Sweet Talk

A woman alone in her kitchen at night, eating a slice of bad chocolate cake, gets a drunk text from Eliot Hoffman. She has had a crush on him for two months and has spent that time daydreaming about his dimples. The message was almost certainly meant for someone else, but she answers it anyway.

The exchange does not stop. Both of them are insomniacs, so one night of texting becomes every night. The talk starts out as nothing much and grows into real conversation: reality TV, her relationship with her family, Eliot's artwork. Few subjects are off limits.

One is. Eliot asks who she really is, and she will not tell him. Her feelings keep growing while he knows only a voice on a screen, and she knows that the whole relationship rests on a secret that could bring it down once it comes out.

This is a contemporary romance told in the first person by the narrator, with a chatty, comic voice and an easy humour. Most of the connection happens in the small hours, through messages rather than in person. The central tension is simple: she wants Eliot to be hers, and the thing she is hiding may keep them from ever being more than late-night conversation.