I wake up the next morning to my phone blowing up.
For a minute, I can't figure out why I have so many notifications and alerts. But then I realize that it's the BookBox Insta account that I'm signed into on my phone. I'd checked it for the last time when Kit and I had finished up last night around midnight, and there hadn't been much traction. But somewhere overnight—more people were on social media in the middle of the night than seemed possible—it had gone semi-viral.
I open the app and check the post. It has over a thousand likes and almost as many comments. I scan through them quickly, my stomach tumbling with nerves.
Oooh, that guy looks like my ex. TROUBLE.
Promote it on triplehot.xxx
I don't get it, is the guy really missing because this isn't funny.
—Chill, girl, chill, it's just some marketing thing.
I'm ordering 10 copies of MOST WANTED if I get this guy with purchase.
—YAAS!
—100%
MOST WANTED, indeed.
—LOL
BookBox getting spicy! I like it.
Couldn't they have used a better photo? This dude is BLURRY.
—That's kind of what makes it hot, tho?
Is that Central Park?
He's HAWT. JFSKDSKSKSK
He'd know what to do with his hands is all i'm saying.
I continue through the comments, now appearing as fast as I can read them. As far as I can tell, no one's actually given any clue to who Jack might be. Instead, they seem to think he's an actor, hired for the marketing campaign, and potentially available for special appearances. Which was so not the point. I'm probably going to have to edit to clarify, but at least it's getting some attention.
I go back to the first comment and click through to the page of the poster who said Fake Jack looks like her ex. She's solo in the first twenty photos, but after searching through her posts, I find the guy she must be referring to. He has brown hair and greenish eyes, but he's also fifty pounds heavier than either of the Jacks and at least five inches shorter. Definitely not him.
I put my phone down and get ready for work. When I get out of the shower, there's a hundred new comments, with one or two people claiming to know him. But when I check the links they put in, neither looks anything like him. One guy is in California and another in Canada. I should've clarified that he lived in Manhattan.
Even after I edit the post (**Looking for a man in Manhattan; ***Man not available to purchase), the potential leads that appear on the thread that morning are useless.
My DMs are no better. The BookBox's, I mean. It's full of people wanting to know what they get if they identify him—a free subscription, I keep writing—and then producing nothing. I quickly realize that my edits are not helping things. The way people will twist anything you say into something sexual is truly amazing. And this from someone who has spent years coming up with porny movie titles!
Once I clarify AGAIN that the contest is to find the specific man in the photo who is NOT missing, just a date that got away, other people feel the need to tell me about the men that ghosted them, a collection of sad stories that makes me wonder why I want to find Fake Jack in the first place.
I answer those with as much empathy as I can. I still feel hopeful, but overwhelmed too.
I'm about to finally head out the door so I can get to work, and my phone pings again, but this time with a text. From Jack. Real Jack.
Hi, Chloe, how are you? I had a great time the other night and would love to take you out again. Maybe you choose the restaurant this time? I'd love to explore Bushwick. Xo Jack
Xo Jack?
I feel a sense of panic. We didn't even kiss. Our date was pleasant but boring. And, okay, I know I'm not the ugliest person, but is the New York dating scene so desperate that he wants to have another experience like that?
I text Kit. Jack wants another date.
Fake Jack??
No, real Jack.
Oh. I got excited there for a minute.
Ha! Nothing on that front other than a bunch of sad stories about guys disappearing after a couple of dates and why do I want to find him again?
I'm supposed to be convincing you? Kit writes. I told you to forget about it.
Yeah.
So what are you going to do?
About what?
The date with real Jack.
Oh! I forgot. Ugh.
Not a good sign.
I've been saying ...
Wouldn't hurt to give him a second chance tho.
You sound like my mom.
You told Carol about this?
Ugh, no. You know we only speak on national holidays.
