Mismatched Love, Mismatched You

I’d stumbled into a private chat group for trust fund heiresses. Their daily routine consisted of bragging about buying new yachts. For fun, I decided to play along with my own brand of surreal humor. I asked the girls to Venmo me $50. Ping! $20,000 has been deposited into your account. The heiress said she’d hit her daily transfer limit and that I should get the rest from her sister. “My sister’s getting engaged,” she typed. “She’s in a great mood, just throwing money around. You should hit her up, catch some of that good luck!” But when I looked at the wedding invitation she posted in the group, the woman in the white dress looked hauntingly familiar. Wasn’t that my girlfriend? The one who shared my tiny, cramped apartment? The same girlfriend who, just last night, was trying to get people to click her discount link to save three dollars on a purchase.

1 Sensing my gaze, Julia Keane turned her head, nuzzling my cheek with the tip of her nose. “Babe, I just need 0.03 more diamonds to unlock the deal!” Her long lashes cast soft shadows over her almond-shaped eyes. Her brows were gentle, her lips soft and sweet. Her face was so delicate, so impossibly pretty, that she even made the knock-off cartoon pajamas she was wearing look like Chanel. My smile felt brittle. “Don’t you have a sister?” I asked, testing the waters. “You could send the link to her. She could help.” “Oh, I totally forgot!” Julia’s eyes lit up. She quickly started forwarding the message, deliberately angling her phone screen away from me. I waited, my own phone silent in my hand, my eyes fixed on the heiress chat group. Sure enough, a second later, the group’s admin—Julia’s sister—posted a link from a discount shopping app. The user “ParisianPrincess” typed, “OMG, my sister is helping out her broke boyfriend again! Can you guys click the link for him? @everyone” “HamptonsHeiress” replied with a facepalm emoji. “Is she still on that stupid dare? A while back, she was trying to get 99 likes on a post just so they could get a hotpot discount. And don’t get me started on that farming game. She had us all feeding her virtual chickens…” “ManhattanMaven” sent a scoffing reply. “She’s surprisingly dedicated to that guy. Last month she asked me to find him an apartment. Downtown Manhattan, $800 a month, south-facing windows. Please. I ended up just giving her one of my places for free.” ParisianPrincess added, “Don’t worry, it’s almost over. My sister’s getting married next week. She said she’s just going to ghost him. Clean break.” Seeing my icon was silent, the admin tagged me. “@FallenHeir, you should click the link for my sister too. And while you’re at it, hit her up for the other $30k she owes you. Hope you get back on your feet soon!” “You got it, boss,” I typed back. This was my burner account. After helping Julia with her discount, I’d added her sister as a contact. She accepted instantly and sent over $30,000. I sent back a simple message: Thanks. Congratulations on the wedding. She replied with a coffee cup emoji. Online, she was dismissive, cold, and utterly indifferent. But here, in our apartment, she rested her cheek against my knee, looking up at me with an expression of pure, trusting dependence. “Babe, I’m thirsty.”

2 I met Julia at a gala hosted by some obscenely wealthy family. I was there working as a server, and I saw her in a maid’s uniform, surrounded by a gaggle of socialites who were teasing her. “Look at the little rich girl! Is your whole outfit worth even a thousand dollars?” “I’d rather not say.” Seeing Julia, her brow furrowed in discomfort, reminded me of my first time at one of these events. I’d mistaken a glass of champagne for mouthwash and spat it onto the table. The host’s face had turned to stone. In the middle of summer, he’d poured a glass of ice water over my head. “Rinse your own mouth out,” he sneered. Having been rained on before, I saw Julia as one of my own. I felt a pang of sympathy. I walked over, took her hand, and pulled her away from the group. “The chef needs you in the kitchen.” The other women gave us a strange look. “You two know each other?” Julia looked at me and nodded. “Yeah. I’ll get back to work.” At that moment, a flicker of a smile crossed her face. I thought it was gratitude. Looking back now, I realize she was just sizing up the prey that had wandered right into her trap. After the party, I gave her a ride home on my moped. She held onto the corner of my jacket as I shared my hard-won wisdom on side hustles. “You gotta join the neighborhood groups online. They’re always posting gigs for tutoring or cleaning. And I heard from a guy that if you hang around the dumpsters in the rich neighborhoods, you can sometimes find designer stuff they just throw out.” Julia gently corrected me. “They don’t use dumpsters. All their trash is sorted and collected by a private service.” I glanced back, impressed, and made a mental note. She clearly had some experience; she wasn’t some naive kid fresh out of school. That night, I treated her to a five-dollar hot dog from a street cart. Julia wrinkled her nose and took the tiniest, most hesitant bite. I thought she was just being frugal, never considering that for a girl like her, it was the equivalent of being fed garbage. We exchanged numbers. She’d send me leads on catering gigs at mansions; I’d send her tips on how to save money. Every job she recommended was with a family that was surprisingly pleasant and respectful. I never once suspected a thing. The day I finally saved up ten thousand dollars, I asked her out to a nice dinner to celebrate. Julia got stuck in traffic, and while I was waiting at the restaurant, my family found me. An acquaintance had told them they’d seen me working in a wealthy neighborhood, supposedly making a fortune. They’d driven all night to track me down. They held me down, took my phone, and transferred every last cent out of my account. They were kind enough to leave me three dollars and sixty cents. When Julia finally arrived, I was squatting by the restaurant entrance. I looked up at her and scratched my head. “Sorry. The money’s gone. How about I take you back to my place and cook you dinner instead?”

