Chapter 2

I was on mile three on the gym treadmill and chapter seven of a new Sarah Eden audiobook when my phone started blowing up. Instead of hearing the dulcet tones of Sir Toby, I got:

“But darling, you’ve never—”

Buzz

“in as long as I’ve”

Buzz

“how dare you”

Buzz Buzz Buzz

“cannot countenance such”

Buzz Buzz

I growled and snatched my iPhone from my armband and quieted Lord Toby to check the alerts. It had better be a forty-car pileup with every person I’d ever known involved if it was going to interrupt my audiobook and work out.

Oh, it was a wreck all right. Seven Facebook notifications and two more going off as I looked, all saying stuff like, “Hot, girl!” or “When did you and Paul break up?”

And then a text from Paul. What’s going on?

I stopped the treadmill and hopped off so the impatient bro-dude waiting for a free one could have it while I investigated the situation. Two screen taps later and I was staring at a picture of me with a guy I’d never seen before in my life. A guy with his arm around me. It was posted under my name and “I” had apparently captioned it, “New beginnings.”

Only I remembered that picture. It used to show me and my cousin in a selfie from his sister’s wedding. His body had been photoshopped to look more athletic, and the face? This face was a seriously hot guy with high cheekbones, a mysterious half-smile, big dark eyes, and a slight five o’clock shadow. I would normally drink that in like a midwinter hot cocoa, but the whole effect was ruined by his fall of long brown hair.

Long hair.

I deleted the photo and stabbed Ranée’s speed dial number.

“Hey, Em.” Her voice was so innocent it was guilty.

“I already took it down but not before Paul texted me to ask me what was going on.”

“Took what down?”

“Stop. You only sound guiltier. I know you hacked my Facebook.”

“Hacking is a really strong word coming from someone who left her laptop open.”

“In my bedroom!”

“The door was open.”

“Just so we’re clear, I’m going to kill you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Believe it. I have to go fix this.” I hung up and posted a quick “Roommate hacked my Facebook” status before I logged out so she couldn’t do it again. Then I sent Paul a quick text. “Sorry, Ranée thought she was being funny.”

He sent back a question mark. I tried again. “Ranée was pranking me with that picture. I don’t know who that guy is. Nothing to worry about.”

His reply was slow in coming, not pinging me until I was back in my car. “I don’t really get her.”

Yeah, no kidding. I heard that from both of them about each other at least once a week.

It took me a half hour to get home through traffic. When I opened the door to our apartment, Ranée jumped off the couch and ran for her room, but she wasn’t fast enough to keep me from getting my foot in her door.

“I left some Panda Express on the counter. We can talk after you eat.” She said it through the crack.

“Open up. You’re being ridiculous. Do you honestly think I’m going to hurt you?”

She flung the door wide. “Of course not, dummy. You’ll just lecture me to death, but it’ll be half as long if you do it on a full stomach.” Then she pushed me hard enough to get my foot out of the door and shut it again.

I scowled at it. “Junk food is why I had to go to the gym tonight, and you’re the reason I didn’t work off last night’s celebration. I lost my treadmill to Facebook drama.”

“That was your choice,” she called, unapologetic. “It’s orange chicken. And fried rice.”

I scowled for another second. But I really did love orange chicken. So I went into the kitchen. Ranée gave me five minutes before she came out.

“Have the happy food endorphins reached your brain?”

I finished my bite. “I think I won’t kill you.”

“Come on, it was funny.” She sat down on the other side of the table.

“Tell that to Paul.”

“Ha. I could diagram a knock-knock joke for him and he still wouldn’t get why it’s funny.”

“You just have very different senses of humor.”

“No. I have a sense of humor. He doesn’t. That’s the difference.”

Normally this would be where I rolled my eyes at her, but I didn’t want to take them off my next piece of chicken. “You’re way too hard on him.”

“He didn’t laugh once during our Marx Brothers marathon last week.”

“He didn’t?”

“No.”

I hadn’t noticed, but that was surprising. Everyone laughed during the Marx Brothers. “He’s just not an old movie fan.” I wasn’t exactly sure if that was true. We didn’t watch a lot of movies together. “But I don’t want to talk about Paul anymore. I explained the picture and he’s fine. But I’m really worried that you suddenly know how to do Photoshop. There’s no way this ends well for me. Or anyone who knows you.”

She waved away my concern. “Relax. I didn’t do it. I know a guy.”

I set my fork down to study her closely. “Ranée. People who ‘know guys’ usually have mob connections or crack dealers.”

“Shut up. Not like that. I mean one of my brother’s friends is kind of internet famous for his Photoshopping skills. People send in Photoshop requests. Usually, he’ll give you some hilarious version of what you ask for. Look.” She tapped her phone a few times and pulled up Twitter then handed it to me.

The account belonged to someone calling himself @crankymtnman. She’d picked a tweet from someone who sent him a picture of a woman our age looking down with her hands over her mouth in happy surprise. The tweet read, “Hey, @crankymtnman, I told my mom my boyfriend of 2 weeks proposed to freak her out, but he didn’t. Can you make it look like he did? Any man will do.” His reply was a photoshopped picture of a Gringotts goblin down on one knee proposing while she looked delighted.

I handed it back to her. “That’s pretty funny.”

She nodded. “Sean really likes him. I’ve met him a couple of times. He’s a funny guy. You should check out his feed some time. He nails it. If you’re lucky, he’ll actually do what you ask, but usually he messes with the people who request his skills.”

“So Cranky Mountain Man decided to mess with you, huh?”

“No, his real name is Jack, and he did exactly what I asked him to.”

“Photoshop me with some corny romance cover guy?”

“Corny or hot?”

“Hot until the fake hair makes him corny.”

“Interesting,” she murmured.

“Stop being mysterious. Why is that interesting?”

She tapped her phone again and turned it to show me a picture of Sean with the guy from the picture I’d deleted. “Because I asked him to Photoshop you with a long-haired hot dude to give you a vision of what was possible. That hot guy is Jack himself, and the hair is one hundred percent real. I’ve never seen him use himself in a photo hack before. I’ll tell him you thought he was hot, but I think I’ll skip the corny part.”

And she was out of the chair and down the hall, thumbs flying, before I could even dive for her phone.