This is sadly true. My family sort of kept it together while I was still living at home, but after I went to college, the pretense that we were a normal, happy family fell apart. It didn't help that they used my time away to clear out Sara's room and remove the rest of the photos of her that were in the house. Like they needed to erase her from our life and pretend she never existed.
When I confronted them about it when I came home that first Christmas, they told me it was too painful to remember her, and that I'd never understand what it was like to lose a child, they hoped. And what could I say to that? I didn't want to know what it was like to lose a sister, but I didn't get that choice. I didn't get the choice about how to mourn her. I was ten. I wasn't in control of my life. My parents were. They'd been peeling her away from me for years, and that was the final straw. I found a job on campus that summer, and when I went back to Cincy after graduation, I moved into an apartment and saw them as little as possible. They could control Sara's life, the lack of it, but not me.
I just mean, I write, that she always said you should give someone three chances to impress you before you write them off.
Seems like good advice.
Maybe.
So Jack has two more chances?
Nope.
Why not?
He stood me up, remember? So that was chance one. He's got one more chance, if I decide to give it to him.
Will you?
Not sure. Mulling. And am about to miss my train. Got to go.
I stuff my phone into my purse and locate my keys. I won't say no to Jack immediately. I've got the rest of the day to respond to him. And maybe in the meantime, Fake Jack will appear and solve my problem for me.
A week later, subscriptions are up twenty per cent, I've been through more Insta DMs than I ever want to again, and there's no sign of Jack.
What there is, is a very angry boss standing over me, with a copy of the flyer I put in the boxes clutched in her hand.
"Who authorized this?" Karen asks. She's got bright orange died hair that she wears short and spiky, but the rest of her is ultra conservative. Addison calls it her Boomer Librarian look, though if she heard that she'd give us a twenty-minute lecture on the difference between Boomers and Generation X. "Chloe? Jameela? Addison?"
Jameela and Addison both accuse me with their eyes.
I raise my hand. "It was my idea."
Karen crosses her arms over her chest. She's wearing a white button down tucked into a beige khaki skirt, and her glasses are hanging around her neck on a chain. Now's probably not the best time to ask why a forty-five-year-old woman wants to look like a sixty-year-old one. "You didn't think you needed to run this by me?"
My throat goes dry. "You were on vacation and it was time limited. It fit perfectly with Most Wanted, but there was only a few days to get it into the box. And you said to only send you emails if there was an emergency."
Karen's not impressed. "So, let me get this straight. You're using the BookBox in order to find a guy?"
"I mean, not exactly?"
"How, not exactly? Is this a real man?"
"Yes."
"Do you know him?"
"I do."
"Is he missing?"
"No, I ... I can't find him, but I'm sure he's perfectly okay." My eyes go to Jameela's, then Addison's. They're watching intently while pretending not to. "Could we, maybe, go to your office to discuss this?"
"I see no need for that."
"Okay." I take a deep breath. My hands are shaking. "I'm sorry, Karen, I should've talked to you before doing this. I just thought ... I went on an accidental date with this guy, and it was great, he was great, but I didn't have his number and I was trying to find him, and I was thinking of ways to be maybe do that, and it occurred to me that there was a good tie in with this month's box, that it could be this cool marketing thing for the book..."
She raises a hand. "Stop. This is a romantic thing between you and this guy?"
"Well, yeah, I mean, I guess I'm hoping it is."
"So you used company time and property for a personal reason."
Shit. Shit. I'm about to get fired. "In part, yes."
She taps her chin, considering. "Subscriptions are up?"
"Yes, twenty percent over this time last year. And we've sold out of Most Wanted when it was trending behind the other titles. They're going to do a second printing."
"Hmmm. And any results?"
"You mean, have I found him?"
"Yes."
"No."
"That works, then."
"That works, for what?"
She gives me a fake smile. "I've been contacted by Buzzfeed. They're doing an article—we'll you're going to be doing an article."
My throat goes dry. "About?"
