Page 19 of Love Felt Like This

A Pretend Hot Person

Beverly

I stand, very uncomfortably, in the lobby of a ritzy restaurant.

Ritzy.

There’s a better adjective for it, I’m sure. Ritzy feels like an amateur word used by people who don’t go to ritzy restaurants. Except, well, I don’t go to ritzy restaurants.

Last night, I was in a shopping center restaurant with Finch, lit by harsh fluorescent overhead lighting, hunched like a gremlin over a plastic container loaded with oily noodles, chicken, and sesame seeds. It was a perfectly unritzy night until my phone buzzed with a message. I thought maybe the text was from my nana, asking what I wanted for dinner tomorrow night when my flight landed.

I was wrong.

Unknown number: Is this Beverly Lark?

Beverly: Hi! Yes. Who is this?

Unknown number: My name is Jimmy Verso, Griffin Harvey’s manager. He’d like to set up a dinner with you.

I suddenly grew very lightheaded.

I must have misread.

I shoved my phone over to Finch as if a ghoul had crawled out of it. He simply stared.

“It’s another scam,” I breathed, pulling my knees up to my chest. The plastic chair squeaked under me. “Right?”

Finch squinted, unhooking thin glasses from his shirt pocket and then sliding them onto the end of his nose. He mouthed the text as he read it, finally ending with a hmm.

“Hmm?” I echoed back.

“Ask him.”

“Ask the strange number if he’s a scam? Do people admit that?”

Finch shrugged, lifting his glasses to the top of his bald head. “Ones who are bad at their job.”

I slid the phone back in front of me, hovering my fingers over the screen before typing Are you a scam?

Finch laughed. I laughed with him.

How funny this situation is. A real riot.

My phone buzzed, and a new text read I wish.

“Huh,” Finch said as I slouched in my chair.

“What do you make of that?”

Finch repeated, “Huh.”

“Are you just saying that, or is your hearing aid actually failing?”

My phone buzzed again.

Unknown number: Are you free next week?

I stared, then typed back No.