Networked ➳ z.m [au]

chapter 1

"Claire, hello?" Paige waves her hand over my face but I continue to type on my computer.

"You have been typing to the same person all day!" She exclaims laying back dramatically on my bed.

"Who is that anyway? Do I know him?" She sits up to peer over my shoulder but I move away so she won't see who I am talking to.

I've been chatting with the username "artsyM" everyday now and we had become really close friends on a dating website that I discovered with the help of google. We didn't exactly want to date, but mostly just get to know each other, which is what we had spent three months doing, and now here he was making me laugh to myself at our conversations. The thing I liked about this boy, was that he hadn't asked me any private questions that made me uncomfortable like the rest of the creeps online. He actually made me feel like we could talk about anything, so I basically became highly addicted to talking to him on a daily basis.

"You're not even going to tell me, huh?" I hear Paige pout.

"Well, you are the one who wanted me to get with someone," I point out.

"But I have to at least know him!"

"Alright, alright. His name is M,"

"M? Like the letter?"

"That's what he told me to call him," I shrug, typing to M that I was currently talking to my best friend.

"That's weird, well what did you say your name was?" Paige lifts her eyebrows.

"C," I laugh, thinking about how I had only given him the first letter of my first name. My username had been something completely random because I hadn't really had the time to sit and think about one. I had just made the first name that popped into my mind, cupcakeswirl12, which probably made me seem like a seven year old.

"Seriously, Claire? Are you guys just reciting the alphabet? What's next, L?"

It only took about half a second before the both of us started to historically laugh.

"I'm serious though, you need a real boyfriend. Someone you can physically touch. Someone like Niall," she sighs at the mention of her long term boyfriend but I roll my eyes. Niall was cool and all, but I just wasn't into guys like him; popular and a jock.

"I'm fine with M," I smile to myself.

"Do you even know anything about him?"

"Yeah, he likes to paint to get his mind off things, his favorite color is red, and he sings Beyoncé in the shower," I chuckle at the memory of him telling me that.

"Wow, you sound like you're in love already,"

I shrug, not really knowing how to respond to that because I don't think you can fall in love with someone so quickly, but I can't be entirely sure.

"How old is he?"

"19, he just had his birthday in January,"

Before Paige can ask anymore questions about M, her phone rings and she quickly answers it after mouthing the words "Niall,"

"Yeah, babe?.....oh okay, hold on."

Paige turns to me, while I type M about how much I love the Beatles too.

"Do you wanna come with us? We're going out to eat,"

"No, i'm fine," I say, not wanting to intrude in their relationship, although i was invited.

"Come on, I don't want you to talk to," she looks over at my screen to read the username, "artsyM, all day,"

"Why not?"