who has been testing me in person is the same one I can't stop thinking about online.
Now I know who she is. But she doesn't know who I am.
Every day I let her keep believing we're equal, I'm running a relationship she didn't consent to.
Knowing who she is wasn't the risk.
Telling her who I am is.
Genre: Young Adult Fiction