Kathleen (Meg Ryan) owns a small children's bookstore in New York City. When FoxBooks, a huge chain of bookstores starts building a store across the street, supervised by Joe Fox (Tom Hanks), he instantly attracts Kathleen's hatred, as it appears he's going to drive her out of business. When she protests his project, Joe doesn't exactly think she's so great either. What neither of them know is that when they go home at night and log on to their computers to chat with their on-line pals... they're talking to each other.