The one who existed perfectly in professional font
The one I found through a typo and lost through an expired inbox. Some connections exist perfectly at 10pt Calibri.
This is about the boy I found through a typo and lost through an expired inbox.
I’d just gotten my first corporate email address. An intern with a domain name. After years of variations on funnygirl_1508, I finally had firstname.lastname@[company].com. Three months of feeling important.
So I emailed everyone. Including my school friend with the unusual name – except I added an extra L and created an entirely different person.
The reply came within minutes: “Congratulations! But do we know each other?”
I stared at my screen, confused. Then checked the ‘To’ field. Then died a small corporate death.
My apology was painfully formal: “I’m so sorry for the confusion. I meant to email a school friend with a similar name. Please ignore. Regards, [Name] (and the entire legal disclaimer below).”
His response came back in under five minutes: “No worries about the mix-up. Though I have to ask – ‘Intern, Creative Strategy’ followed by a paragraph of legal disclaimers? How many lawyers does it take to send a ‘congrats on my job’ email?”
I typed back: “Welcome to advertising. Where even our mistakes come with terms and conditions.”
“Well then,” he replied, “consider me your first accidental campaign. Target audience: Wrong inbox. Success metric: Confusion. ROI: This conversation.”
And somehow, we kept writing.
There was something dangerously specific about flirting via official email. Every banter came with a corporate footer. Every joke was archived on a company server. We were having personal conversations dressed in professional fonts, sneaking intimacy between quarterly reports and meeting requests.
My friends were obsessed. My roommate started calling it “The L Affair.” Another friend created a scoring system: “+2 points for pop culture reference, +5 if he initiates, -3 for emails during office hours (too eager).” By week three, they’d made a spreadsheet.
“Ask him about the books he mentioned,” they coached over lunch. “But I haven’t read them.” “So? Neither has he, probably.”
And I was no better. I’d crafted this person from typos and timestamps. He was well-spoken, funny in that dry, sideways way. A fellow corporate prisoner, a couple of years senior, who dropped references to books I pretended I’d read and places I pretended I’d been.
But what got me was how he seemed… disarmed. Like I’d caught him off-guard and he’d decided to stay there.
We never met.
Not because we didn’t try. Or maybe because we didn’t try. The reasons kept shifting. First it was geography. Then it was timing. Then it was… something harder to name.
Maybe we both knew that Double L existed perfectly at 10pt Calibri. That what we had was built on the accident of an extra letter, the thrill of misusing corporate infrastructure, the safety of screenshots my friends could analyze.
The emails eventually slowed. The internship ended – and with it, that email address. He wrote once to my personal Gmail: “Feels weird without the disclaimer. Like talking without clothes.”
I never replied. It felt wrong. Like seeing your teacher at a grocery store.
The weird thing is, I’ve lost touch with both of them now. Single L – my friend from school – drifted away the way school friends do when careers pull you to different cities. Double L vanished when my inbox did.
Sometimes I wonder if I should email them both. Same message. See who responds first. See if I get the names right this time.
But some connections only exist in the context that created them – a summer internship, a school friendship, a typo that became three months of unexpected morning emails.
I kept one thread, forwarded to my personal account before IT deactivated my access. The subject line still makes me smile: “Re: Re: Re: Wrong person, right conversation.”
I’ve never read it again. I just like knowing it’s there – proof that once, I accidentally found someone I wasn’t looking for.
This is part of How I Did Not Meet Your Father, a recurring series in which I mine my non-existent love life for content, gently, and with context.
Primalsoup 
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