Chapter One: Vampire Hours
I lost my job over a headline so dirty it practically needed a content warning, but that was months ago when this all started. Right now, at 11:03 p.m. on the first night of the new rotation, all I know is that the universe has decided to trap me in a dimly lit newsroom with the one man I’ve spent six months carefully not noticing. The way his smile carves faint, asymmetrical dimples when he catches something clever in copy. It could be something. The best kind of something. The worst part is I can’t do a thing about it.
The place smells like cooling toner, yesterday’s takeout congealing in someone’s forgotten styrofoam box, and the faint metallic burn of ambition that’s been left on the stove too long. The single fluorescent tube overhead flickers in slow, irregular pulses (like it’s tired of the job too). Every time it stutters, the shadows on the far wall twitch just enough to remind me how empty this floor is after 10 p.m. My chair creaks when I sit. The fake leather exhales a puff of stale air that smells faintly of old sweat and instant coffee. I drop my bag under the desk with a soft thud that gets swallowed by the low, constant drone of the HVAC. The kind of white noise that’s supposed to be soothing but mostly just makes the quiet feel louder.
My fingers are cold even though the room isn’t. They always are these days, like the rest of me has quietly decided warmth is optional. I rub them together (dry skin catching) and notice again how the callus on my right index finger — from years of scrolling through endless copy on a trackpad — has thickened into something almost numb.
I’m good at this job. Really good. And outside of it, I’m objectively a catch. Thirty-three, sharp jawline that photographs well when I bother to smile, legs that look endless in the right heels, hair that falls in dark waves when I let it down instead of twisting it into a deadline knot. I read voraciously, cook well enough that friends used to beg for dinner invites, laugh at the right moments without forcing it, and can carry a conversation from policy wonkery to dirty limericks without missing a beat. Men have told me I’m intimidating. That’s code for “you’re attractive and you know things and that makes me feel small.” I’ve never had trouble getting attention when I want it. The problem is I’ve stopped wanting it from people who don’t match my wavelength.
Which makes the last eighteen months of bone-deep loneliness sting even more. I know what I bring to the table. I know I’m desirable — desirable enough that the Tinder matches roll in when I bother to swipe, desirable enough that bartenders remember my order and strangers compliment my posture in coffee lines. And yet here I am, coming home to an apartment that still smells like yesterday’s takeout because there’s no one else there to throw it out. Waking up with my phone still in my hand from scrolling through feeds that aren’t mine, looking for proof that other people are living lives that include daylight and laughter and someone else’s heartbeat next to them in the dark. The frustration isn’t that I can’t get laid. It’s that I can’t get seen. Not really. Not by someone who cares about precision the way I do, who notices the small things and doesn’t flinch at the big ones.
The last Tinder date was three weeks ago. Thirty-four, marketing consultant, profile photo in a Patagonia vest that screamed “I own a Subaru and I want you to know it.” He ordered a light lager and spent forty-seven minutes explaining why he didn’t read newspapers anymore — “too much negativity, you know?” — then asked if I thought “fake news” was a real thing. I sipped my old-fashioned (sugar cube muddled just right, two dashes of bitters, no shortcuts) and paid for my half before the ice even melted. Deleted the app in the elevator. If I’m going to be alone, I’d rather be alone than spend another hour pretending mediocrity is interesting.
I boot up my terminal. The screen glows blue-white, too bright for eyes that have already been open fourteen hours. I rub the bridge of my nose and feel the faint ache behind my eyes that never quite goes away anymore.
The overnight copy desk used to be a two-person operation: me and whoever drew the short straw. Then the merger happened. Budgets shrank. Staff shrank. And last week management sent the memo that made my stomach drop like a bad wire story:
“Effective immediately, overnight copy will be consolidated under a shared rotation between print and digital desks. Nightly pairing assigned by seniority and skill overlap.”
Translation: they’re pairing the best remaining copy editors together so fewer people can do more work for the same (shrinking) salary.
I didn’t need to open the attachment to know who my new permanent night partner would be. The rumor had been circulating in the Slack channels for days.
Eli.
He started six months ago — digital-first, sharp on SEO without being obnoxious about it, the rare transplant from a coastal alt-weekly who could write clean and fast and still remember to attribute properly. We’d crossed paths in passing: hallway nods, the occasional “nice catch” when I fixed something he’d pushed live, once a shared eye-roll over a press release so bloated with adjectives it needed liposuction. He’s funny in that dry, quiet way that doesn’t demand laughter — just recognition. And once, when the elevator was stuck between floors for eleven agonizing minutes, he quoted a lede from my 2019 feature on the city’s last independent record store without missing a word. I’d stared at him like he’d grown a second head. He’d just shrugged. “It was good. Stuck with me.”
