Okay, so this is gonna sound fake but I promise it's I got a guy's number from his six-year-old daughter at a wedding I was actively trying to escape.Hi, I'm Evan. pediatric resident. professional overthinker. owner of a social battery that died somewhere around 2019 and never recovered. My ideal Friday night is charting patient notes in silence, not making small talk with strangers who ask what I "do for fun," like that's a normal thing people my age still have.Then Lian happened.Six years old. covered in chocolate frosting. zero sense of personal boundaries. She decided I was her new best friend, handed me her dad's phone number on a napkin, and told me we were gonna be "efficient pen pals." And because I'm apparently incapable of saying no to children with good ideas, I texted him.Aiden's a cardiac surgery resident, which means he's just as sleep-deprived and emotionally repressed as I am. We started trading medical pics for his daughter, skeleton diagrams, heart surgery stories, drawings of my dying houseplant. It was wholesome. It was safe. It was absolutely NOT supposed to turn into late-night calls where he laughs at my jokes and I start looking forward to his texts more than my morning coffee.Now I'm in too deep, and my best friend Julia is staging an intervention because apparently my "slow-burn era" is painful to witness.This is what happens when you let a first-grader play matchmaker and two exhausted doctors accidentally catch feelings while trying to survive residency.Tropes: single dad romance - slow burn - text-based yearning - found family - medical romance - grumpy meets tired (we're both tired) - "Oh no, I'm in love with my pen pal's dad."