Chapter 3My Cousin Stole My Face to Date a Professor

Back in the living room, I had an unread message from Tessa.

“So what is the deal with Liam?”

My thumbs flew across the screen as I recounted my tactical victory.

“Pretty brilliant, right? I’ve got him completely under my thumb now.”

“I bet my cousin is done with online dating for good.”

But Tessa, as always, had a different takeaway. She replied with a single skull emoji.

“Liam can pull a boyfriend and you can’t. The irony.”

“…” Okay, she had a point.

Tessa and I were polar opposites. If our lives had a year-in-review summary, it would look something like this:

Start of the year: Tessa is dating Mark. I’m single.

Mid-year: Tessa is dating David. I’m single.

End of the year: Tessa got back together with Mark. I’m still single.

Tessa was a magnet for romance.

I, on the other hand, was apparently romantic repellent.

In the beginning, watching Tessa post about her blissful love life made my own heart ache with a distant sort of longing. I’d tried going on a few dates, but nothing ever clicked.

So, I remained single all the way through grad school.

I was pretty sure the butterflies in my stomach had long since died of old age.

Today’s phone call was the first time in years I’d felt even a flicker of life from them.

But let’s be real. Anyone who could be fooled by my cousin’s pathetic acting was probably some naive kid who didn’t know any better.

A rich, underage boy with a nice voice.

Over the next few days, I forced Liam to break up with the guy and uninstall his game.

After he did, I quietly downloaded Realm Clash onto my own phone.

If my cousin could find a guy using my pictures, then I, the actual person in those pictures, should be able to, right?

As it turned out, the only person I played with for the rest of the break was Tessa.

She was barely better than me, yet she spent every day patiently dragging my sorry ass through ranked matches. I was completely clueless, so she taught me to play a tank character named Gideon the Protector and gave me two simple rules.

“One: tap whatever button lights up. Two: see an enemy, charge.”

So there I was, a woman in her mid-twenties, running around the map as a grizzled old knight, charging headfirst into anyone I saw and mashing my screen randomly.

By the time the holiday break ended, not only had I failed to find an online boyfriend, I hadn’t even heard another guy’s voice. In fact, I’d managed to drag Tessa’s rank all the way down to Gold with me.

Tessa sent me a screenshot of her demotion. “I can’t rank up anymore. Can I use your pictures to find a new gaming boyfriend?”

I sent her back a single sticker: a block button with the word “PERISH” written on it.