The Broke Boyfriend Lie

I found my dirtpoor online boyfriend sitting dead center in the VIP booth of the nightclub where I worked, ringed by people, eight bottles of Ace of Spades champagne lined up on the table in front of him.

The next day was supposed to be the first time we ever met in person. One of them laughed and asked him, "Joel, you really meeting your internet girl tomorrow?" He scoffed. "Me?

Go see her? What, am I that bored?" He clapped one of his buddies on the shoulder and told him to go in his place tomorrow and get rid of me.

The guy turned his head, and the tray almost slipped out of my hands. It was Soren. The one who'd turned me down in front of everybody when I asked him to prom, senior year.

That night another text came in from a number I didn't know. [All that stuff about how I was the one you liked most… Little liar.

How many people have you said that to?] Chapter 1 No greeting, no context. But one look and I knew it was Soren.

Because back when I was chasing him, I'd said every sweet thing there was to say to him. And only to him. Soren had grown up around money like that, so of course he knew Joel.

The part I couldn't work out was Joel. He'd gone to all that trouble to play broke in front of me. What was he getting out of it? I was worn out, body and mind.

I turned off my phone without answering Soren.

I took a hot shower, and just as I was about to get into bed, my phone chimed. [Baby, we finally meet tomorrow, I'm so excited I could cry.] [How about this place?

There's a fiftyninedollar dinner for two on Groupon, that's a pretty good deal, right?] My fingers stopped.

Of all the cheap restaurants in this city, the one he'd hunted down was the one I'd tried to get hired at last month. Waiting tables.

Fourteen hundred a month takehome, plus whatever I managed to save in tips. Every cent of it had gone to presents for Joel. A mechanical watch. Nine hundred dollars.

He'd mentioned once, in passing, that it looked good. I'd held on to that for two months. A down jacket, four hundred and eighty, because he said Chicago winters were cold.

I picked a brand name, the thickest one they made. With what was left I bought gloves, hand warmers, enough odds and ends to fill half a suitcase. I ran the numbers afterward.

I'd covered six hundred dollars out of my own savings on top of what I earned. And all of it together wasn't even the loose change on their bar tab that night.

Last week in the locker room I'd heard the other girls talking. There was a rich kid in that booth who liked to egg the bottle girl into chugging.

Every bottle of Ace of Spades she put away, he'd throw ten thousand dollars at her. A month of carrying trays at the club got me twelve, thirteen hundred.

And that crowd tossed out ten grand without looking at it. I let out a breath. Maybe I'd been staring at the screen too long. My eyes had gone hot. A fiftyninedollar dinner deal.

Any other day I'd have thought that was expensive too. It was ten burritos, for me. Joel expected me to do what I always did and find some way to save him the money.

This time I typed one word without hesitating. [Sure.] For the first time, he didn't answer in a second. Like it hadn't occurred to him that I'd say yes that easily.

It took a long while. Then he sent a screenshot from the Uber driver app. [Thirty rides tonight.

Impressive, right?] Chapter 2 [And one of them was a run up to the rich neighborhoods on the North Side.

Some executive tipped me fifty bucks!] I tapped the image to open it full size. The time in the corner of the screenshot said 10:47 tonight.

At 10:47 he'd been sitting in that booth at the club, telling Soren to go meet me for him. [Baby, are you asleep?] [Okay, no goodnight for me tonight, I guess…] [See you tomorrow, baby!] I didn't write back.

I let my eyes drop. I had no idea what expression I was supposed to put on tomorrow when I faced Soren.

Because back then, in front of all those people, he'd humiliated me until there was nothing left. "Did I do something?

To give you the impression that I'd ever like you?" He said it and walked away, and left me standing alone in the courtyard with my entire class watching.

Somebody filmed it and sent it to the anonymous gossip account the school ran on Instagram.

The caption was "Basic Girl Asks Him to Prom, Caught on Camera." I hid at home for two weeks and didn't dare go out.

Afterward I deleted every way I had of reaching Soren, got a new number, and got into a school in Chicago. I thought I'd never see him again as long as I lived.

And here he was, with a new title on top of everything else. My online boyfriend's good buddy. I woke up early the next morning.

The alarm hadn't gone off yet, and it was just getting light.

I stared at the ceiling for a long time before I finally got up, put on a little makeup, and covered the shadows under my eyes. I got to the restaurant a little after eleven.

I'd barely reached the door when the owner and I made eye contact. The second she saw me she called out, "Hey, what are you doing back here?