3 That was the first time I ever saw Julia truly angry. “Aren’t you going to call the police?!” But it wasn’t that simple. Family matters never are. I’m adopted. My mother couldn’t conceive before she took me in, but when I was five, she gave birth to my sister. From that day on, I became a resource. I got into NYU, but my tuition fund was used to buy my sister designer bags. The day I was supposed to get my diploma, they tricked me into coming home, having already arranged my marriage to line their own pockets and buy my sister’s fiancé a sports car. The first suit I bought with my own paycheck was taken and used as a bed for the family dog. Every time I tried to stand up for myself, my parents would start with the waterworks, calling me an ungrateful monster, clutching their chests and talking about their weak hearts. Even the most righteous judge backs down in the face of shameless hysterics. Now, thousands of miles away in a new city, they had still managed to find me. A bitter taste filled my throat, but looking at Julia, I forced a smile. I didn’t want her to see me like this, so broken. “It’s okay. I’ll just move. I’ve dealt with this for years. Don’t worry about it.” Julia took off her jacket. It was still warm. She draped it over my shoulders, her own warmth seeping into my chilled skin. She took my cold hands in hers, and her voice was laced with an unfamiliar chill. “If you don’t solve a problem, it will never go away.” The next day, I heard my mother’s small business was being audited for tax evasion. My father’s construction site was shut down after an anonymous tip to OSHA about safety violations. My sister was fired after being caught bullying a coworker and then, in a freak accident, was mugged by some street thugs who broke both her legs. Her fiancé left her, and she lost the baby. They were so caught up in their own disasters that they never had the chance to bother me again. They simply vanished from my life. I was on the back of Julia’s moped when I heard the news. She was wobbling, still unsteady with the controls, but her voice was bright with laughter. “I had some of my friends help out. It’s fine, don’t worry.” I wrapped my arms around her. Her back was soft, shielding me from the wind. My eyes stung, and I pressed my face against her shoulder. A selfish thought crept into my mind. “I don’t have any money to pay you back,” I murmured. “How about I offer myself instead?” Julia stiffened for a moment, then answered, her voice muffled. “I’m just afraid you’ll be the one getting the short end of the deal.” Looking back, I realize she was worried about me getting hurt when I found out the truth about her identity. But what’s a poor man’s heart worth, really? I’m more upset about the buy-one-get-one-free milk teas I shared with her, the streaming accounts I let her use. All the little things she never needed, all the gestures born from my own self-deception.

4 After dinner, Julia fell asleep beside me, tucking my hand into the warmth of her arms. She knew I was always cold, my hands and feet like ice since I was a child. Quietly, I opened the heiress chat. The admin, flush with cash from her sister’s generosity, was planning a trip to Iceland to see the Northern Lights. She was giving away her old travel itinerary for Paris. The other heiresses were bored. “Paris is so last season.” The admin immediately tagged me. “@FallenHeir, you want to go to Paris? I have a friend there who also went broke and made a comeback. Maybe you could learn from her! Type 1 to claim.” “111!” I typed back instantly. I confirmed the travel dates with her—right before Julia’s engagement party. Later that night, unable to sleep, I sent a private message to the admin, Julia’s sister. “That boyfriend of your sister’s… you don’t think he’ll try to crash the wedding, do you?” She sent back a laughing emoji. “FallenHeir, you’re new here so you don’t know. My sister lost a dare and had to dress up as a maid at that party. The dumbass boyfriend played the hero and ‘rescued’ her. That’s how they got together.” “A friend of ours dared her to keep up the act for a few months. The prize was a set of antique porcelain my sister’s fiancé really wanted, so she agreed.” My fingers felt cold as they tapped against the screen. “What about the guy? Aren’t you guys going to give him some money or something?” “My sister’s been good enough to him! The guy’s one of those suckers who gives everything to his family. Julia had to get her hands dirty cleaning up his messes. A clean break is more than he deserves! Does he really think a frog can marry a princess?” “And if he gets clingy, she’ll just toss some money at him. Problems of the poor are easy to solve~” Suddenly, the phone was snatched from my hand. I looked up into Julia’s eyes, dark in the dim light of the bedroom. My heart hammered against my ribs. Did she see the tears in my eyes? Would she demand to know what was wrong? Could we finally talk about everything? If she just apologized, just explained, was there still a chance for us? I opened my mouth to ask. But Julia just turned off the screen and wrapped her arms around me, her voice thick with sleep. “Babe, don’t stay up so late. I have to work in the morning.” I lay beside her, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. My mind was already packing my bags for the trip.

