The Lieutenants' Online Love. Caro Carson

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СКАЧАТЬ was flexible. It was the kind of bra that didn’t let anything show, even when she was soaked in sweat, the kind of bra that kept a girl as flat as possible, because bouncy curves were frowned on in her profession.

      She pulled on her comfy, baggy pants and zipped up her matching jacket, checking her laptop’s screen between each article of clothing.

      He had to be offline. If he was online, he would have answered her...unless he was turned off by a ballerina who was obsessed with tater tots. Which she wasn’t.

      She yanked on her best broken-in boots. If there was anything she needed to stop obsessing over, it was him, the mystery man who always seemed to get her sense of humor, who always seemed as happy to chat with her all night as she was to chat with him. It was too easy to forget it was all an illusion. She wasn’t really Ballerina Baby; he wasn’t really a unique man who marched to the beat of a Different Drummer, a mystery man who sent her long notes and found himself hopelessly charmed by her words.

      Was he?

      Today, I was desperate for tater tots.

      Blink, blink.

      Nope. He wasn’t hopelessly charmed. It was time for Ballerina Baby to join the real world.

      Her fingertips had just touched the laptop screen, ready to close it before leaving her new apartment, when a sentence in blue magically appeared.

      You crack me up.

      He got it. She’d made him laugh. Mission accomplished.

      The next blue sentence appeared: Or am I not supposed to laugh? The word desperate sounds rather...

      Desperate? she typed one-handed. Then she stuffed her wallet in her pocket, but not her car keys. She knew from experience that if she started chatting to Different Drummer, she’d lose track of time and forget that she had to be somewhere. She bit down on the metal ring of her key fob, holding it in her teeth to leave two hands free for typing. She wouldn’t forget about work as long as she had her car keys in her teeth.

      Another blue line appeared on-screen. They say most men lead lives of quiet desperation.

      Chloe raised one eyebrow. They slipped in famous quotes now and then, just to see if the other person would identify the quote, their own little nerdy game. This one was no challenge. How very Thoreau of you. (Too easy.)

      He replied, You, however, are not like most men. (I knew it was easy.)

      For starters, I’m a woman. Her words showed up in hot pink as she typed—the app’s choice for female users, not hers.

      He sent her a laughing-face emoji. I was thinking more along the lines that you don’t seem to lead a quiet life. You also never sound desperate. I don’t think you’d be quiet about it if you were.

      She was typing while holding car keys in her teeth. Quietly desperate? He didn’t know the half of it.

      Were you able to procure the tots? Tell me you did it noisily.

      Shamelessly. I bought a big bag of frozen tots at the grocery store a couple of hours ago. They didn’t survive long.

      You killed them already? All of them?

      All of them. A one-pound bag.

      Blink, blink.

      For a moment, just one tiny, insecure moment, she worried again that she’d turned him off. Ballerina Baby didn’t sound like the kind of woman who would eat a whole bag of tater tots at one sitting, did she? The next second, impatient with all these self-doubts, she sucked in a faintly metallic breath around her key ring and shoved aside all the insecurity. This was her friend—yes, her friend—and sometimes a pause was just a pause.

      I’ve shocked you into silence with my brutal killing of a bag of tots, haven’t I?

      Not at all. I’m deciding how best to advise you so that you won’t be tried for murder. I don’t think they’d let you write to me from jail. I’d miss you.

      Chloe’s fingers fell silent. He’d miss her, and he wasn’t afraid to say it. He was so different from all the other men she knew. So much better. Would he find it weird if she suddenly switched gears and wrote that?

      Instead, she wrote: If I hadn’t killed them all, they would have sat in my freezer, taunting me, testing my willpower. No, they needed to die. ’twere best to be done quickly.

      Very Lady Macbeth of you. (Too easy.)

      Yes, well, unlike Lady McB, I ate all the evidence. I guess I shouldn’t feel too superior. In order to eat her evidence, she would have had to eat the king’s guards. Rather filling, I’d imagine.

      He had a quick comeback. If Macbeth had been about cannibalism, English class would have been much more interesting.

      Ha. She smiled around the car keys in her mouth. At any rate, ’tis done. Half with mustard, half with ketchup, all with salt.

      Then you’re safe. We can keep talking. How was the rest of your day?

      If only the last guy she’d seriously dated had been so open about saying he liked her. If only any guy she’d ever dated had been like Different Drummer.

      But the car keys in her teeth did their job. They were getting heavy; she had to go.

      I wish I could stay and chat, but I gotta run. And then, just in case he thought she was an unhealthy glutton, she added, Time to go burn off a whole bagful of tater calories. Talk to you tomorrow.

      There. That didn’t sound desperate or obsessed or...in love. She couldn’t fall in love with a man she’d never met.

      Looking forward to it, Baby.

      But if they broke their unwritten rule and arranged to meet in real life...

      The alarm on her wristwatch sounded again.

      If they met in real life, he’d find out she was no ballerina—not that she’d ever said she was, but she’d never made it clear she wasn’t. She certainly wasn’t the kind of woman who was any guy’s baby. Most guys were a little intimidated by her, something it had taken her a few years to realize.

      But with him? She could show so many more sides of herself. The soft side, the insecure side, the side that worried about making friends, and yes, the side that adored the ballet. A lot of pop psychology criticized the digital age for enabling everyone to pretend to be someone they were not while they were online, but Chloe felt like this situation was the opposite. The anonymity let her be her whole self with Drummer, not only her work self. She’d be crazy to mess with a good thing. She’d follow the rules, and not try to figure out who he really was.

      She picked up the last item she always wore for work, her patrol cap. The way she slid the camouflage cap over her hair, the way she pulled the brim down just so, were second nature to her. The cap was well broken-in; she’d been wearing this exact one throughout her four years as a cadet at West Point, the United States Military Academy.

      Although she was so familiar with her uniform that she could dress in the dark in a matter of seconds when required, Chloe checked the mirror to be sure her uniform would pass inspection, as СКАЧАТЬ