Free Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros Page A

people she was Following flitted across the left column of the screen, but her Direct Message column remained empty. It wasn’t the screen she was seeing anyway, but a man walking away from her down a winding cobbled alleyway laced with moonlight and shadows.
    He turned, glancing over his shoulder at her, his eyes filled with humor and tenderness. She frowned. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t transpose anyone else’s features over his. He wasn’t Hugh Jackman or Jude Law or even Steve McQueen. He was just Mark. Her Mark.
    Both friend and stranger.
    She touched a hand to her cheek, remembering the odd tingle she had felt both times he had pretended to touch her. She tried to remember the last time she had felt that tingle—that unspoken promise that something magical was about to happen.
    Had it been like that the first time Dean kissed her? She frowned, struggling to remember exactly where that kiss had taken place. Had it been on the steps of the Met after the Frida Kahlo exhibit? Or over the morel risotto at Balthazar on Spring Street? It had only been a little over a year since their breakup, but she could barely remember their first date, much less their first kiss. Even Dean’s face was growing fuzzy in her memory, like some half-remembered actor from a black-and-white movie she’d seen as a child.
    Surely she must have felt that tingle during her freshman year at Wake Forest when she’d surrendered her body and her soul to a graphic arts student with killer abs, a pack-of-unfiltered-Camels-a-day cigarette habit, and the sleepy, dark-lashed eyes of a young Al Pacino. She had always been a good girl and he had been her first real bad-boy crush. Come to think of it, what she’d felt that night hadn’t exactly been a tingle but more of a dizzying rush of lust, followed by a siren in her head warning her she was about to make a terrible mistake she would never regret.
    Nope, she was pretty sure the last time she had felt that tingle was in the fourth grade when Chris McClain had passed her a note at lunch that said, “You’re reall prety. If you give me your twinkie, I’ll be your boyfriend.” (Of course he had dumped her the following week for a girl whose mom packed Ho Hos in her New Kids on the Block lunchbox.)
    So how to explain the delicious little thrill that had made the hair on the back of her neck stand up when Mark had simply pretended to brush his lips tenderly over her temple? Had Margo been right? Was he the perfect lover for a budding agoraphobic, a woman who had built so many walls around her heart she was in danger of ending up imprisoned behind them forever?
    Abby absently reached for the glass of wine, grimacing when it touched her lips. Neglected and forgotten, the char-donnay in the bottom of the glass had grown warm while she sipped an imaginary Diet Coke with her imaginary date at a very real cafe on the other side of the world.

Chapter Seven
Wednesday, May 18—2:53 P.M.
MarkBaynard: What are you wearing?
    Abby_Donovan: Coffee-stained sweats & the Playboy Bunny ears and tail Elle Woods wore to the computer store in LEGALLY BLONDE. You?
    MarkBaynard: The aluminum foil hat Joaquin Phoenix wore to ward off the alien mind control in SIGNS and Johnny Depp’s “Wino Forever” tattoo.
    Abby_Donovan: The tattoo that read “Winona” before he and Miss Ryder broke up?
    MarkBaynard: That’s the one. Just think—if I got your name tattooed on my ass, I could change it to “Flabby” after you dumped me.
    Abby_Donovan: Be still, my heart! I was beginning to think you were one of those guys who don’t tweet after a first date.
    MarkBaynard: I didn’t want to appear too eager … or too pathetic.
    Abby_Donovan: Well, one out of two isn’t bad.
    MarkBaynard: Miss me?
    Abby_Donovan: A little. I’m embarrassed to admit I caught myself tweeting to you in my head more than once over the past few days.
    MarkBaynard: If I hadn’t been wearing that aluminum foil hat, I might have heard