Olivia
“Are you sure you can afford this?” I ask as Sadie and I sit down at a small table at Indigo Tide, the same sushi place Luca took me on our first date.
“Thanks for the faith in me,” she says.
“I’m just saying, I’ve been here before and it’s pricey.” I say, and Sadie shoots me a look.
“I know you’ve been here before. With Luca. How could I forget?” she asks as she looks over the menu. “And my new job pays well. Way better than he ever paid me. So, I’m treating us to sushi. And drinks, of course.”
I smile, but in my gut, I feel guilty for more than one reason. She’s my best friend. Despite all our differences and her tendency to be a bit of a diva, Sadie is my best friend. And because I am her best friend, I need to tell her the truth.
We order cocktails and several rolls of sushi to share. I let her tell me about her new job, all the while doing my best to seem interested and not focus on the elephant in the room. The elephant whispering in my ear that I need to tell her the last thing she wants to hear.
“The best part is they literally let me have creative freedom. No more being treated like I don’t know what I’m doing.
Or not being valued for my talent. I might have only gone to a community art school, but I know design.
Not just graphic design, but fashion too.
And they see that. They really see that.
Sure, it’s lacking in sexy men, but what are you going to do, right?
” Sadie takes a break from talking to take a sip of sake.
“There are no men at the magazine?” I ask.
“Not straight ones,” she mutters. “But…that’s what the apps are for, right?” I ask.
And as much as I think I might throw up in my miso soup, I know I need to coax the conversation in the inevitable direction.
“I thought you were done with the apps,” I say. “After the whole Luca fiasco.”
“No, I’m just done with Luca,” she states, popping a piece of sushi in her mouth. “I didn’t meet him on the app.”
“Right,” I nod with a forced smile. And of course she sees right through it. Sadie studies me for a moment before clicking her tongue and going back to the sushi board.
“So…have you seen him recently?” She asks, and I’m a little surprised it took her this long to bring it up. Usually, she’s grilling me before we even open the menus.
“Some,” I say, and immediately I hate the word because it only solidifies the fact that I am sick of lying. “Listen, Sadie,”
“He’s leading you on, isn’t he?” she asks. “He’s seriously disgusting.”
“Actually, there’s something I need to talk to you about,” I say.
“Okay,” she says as she sips her sake.
I set my chopsticks down. I’ve been fighting with them since we got our food, anyway. I just need to focus.
“I don’t think Luca is using me,” I tell her. But Sadie just snorts.
“What are you talking about? Of course he is.”
I bite my lip. I guess I need a different angle. A more aggressive one.
“Listen, I know what he did to you was hurtful, Sadie,” I say.
“Hurtful? It was horrible,” she cut in. “Olivia. I gave that man everything. My time, my efforts, my energy, my affection, and he threw me out with the trash. And my guess is that he is going to do the same thing to you. He’s just playing the game differently because he knows that you're my friend. If I had to guess, he is leading you on so he can hurt you in an attempt to hurt me. You know,” she says, grabbing another piece of sushi and popping it in her mouth.
“I think he’s, like, obsessed with me or something. ”
And something in that last sentence hits a nerve. Because while I feel bad for everything that’s going on, I also can’t understand how Sadie isn’t hearing me. Or hearing herself, for that matter.
“Sadie, I don’t think Luca is using me to hurt me or you or anyone else,” I say.
“Of course he is,” she argues.
“No. I really don’t think so,” I argue back.
Sadie’s green eyes flash up to mine, but I keep going.
“I think maybe in the beginning he had a different motive. But don’t we all?
I mean, my intentions were bad, you know that.
But the more dates we went on, the more I’ve been around him, the more I’ve realized that this isn’t a game.
It’s not about revenge or catfish or anything else. ”
“So what is it about?” she asks sharply. “Your feelings for him?”
I bite my lip as an answer, and she nods.
“I see,” she says.
“Sadie, I never meant–”
“You promised. You promised me, Livv. And I trusted you,” she says.
“I know, but–”
“You’re supposed to be my best friend, Olivia. And this was your idea. Going out with him, getting revenge, it was your idea,” she says.
Actually, only the revenge part was my idea. Me being the one to do it was her suggestion. But it doesn’t seem like the time to try to turn the tables. Besides, I’m too busy trying not to cry at a fancy sushi restaurant.
“I just…I can’t believe it,” she shakes her head.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, knowing that it probably doesn’t matter. “I promise I never meant for this to happen. I never dreamed it would happen.”
“You promised,” she says the word, and it feels like a knife twist. “You’ve been promising a lot of things, Olivia. So much so that the word doesn’t really hold any merit anymore.”
“Sadie.”
“Does he feel the same?” She says.
“What?” I ask, having trouble keeping up.
“Luca. Does Luca have feelings for you too?” She asks.
“I think so,” I say modestly.
“I see…” she nods. “Well. Isn’t this a fun little plot twist? I trust you with my heartbreak and then the two of you hook up, leaving me the one who gets used. Tell me, Livv. You work in the world of dating and matchmaking. Are catfish a universal thing?” she asks.
“What do you mean?” I ask, my voice breaking.
“I mean, is catfishing solely a dating thing? Or can you catfish your friends too?”
“That’s not fair,” I say, stuffing down some of the emotion. “It’s only catfishing if it was intended.”
“Well, just because you didn’t intend to hurt me doesn’t mean you didn’t,” she says, standing up. “I hope you two are happy together. Actually. No. I hope you two get exactly what you have coming to you. You deserve each other.”
“Sadie,” I call out, but she’s already marching out the door, leaving me with tears streaming down my cheeks and a fat check that I don’t know if I can pay. So I do the only thing I can think of. I call Luca.
