Page 12 of Minted

Instead of ignoring the notification and finishing with brushing my teeth like a normal person, I swipe to open my phone and bring up the app. And then I’m even more shocked when I find myself staring at Bentley’s gorgeous face.

I mean, he’s not even looking at the camera, and it’s a weird crop of the photo, but it’s definitely him. Could it be a bizarre sign from the universe? Am I supposed to write him a horribly sappy letter about my unrequited love, get humiliated, and somehow discover something about myself?

No way.

There’s really only one explanation.

It has to be a fake account. Someone stole his identity—probably some dork who works for him. They made an account with his information, hoping to use his looks and posh-sounding name to find a girl. I’d expect that more at like, Tinder or Match, but hey. People are branching out as women get smarter. I glance at the income.

Two hundred grand.

Ha! Bentley probably makes that in a normal day.

I think about just ignoring it, which would be the smart thing to do. There’s no way that even a fake Bentley would be interested in me. But if it was me who had been hacked, I’d want to know that someone was impersonating me. I’d want to get a heads up or something.

I do the adult thing, even though it’s a little hard, and I pull up his contact on my phone. It’s ten at night, but he’s the kind of person who probably swipes the silence notifications button on, right? If he’s asleep, a phone call won’t wake him up, surely.

“Hello?”

I fumble my phone a little and my heart accelerates. I guess I didn’t expect him to answer. I’ve known Bentley forever, but I almost never call him. And when we text, it’s about Dave or Seren. Always.

“Uh, hey. It’s Barbara.”

“Yeah, I got this weird thing—I think it’s called caller ID or something. It tells who’s calling me at ten at night so I can decide whether to answer.”

“So, I know it’s late, and maybe you won’t care, but I wanted to warn you.”

“Warn me?” Bentley sounds a little incredulous.

“Yeah, so I’m on this dating app called eHarmony, and I just got a notification that I was matched with someone.”

“Okay.”

“And it was you, only I know it’s not you, because I know you wouldn’t ever get on there.” He’s not saying anything. Why isn’t he saying something? “Anyway, I think maybe someone from work like, took your photo, and they’re imitating you so they can, I don’t know, like, hit on people.”

“Imitating me?”

“The profile’s just awful,” I say. “I mean, it made me laugh, but it’s really, really bad. I doubt they’ll convince many women to meet them, but they did say they had an income of two hundred a year, so who knows? Some women are really desperate.”

“Barbara?”

“Yeah?” Before he can get annoyed, I cut to the chase. “Listen, I can email the web admin and report your account if you want, but I might need some kind of verification from you, like a photo of your actual ID to get them to take it down, and I’m not sure whether they’ll give you information on who’s doing it—like an IP or something.”

“Barbara.”

“Maybe you don’t care, but people can google you, and if it were me, I’d want—”

“Barbara, it’s really me.”

“What?” I hate how shrill my voice sounds.

“It’s my account.”

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. I said—what exactly did I say? That it was bad. That the account wouldn’t pull any girls at all. And oh, no. He knows it matched us, and that’s how I saw it.

I can feel the heat flooding my face and neck. My face flushes really easily—a little bit of wine, the slightest embarrassment, and I turn into Sebastian the Crab.

At least he can’t see me.

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