She has been writing anonymously for three years. He has been reading her for two.
Ashley Davis knows how to be invisible. As the unnamed voice behind Static - Harlow University's most-read anonymous column - she has spent three years telling the truth in second person so it can belong to everyone. She doesn't write about herself. She writes around herself. It's safer that way.
Rob McCoy reads Static every Wednesday morning, alone, in a parking lot, before the team shows up. He has never tried to find out who writes it. The anonymity is part of why it works.
Then he walks into the wrong basement office at 11:04 p.m. on a Tuesday in September. The door is unlocked. There is one person inside. She is not expecting anyone.
He stays for forty-three minutes. He rinses his mug before he leaves.
When their professor pairs them on a semester-long project about journalism ethics and personal trust, Ashley tells herself it is manageable. She is good at managing things. She is less good at the part where he asks the right questions, listens like he already knows the answers, and quotes her own column back to her without knowing it's hers.
STATIC is a slow burn contemporary romance about two people who found each other twice - once through a voice, and once in person - and the distance between those two things.
For readers who loved Act Your Age, Eve Brown, People We Meet on Vacation, and I Kissed Shara Wheeler - and anyone who has ever been more honest in writing than in real life.