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It should come as no surprise that the guy with the perfect six pack and biceps like a Greek god was in better shape than me.
“Why not?” Ellis asked, typing in the password to unlock my phone.
Of course he knew it. Ellis knew everything about me.
“Because I don’t have any pictures of myself I like enough to, you know, put out there and all,” I mumbled
There was only the sound of the television as I focused intently on my toes and waited for Ellis’s response. I didn’t want to think of all the times when I felt most alone, as I waited for the bus to arrive or for my ramen to microwave or for an elliptical to open up at the gym, that I considered creating a Tinder profile, or figuring out what the heck Bumble was. I was pretty sure Grindr wasn’t my thing. But it always ended the same way: I would flip through the photos of myself on my phone and wince at every single one of them before reassuring myself I just wasn’t the type of girl who “did” Tinder. None of this Ellis knew, though.
“Tessa Stewart,” Ellis finally said, “that is the lamest, dumbest excuse I have ever heard in my entire life.”
I dragged my gaze up to his. “Ellis, I—”
“I have loads of pictures of you that will work.”
He plopped back down next to me on the couch and pulled out his phone. As I fumbled for words, he flipped around his screen and showed me a picture of myself I’d never seen before.
“When did you take this?” I asked, looking at him in confusion.
It was a picture of me at the beach. Watermelon slice in hand, sea salt tangled hair on a messy bun on top of my head, and a seemingly carefree smile on my face as I laughed at something surely Ellis said. I looked happy. I looked…pretty.
“I take pictures of you all the time without you knowing.” Ellis grabbed the phone and scrolled down the page before turning the screen back around to face me.
“Um, that’s not creepy at all, friend,” I said, leaning closer to see another picture of me.
I knew what pictures of me looked like: they were not pretty. I’d spent hours trying to perfect the beautiful pictures I saw on other girls’ social media profiles. But I always found something wrong with the pictures I took of myself: double chin, chip in my front tooth, cheeks too red, lips too small.
But the next picture that I stared at on Ellis’s phone was flawless.
I was on stage at an acting workshop Ellis had dragged me to (literally he had to drag me through the front doors). The bright lights were on me, which made my hair look shiny, my skin appear soft and supple, and my body curvy in all the right ways. There was emotion on my face as I held the script in my hands, emotion I never saw when I practiced lines in front of my own bathroom mirror.
I had no idea that Ellis had even been watching my performance, let alone taking a thoughtful, intimate picture of it. My heart did a twisty thing inside my chest.
Looking up, I found Ellis typing on my phone. “What are you doing?” I asked, suddenly nervous.
“Making your Hookup Central profile,” he said, not bothering to even look up at me.
“No, no, wait.” I reached out for my phone, but he again pulled it away from my flailing arm. “Ellis, stop. What are you writing? I—”
Ellis placed a silencing finger to my lips as he somehow kept typing with a single thumb.
“Ellis…” I mumbled against his finger.
“Shh, shh,” he hushed.
“But—”
Ellis pressed one final button and then smiled up at me. “It’s done.”
“What?”
He handed me my phone. “Welcome to Hookup Central, Tessa Stewart,” he said, as my eyes skimmed over the profile he created for me. “It is the cesspool of humanity. And it is beautiful.”
“You wrote that I’m an actor,” I said, still scrolling.
“Yeah?”
I gave him a pointed look. “You do know that I’ve never actually booked a gig, right?”