That was it. No follow-up. No lingering. Just a compliment delivered like a fact, then the doors opened and we both walked away.
I have a strict policy: no dating in the newsroom. Ever. I’ve seen it go wrong too many times — awkward silences at the assignment desk, passive-aggressive edits, someone crying in the bathroom over a breakup Slack message that accidentally went to the whole masthead. I’m not doing that. Not even for someone whose rare, crooked smile reveals those faint, uneven dimples that appear only when something genuinely amuses him — like he’s letting a secret slip without meaning to.
Except now we’re on the same shift. Every shift. Twelve hours a night, four nights a week, shoulder to shoulder at the same bank of monitors. No buffer. No escape hatch. Just us, the wire, the page proofs, and the creeping realization that the universe has a sick sense of humor.
The elevator dings.
I pretend to be very focused on the style-guide update I’m supposed to be reading. But peripheral vision is a traitor.
Eli steps out wearing the same navy button-down he always wears on nights — collar open one button too far for corporate but exactly right for 11 p.m. in a dying industry. Dark hair still damp from the walk over, probably. He carries his messenger bag the way some people carry guilt: low, resigned, but never dropping it.
He pauses at the edge of the copy desk island. Looks around like he’s confirming we’re the only two idiots left in the building.
Then he walks straight to the desk opposite mine, drops his bag, and slides my favorite mug across the divide without comment.
Oat milk latte. Extra hot. No foam. The way I like it but have never once asked for out loud.
I stare at the mug. Then at him.
He meets my eyes for the first time tonight. Steady. A little tired. And there it is — that small, crooked smile that pulls the left dimple deeper than the right, the one I’ve pretended not to catalog.
“Figured we’d need it,” he says. Voice low, like he’s trying not to wake the servers. “Long night ahead.”
I wrap my hands around the ceramic. Still warm through the sides. The heat seeps into my palms like it’s trying to remind me what warmth feels like.
“Yeah,” I say. “Long night.”
He sits. Opens his laptop. The glow catches the line of his jaw, the faint stubble he never quite shaves clean on late shifts.
I take a sip. Perfect temperature. Perfect ratio.
I should say thank you.
Instead I open the overnight queue and pretend my pulse isn’t suddenly louder than the hum of the AC.
He doesn’t speak again for a few minutes. Just starts pulling up the first batch of wire stories, scrolling with the same quiet focus he brings to everything. Then, without looking up:
“You ever think about how weird it is that we’re the only two people in this building right now who still care if a comma gets moved?”
I snort before I can stop myself. “Every damn night. The rest of the world is asleep or scrolling TikTok, and we’re here arguing with ourselves about whether ‘impact’ is a verb.”
He glances over, and there’s that quick, lopsided grin again — dimples flickering like a secret code. “It’s not a verb. Not unless you want to sound like a corporate memo.”
“Exactly.” I lean back in my chair, stretching my arms overhead. The motion pulls my sweater tight across my ribs for a second. I feel the faint ache in my shoulders from too many nights hunched over this same desk. “And yet here I am, about to spend the next twelve hours making sure no one else has to read that crime.”
Eli’s eyes flick to my face, then back to his screen. “You sound tired of it.”
I hesitate. No one’s asked me that outright before. Not in a way that felt like they actually wanted the answer.
“I’m tired of a lot of things,” I say finally. “The hours. The shrinking staff. The way every shift feels like I’m trying to keep a sinking ship from taking on more water while the passengers argue about the color of the lifeboats. And mostly… I’m tired of coming home to an apartment that still smells like yesterday’s takeout because there’s no one else there to throw it out. Tired of being the only heartbeat in the room at 4 a.m.”
The words hang there. Heavier than I meant them to be. I didn’t plan to say that last part out loud.
He nods once, slow. Doesn’t flinch or look away.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I get that.”
A beat of quiet. The fluorescent flickers again.
Then he adds, softer: “For what it’s worth, you’re the best part of these nights. Always have been.”
My stomach does a slow, traitorous flip. The warmth from the mug is nothing compared to the sudden heat crawling up my neck.
I force a laugh that comes out rougher than I mean it to. “Careful. That almost sounded like a compliment.”
“It was.” He still isn’t looking at me, but his voice is steady. “Just stating facts.”
I swallow. Look back at my screen. The cursor blinks at me like it’s waiting for me to say something stupid.
I don’t.
Instead I open the first story in the queue — a routine city-council recap — and start reading.
But the air between our desks feels thicker now. Warmer. Like the room just turned up the heat without asking permission.
And I know — deep in the part of me that’s been ignoring this for months — that this shift is going to be very different from the ones before.
Because Eli isn’t just sitting across from me anymore.
He’s right here, faint uneven dimples and all.
And for the first time in a long time, the quiet doesn’t feel quite so empty.