I told you last week, we're full on servers, we're not hiring." It took me two seconds to catch up. "I'm not here to—" "We really aren't hiring.

Go on." She waved me off like she was shooing a fly. "We've got enough people this month. Try somewhere else." I opened my mouth to explain.

A hand came in from beside me and drew me back half a step. "She's not here for a job." I turned. It was Joel. I knew he'd been lying to me.

And still, the second I saw him, my heart skipped. He'd thrown on a jacket and hadn't done much with his hair.

He looked exactly like an Uber driver who'd just come off a shift and stopped in to grab something to eat.

His sleeves were pushed up to his forearms, and the strip of wrist showing was bare. He wasn't wearing the expensive watch today. Which made sense.

Guys who drive for a living don't wear mechanical watches. Joel gave the owner a smile. "She's my girlfriend.

We've got a table booked." Only then did the owner look him up and down. She muttered, "Oh, sorry about that," and turned and left.

I watched the side of his face and didn't say anything. He looked down at me, eyes going soft at the corners when he smiled. "What is it? Did I scare you?" I shook my head.

It just hadn't occurred to me that the one who showed up wouldn't be Soren. I had no idea what had happened.

Joel took my hand and walked me inside, his fingers warm around mine. "Come on, baby.

I reserved us a spot." Once we sat down he went through the menu, muttering as he turned the pages. "This is kind of pricey…" Watching him work his way down that menu, I felt the whole thing tip over into something absurd.

The man in that booth last night with people packed in around him, and the man doing arithmetic over a fiftyninedollar dinner for two today. Were they really the same person?

In the end, Joel did redeem the Groupon. He smiled at me with an apology sitting right there in his eyes.

Chapter 3 "Sorry you have to settle for this today," Joel said. "Once I've got money I'll take you somewhere good." I looked down and drank some water. "Sure." When the food came he pushed the plates over to my side and kept finding things to talk about.

He asked whether work had been wearing me out, and told me he'd already started wearing the scarf I knitted him. He said a lot. I made the right sounds back.

Partway through I went to wash my hands, and on my way out I ran straight into the owner.

She looked at me, then glanced toward the room we were in, and leaned close with her voice down. "Hey. That guy in there.

He's not actually your boyfriend, is he?" I thought about it and shook my head. "He's not?" She frowned. "Then what is he to you?" I thought about it. "…Someone I met online." "Huh." She nodded, looked back toward Joel, and rubbed her chin. "I knew there was no way he was your boyfriend.

And another thing. I keep feeling like I've seen that man somewhere before." She came half a step closer. "Look at him. Regular clothes, nothing special about any of it.

But the way he sits, the way he holds himself? That is not a regular guy." "I worked the kitchen at one of those highend places for a while. I've seen rich boys like that.

They sit down, they don't have to do a single thing, and you just know they aren't living in the same world we are." She patted my shoulder. "Keep your eyes open." I pulled my mouth into something like a smile and got out a dry "Sure." I'd thought Joel was doing a convincing job of playing broke.

But by the end of that meal I realized something. He couldn't even fake his way through a fiftyninedollar dinner.

At one point he speared a piece of something that had obviously come out of a freezer bag and been heated up. His eyebrows moved, so slightly you'd miss it.

He held it there for several seconds before he put it in his mouth. Right then I thought of a movie I'd watched a long time ago. Parasite.

There's a line in it about how the difference between the rich and the poor is a smell. The father in that movie can never get his out.

The smell of packed subway cars, of a halfbasement, of growing up breathing damp and mildew. I'm one of the ones who'll never air out the smell of being poor either.

I can eat reheated freezer food and enjoy every bite. And Joel is the kind who can't fake being poor to save his life.

I finished at the sink and came back, and heard Joel on the phone. The door was pushed most of the way shut, and his voice carried through the gap, low. "Yeah… I ate.

I'm having lunch with her." My feet stopped. I stayed where I was in the doorway. The voice on the other end wasn't clear. I could just make out that it was a girl.

Joel pitched his voice light and soft, with a coaxing edge to it. "Princess, I'm handling it for you, aren't I?

What's the rush?" She said something else, and he laughed. "Sure, fine. Since when do you not trust me with something?" "Twentyfive thousand, not a dollar short.

Once she's spent it all, then you'll be happy? …I'm hanging up, she'll be back any second." My hand tightened on the door handle. Twentyfive thousand. Twentyfive thousand of what?

