After a chance encounter, Penny and Sam become each other's emergency contacts and find themselves falling in love digitally, without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other.

When Penny Lee heads to college in Austin, Texas, to learn how to become a writer, it's seventy-nine miles and a zillion light years away from everything she can't wait to leave behind. Sam is stuck, literally, figuratively, emotionally, financially. He works at a cafƯ̌ and sleeps there too; he knows that this is the chapter of his life that will serve as inspiration for when he's a famous movie director but right life is really testing him. When they cross paths it's a collision of unbearable awkwardness. But as they stay in touch via text and share their deepest anxieties and secret dreams without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other.