* * *
“So she insisted on going to Indigo and then stuck you with the check,” Luca says as we drive back to my house. The only thing more embarrassing than having to call him because I couldn’t pay the tab is asking him for a ride home because Sadie and I carpooled here and the car was hers.
“We may or may not have gotten in an argument,” I admit, and he looks away from the road momentarily to look over at me.
“That’s not good,” he says, and I can feel more tears coming. I fight them vigorously, but I’m not sure what good it will do. I’m a mess.
“No, it’s not,” I sigh.
“Do you mind if I ask what it was about?” he gently asks, and I turn to him.
“What happened between you two?” I ask.
“Between Sadie and I?” he asks, pulling up to my place and putting the car in park.
“Yes. Because I only know her side. And I need to know yours,” I say.
“Well,” he sighs, sitting back in his seat and turning Hozier down. “Sadie worked for me.”
“I know,” I say.
“And while she was kind of…no offense…an airhead most of the time, I could tell she had potential. So, I promoted her to the design department. And she was good. Honestly, she was even better than I expected. We worked together a lot because design is incredibly important for a dating app. Any app really. If it’s not appealing to the eye, people swipe left.
They end up on another app,” he explains, looking over at me to see if I am still following. When I nod timidly, he goes on.
“I think, somewhere in those meetings and private lunches, Sadie might have taken the one-on-one time the wrong way,” he says.
“So you weren’t interested in her,” I state.
“In short? No. I mean don’t get me wrong; she’s a pretty girl.
But she isn’t really my type. And I wasn’t looking for a relationship anyway.
So when she asked if I would go to dinner with her to discuss the layout for a new launch we were doing as part of a full app update, I figured, why not?
We could discuss work things, and I could also explain that our relationship, if you want to call it that, was strictly professional. ”
“So the dinner at the Italian restaurant wasn’t a date…” I say.
“No. And when I realized that’s what she thought it was–”
“You fired her,” I say, but Luca’s brow furrows.
“No. I fired her because after I explained where we stood, she lost her mind in the middle of the restaurant. I cut the dinner short and walked her to her car, and she kissed me,” Luca says, and my mouth literally pops open.
“She…kissed you?” I ask in utter disbelief.
“Yeah,” he says, letting out a breath. I study him hard.
Searching for the catfish. Searching for the charm.
Searching for anything to tell me that he’s making this up.
Because if he is telling the truth, that means that not only was he not at fault, but Sadie lied to me.
And used me to hurt him because her pride was hurt.
“I can’t believe this,” I say, shaking my head.
I take in a breath and let it out shakily.
Because while he is yanking skeletons out of the closet, I should probably clean mine out too.
“Luca…I need to tell you something…” I trail off momentarily, the words feeling thick in my mouth.
“The reason I swiped right on your profile, heck, the reason I had the Realr app at all, was because Sadie asked me to…catfish you.”
I bite my lip the moment the words are out and squeeze my eyes shut. I’m expecting anger. Hurt. Yelling even. But the sound that comes from his mouth is nothing like that. In fact, it’s such an unexpected sound that I actually open my eyes again to see if the noise he’s making is real.
Luca is chuckling.
“Why is that funny?” I ask in disbelief.
“Because I know,” he says, and I just blink.
“You know?” I ask. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I knew what you were up to,” he says.
“You did? How?” I gasp.
“It wasn’t that hard to figure out, Olivia. Did you think I wasn’t going to look you up? You have photos on social media with her. What are the odds that Sadie’s best friend would match with me on Realr right after I fired her?”
“If you knew, why didn’t you say anything?” I ask.
“Honestly,” he says, dragging a hand through his hair, a smirk still on his lips. “It was more fun to play along,” he says.
“What?”
“Did you really think you could catfish the CEO of the most successful dating app in history?” he asks.
“I mean…” I shrug, and then I realize this is kind of funny. Ridiculous really. I stop and turn to him. “Wait. So is that why you didn’t sleep with me on those first dates?”
“It is. Because I knew that you were trying to get me to sleep with you so that you could use it against my reputation,” he says. My face flushes so many tones of red that I cover it with my hands.
“Did you really think I didn’t want to sleep with you?” he asks, and I just shrug, hands still on my face. “Resisting you was close to impossible, Olivia.”
With that, I look at him again. “Seriously?” I ask.
“Dead serious,” he says. “That and I guess subconsciously I didn’t want to use you for sex either. I’m interested in you, Olivia. Not catfishing you, but dating you. I hope I’ve made that obvious.”
“I feel the same,” I say. “Wow.”
But then I realize there is something else I need to tell him. Because even if we just cleared the air and both basically admitted that we are smitten with each other, he still doesn’t know about the podcast.
“Luca,” I start to say. “There’s something else.”
“Okay,” he says softly.
“My podcast is called Unmatched. It basically is an attempt to dismantle the digital dating world,” I say.
“An ambitious goal. But go on…”
“We’ve done all kinds of series, from red flags to filters to ghosts. You name it. And our most recent series is about–”
“I know,” he says, and I stop dead.
“You do?” I ask.
“People talk,” he says. “That and I’ve listened to it.”
“And you’re not angry?” I ask.
“Why would I be?”
Oh, I don’t know, maybe because we are roasting you on the daily?
Luca takes my hands in his from across the console. “Olivia. I don’t care. I don’t care because at the end of the day…I’ve learned that chemistry and connection and even spontaneity have a place in the dating world. And you’ve learned that one right swipe can change your life.”
“I guess that’s true,” I say as my shoulders soften.
“So let’s move on,” he says. Then he leans in and kisses me. And even though things are still complicated, I let it all fade away. At least for now.