Joel hung up and turned around and saw me standing in the doorway. Something uneasy crossed his face, gone almost before it arrived, and then he was smiling again. "You're back?

Why are you standing out there instead of coming in?" I let go of the handle, walked in, and sat down. "Done with your call?" "Yeah. Family stuff… my sister.

She wants me to come home and fix her computer." He scratched his head, a little sheepish about it. "I'm out here to see you and she keeps at me about it.

Drives me crazy." I smiled too and let it go. Joel seemed to have forgotten. Chapter 4 He'd told me online that he was an only child.

So who was the sister on the phone, nagging him to come home and fix a computer? I laughed at him quietly, inside my own head. One lie after another after another.

After we finished eating we came out onto the sidewalk, and I looked down at my phone. At the edge of my vision, a black Maybach pulled up at the curb.

The door swung open and a man got out. Black overcoat, wide shoulders, narrow waist.

He shut the door without any particular care, spun the key once around his fingers, and looked up toward the restaurant. My phone almost hit the ground. Soren.

He took a couple of steps our way, like he was coming into this restaurant too. When his gaze swept past the entrance, it stopped on my face for a beat. My breath caught.

But he looked away almost immediately, as though he hadn't recognized me. I put my head down and shifted a step sideways, trying to get myself into the shadow.

Joel's voice came from behind me. "Let's go, baby." I hadn't even turned around when his voice stopped short. "…What are you doing here?" I looked up.

Joel was standing a step behind me, staring at Soren, his face stiff and something distinctly uncomfortable in his eyes.

Soren spun the car key around his fingers once more and tossed it to him. "Aren't you out taking rides?" he said, smiling. "Plate ending 0724.

Driver Kellerman?" Joel pulled in a long breath. I was standing between the two of them.

I heard a low sound of agreement out of him, and then he turned to come take my arm. "This is your girlfriend?" Soren said it out of nowhere, the polite smile still hanging on his mouth. "Why don't we all go together?

I'm free anyway. I'll take you home." Joel's brows drew in. "No need.

We'll just call a car—" "It's on my way." Soren cut him off, and he already had the rear door open. "I'm headed that direction anyway.

Let me be a good guy and give you two a lift." Joel's face was hard to look at. He opened his mouth and still didn't turn it down. He said to me, low, "Come on.

Get in." He pulled open the driver's door and sat down behind the wheel. Soren stood by the back door and tipped his head at me. I bent and slid into the back seat.

Soren set an elbow on the window ledge, completely at ease. Like he was sitting on his own couch at home.

Up front, Joel's movements were stiff as he pulled his seat belt across. "…Going." Soren didn't answer him. Nobody said anything after that.

I leaned against the window and watched the streetlights slide backward, my head a mess. I didn't know why Soren had turned up out of nowhere.

In the middle of that, there was suddenly warmth against my knee. Every muscle in me locked at once. The toe of Soren's shoe.

It had come across at some point I hadn't noticed and hooked around my calf, not gently, not roughly. He wasn't looking at me.

His eyes were level, straight ahead, the corner of his mouth curved a little. Like he was watching the night slide past outside.

Or watching the side of Joel's face in the rearview mirror. His ankle moved against the fabric of my pant leg, one light drag. I went rigid.

My back was flat against the seat and I didn't dare move. Up front, Joel kept his whole attention on the road, and had no idea. Then Soren turned his head.

His eyes landed on my face and traveled over it inch by inch, from my eyes to my mouth, and stopped on my lashes, which had started to shake. The curve of his mouth deepened.

Those eyes looked straight into mine, the way a hunter looks at something that has already stepped into the trap. Smiling. He didn't say a word.

Chapter 5 The pressure on my ankle went up another notch. I curled my fingers in until my nails bit into my palm, lowered my eyes, and said nothing. The car kept going.

Chicago's night air came in through the gap in the window and left the back of my neck cold. Up front, Joel broke the silence. "Baby, are you cold?

Want me to turn the heat up?" My head came up in a panic. Too late. His eyes went to my face first, and then, without thinking, they dropped— And stopped.

Soren's leg was still stretched out, the toe of his dress shoe hooked around my ankle. Casual and suggestive at the same time, and he didn't even bother to move it.

Two seconds of silence in that car.

Then Joel's voice came up hard, and the mild, easy mask on his face split straight down the middle. "What are you two doing…?!" Joel twisted all the way around from the driver's seat