5 As soon as the sun was up, Julia left for work. Before she left, she washed my clothes and hung them up to dry in the sun. I’d had a sudden bout of stomach flu last night, and she tucked a bottle of painkillers into my pocket. She gave me her usual kiss at the door and said she’d see me tonight. The moment the door closed, a notification popped up from the heiress chat. The admin had posted: “My sister is on her way to pick out a gift for her fiancé! They are SO perfect together!” What a coincidence. I was also picking out a gift to leave for Julia. The three wool sweaters in the closet were for her. The collection of plushies I thought were cheap knock-offs—all authentic, imported items Julia had bought—were also for her. Even the toilet paper was some fancy imported brand; my skin was too rough to have ever noticed the difference. The dress I’d saved up to buy for her birthday was hers to keep. I wouldn’t be around to celebrate with her this year. I logged her device out of all my shared streaming accounts. Finally, I checked the fridge. There was one carton of yogurt left. I remembered how Julia would take a few sips and then toss it. I’d once snatched it back from her, showing her how to lick the lid clean. “If you don’t lick the lid, you must be a secret millionaire.” A strange expression had flickered across her face. Then, realizing I was joking, she’d laughed and kissed the smudge of yogurt from the corner of my mouth. When she saw all my little habits born of poverty, did she find them charming? Or did she find me pathetic? I decided it didn’t matter anymore. I grabbed my suitcase, walked out of our apartment, and sent Julia one last text. “I’m out of town for work. Won’t be coming home.” Of course, she didn’t reply. A video popped up in the heiress chat. It was Julia, straightening a man’s tie, her smile gentle and elegant. “My sister helping her future husband try on his suit. So sweet,” the caption read. “HamptonsHeiress”: “999!” (for luck) “ManhattanMaven”: “A match made in heaven.” Feeling generous, I added my own comment. “Wishing the happy couple a lifetime of happiness and beautiful twin babies!” Suddenly, a cash prize notification appeared in the chat. It was from Julia. She must have been added to the group at some point. “Thank you all for the well wishes.” No one claimed the money. So I did. Wow. A hundred thousand dollars. Tears sprang to my eyes. I ordered the most expensive coffee on the menu without looking at the price, hailed a cab without checking the fare, and headed straight for the airport.

6 Landed in Paris. The unfamiliar surroundings and the crush of the crowd felt overwhelming. I dragged my suitcase, feeling out of place and clumsy. After a few steps, I saw a sign held high above the crowd. It read: FallenHeir, where are you? The woman holding the sign was dressed in a sleek black trench coat. Her features were sharp and coolly beautiful, and she looked vaguely familiar. She glanced at her watch, a picture of impatient elegance amidst the waiting throng. I ducked my head and walked over, placing my hand on her sign. “Hi.” Her voice was as cool as her expression, but surprisingly loud. “You’re FallenHeir? Let’s go. I’m Elara.” “FallenHeir, have you eaten?” “FallenHeir, where are you staying?” I hurried to catch up with her. “Shh, shh, could you keep it down? I have a name. It’s Leo!” “Right. Got it, Mr. Leo.” She took my suitcase and led the way. A discreet black Maybach was waiting at the curb. As I settled into the plush leather seat, I opened the group chat to let the admin know I’d arrived safely. But the chat was in utter chaos. The admin, ParisianPrincess, was spamming the chat. “HOLY SHIT, MY SISTER RAN AWAY FROM HER OWN ENGAGEMENT PARTY!” “ManhattanMaven” immediately replied: “Spill. Now.” “HamptonsHeiress” was more succinct: “DETAILS.”