Attachments

by Rainbow Rowell

“I still don’t like that you read other people’s mail. Especially at night, in an empty building. That shouldn’t be someone’s job.”

Internet security officer. Lincoln had pictured himself building firewalls and protecting the newspaper from dangerous hackers—not sending out memos every time somebody in Accounting forwarded an off-color joke to the person in the next cubicle.

WebFence would monitor everything everyone was doing on the Internet and the Intranet. Every e-mail. Every Web site. Every word. And Lincoln would monitor WebFence.

JENNIFER SCRIBNER-SNYDER, ACCORDING to the company directory, was a Features copy editor.

Beth Fremont, Lincoln knew. He knew of, anyway. He’d read her movie reviews. She was funny, and he usually agreed with her.

Also, he kind of liked Beth and Jennifer, as much as you can like people from reading their e-mail, only some of their e-mail.

A woman who wasn’t his mother. Or his sister, Eve.

Sam was different when they were alone. She was quiet—well, quieter—and he could tell her anything, even things that mattered. She liked to talk about things that mattered. She was wholehearted, and fierce. He hadn’t made Sam fall in love with him. She just did. And he’d loved her back.

He may as well admit that, to himself. He was never going to send them a warning. Because he liked them. Because he thought they were nice and smart and funny. Really funny—sometimes they made him laugh out loud at his desk. He liked how they teased each other and looked out for each other. He wished that he had a friend at work he could talk to like that.

What’s a meet-cute?

It’s the moment in a movie when the romantic leads meet. They never just meet normally. It’s never like, “Harry, meet Sally. Sally, this is Harry.” They always meet in a cute way, like, “Hey, you just got chocolate in my peanut butter!” / “What are you talking about? You just got peanut butter in my chocolate!”

Having a handsome man rescue you (crying in the rain in the parking lot), change your tire, and share his French fries, that’s very meet-cute. Damn it, I was supposed to have the meet-cute.

“I didn’t know love could leave the lights on all the time. Do you know what I mean?”