"The ten most desperate things you've done to find a man."
"Wait, what?"
"That's the title."
"Which I have to write?"
"No, no. You'll be a subject. They want to interview you."
"The article is about me? I'm the desperate person looking for a man?"
"Well, aren't you?"
Addison sniggers, then lowers her head when I glare at her.
"Yes, but they don't know that," I say.
"They asked to speak to the person who came up with the marketing campaign."
"We don't have to tell them who it is. Maybe if we don't, it would be even better—"
"Chloe, do you want to keep working here?"
"Of course."
"Then you'll do the article." She puts her hands on the desk and leans toward me, her grandma perfume cloying in my nostrils. "Are we clear?"
"Yes."
"The reporter will be in touch."
"Got it."
"And Chloe? Don't ever do something like this again."
"Oh my God, it was awful," I say to Kit that night. We're at her apartment, and I brought pizza as a partial repayment on my debt.
"Talking to you in front of your colleagues was a violation of your privacy," John says stiffly.
I really like the guy, but he can be a bit formal sometimes. He's sitting across the dining table from me, wearing a blue button down that brings out the tan in his face. He's a bit beefy for my taste, and I don't usually find guys with blond hair that attractive, but he makes Kit happy and is solvent and loyal, so he's a 10/10 in my books.
"They already knew the whole story. Well, most of it, anyway," I say. I hadn't told Jameela and Addison why I'd been looking for Jack, something they both grilled me on once Tabitha stalked away.
"A BuzzFeed article!" Kit says. "Cool, though."
"I'm so embarrassed."
"Eh, don't worry about it. It's romantic what you're doing. Others will see that."
"Have you been on Twitter, like ever?"
She makes a dismissive gesture with her hand. "You know I'm not into it. Too angry."
"Yeah, well, I hear about it all day long from Jameela and I've been on it enough myself to know. There are people who will threaten to cut you if you say an outfit their favorite character wore is ugly. They call themselves gatekeepers and they're vicious."
"We'll you didn't disrespect a Bridgerton or anything."
"No, I did something worse."
"What?" John asks, taking a third piece of pizza from the box.
"I disrespected Romancelandia."
"Duh, duh, duh."
"What is that, even?" John says.
"They're the online gatekeepers of romance books. People always shit on romance novels, rom-coms, rom-com movies etc. So they're, like, these intense fans who feel the need to defend anything they see as an attack on that."
Kit frowns. "And you doing this thing to find Jack violates that how?"
"Hard to predict at this point, but I have a bad feeling."
"But what if it works? What if you find him this way?"
I lean back in my chair. "I don't think it will make a difference. I didn't think it was going to be big like this. I thought ... I thought a few thousand book obsessives would see it, and that would be enough. New York is a small place, right? I mean, I know it isn't in the number of people, but it's usually pretty easy to find a connection with someone when you meet someone new. You know what I mean?"
"Yeah, totally," Kit says. "When I first got here, I thought no one knew anyone, but then I met John and he's two different people I work with's vet."
"Right. I remember that. That's what I'm talking about."
"I'm a connector," John says, pointing to himself for emphasis.
"What's that?"
"One of those people that knows lots of other people because of my practice. I'm like the center part of a Venn diagram."
Kit pats him on the hand. "That's cute."
"What? It's true."
"Anyway," I say. "That's what I was counting on. That a big enough vector of people would see the photo and send in a clue to help me find him. But instead, it's just thousands of people thirsting after him or telling me guys suck. That's only going to get worse once this article drops."
"Is it really that big?" John asks.
"The Instagram post has over 250,000 engagements. We can't even keep up with the comments. That's how BuzzFeed heard about it."
"So, it's already out there."
"Not my involvement, though. Right now everyone just thinks it's a marketing gimmick. Now I'm going to be the story."
Kit nibbles on the end of "Maybe it's a story with a happy ending?"
"I think it's too late for that."