I had this whale of a client who constantly paid top dollar to commission my hand-knit scarves. Until this time, when he tipped me an extra three thousand bucks. "Make this one special. She's my favorite." The day after I shipped it out. My gorgeous, brooding, and totally broke boyfriend silently handed me a scarf. I stared at it. "...You knitted this?" He pressed his lips together. "Yeah. Do you like it?" I smiled so hard my teeth ground together. "I love it. Tell you what, why don't you knit me one every single week?" I gripped the soft fabric of the scarf, gasping in feigned amazement: "These stitches, the cast-off edge... it's incredible. Silas, you really put so much heart into this!" The more I praised him, the tighter I gripped the scarf. I was squeezing it so hard it was almost losing its shape. His slightly long bangs half-covered his dark eyes. The corners of his thin lips curled up slightly, looking a bit shy. "I'm glad you like it." I asked, dripping with concern: "It must have taken you forever, right? It's so detailed. For a beginner, this is honestly amazing." I stared intently at Silas's face. He paused for a fraction of a second, barely noticeable, and gave a soft "Mhm." His voice was cool and clear. "It was a little difficult, but if you like it, it was worth it." I clenched my fists, threw myself into his arms, and laughed. "I love it to death. Tell you what, why don't you knit me one every single week?" The air in the room froze for a long moment. He agreed. "Okay." A few seconds passed. He asked, "Are you... trembling?" Oh, I was trembling alright. Trembling with sheer, unadulterated rage. My smile grew increasingly stiff and twisted. I forced a choked sob into my voice. "I'm just so happy. This is the first time anyone has ever hand-knitted something just for me. I feel so lucky... so incredibly lucky..." By the end of my speech, I was practically grinding my teeth to dust. My eyes were red from the sheer anger. Silas awkwardly patted my back. "If you like them, I'll just keep making them for you." After Silas dropped me off at my dorm. I got a new notification on eBay. Z: [Knit me one every week. Can you do it?] I typed back: [Five thousand bucks a pop.] Honestly, the prices I usually listed for my custom scarves ranged from a hundred to a few hundred bucks. I'd occasionally get clients, and the transactions were usually pretty smooth. Until this client named "Z" found my page. I was in the middle of explaining the different knitting patterns and how the material costs varied, when he just randomly Venmo'd me a thousand bucks: [Just use the best of everything.] One look and I knew he was an ignorant rich guy with more money than sense! If I didn't take his money, I'd be an idiot. After that, he became a regular. I even set up a private, thousand-dollar listing specifically for him to buy. Every time he paid, I shipped it to the address he left on his profile. It was in the same city as me. Unsurprisingly, it was in the most notoriously expensive, gated mansion community in the state. But I never, in my wildest dreams, imagined that he could be my sweet, beautiful, desperately poor, brooding boyfriend. The moment I sent the five-thousand-dollar quote. Z: [?] Me: [I've got a lot of commissions lately. Demand is high, so the price went up.] The other side stayed quiet for a long time. Just as I was debating whether I should unsend the message, he bought five quantities of my thousand-dollar listing. I let out a cold laugh. I immediately went on Amazon, bought a bunch of fifty-dollar scarves, had them shipped to my dorm with Prime delivery, and then planned to repackage and ship them to his address. Whatever, I was the one receiving these scarves in the end anyway. After placing the order, I opened iMessage. The only pinned chat at the top of my screen had a new message: [At work. Thinking of you.] I frowned. I immediately hit the FaceTime button. It rang for a long time, no one answered, and it automatically disconnected. Twenty minutes later, Silas texted: [My manager yelled at me for being on my phone. What's up?] I replied: [Nothing, just thinking of you too.] But during those twenty minutes, I had already hopped on my bike and ridden down to the small diner where he supposedly worked. I walked in and asked the owner, "Hey Sarah, about that student I referred to you earlier—" Before I could even finish my sentence, the owner cut me off, her eyes wide with anger. "Don't even get me started, Chloe. I only agreed to hire your friend because you were such a hard worker when you were here!" "Who knew he would get into a screaming match with a customer on his very first day!" "He was wearing some fancy watch on his wrist—a Patek Philippe or something? A customer saw it, joked around, and asked him to take it off so he could look at it. And your friend actually snapped back, 'It's broken, and if you drop it, you couldn't afford to replace it!'" "Who knows if it was real or fake? If it's fake, why couldn't the guy look at it? And if it was real..." The owner clutched her chest in frustration. "Why the hell did you send his royal highness to work in a diner?! I think you were just trying to mess with me!" My body went cold. My voice trembled slightly. "Is he... is he still here?" "He quit on his first day!" the owner scoffed loudly. "Turned my diner completely upside down and didn't even ask for his day's pay." I stood frozen in the middle of the diner. I didn't know what to say. The night wind carried a sharp chill. It blew through my thin jacket, making me shiver violently. The owner waved her hand at me, her face full of disgust. "Just get out of here. I bet you two just did this to piss me off. Chloe, ask your conscience, did I ever treat you badly when you worked here? Unbelievable!" "I'm so sorry..." I mumbled awkwardly. On the bike ride back to campus. I scrolled through my text history with Silas. I knew he was poor. I knew he skipped meals to save money. So whenever I made a little extra cash from my scarves, I'd Venmo him a few bucks every couple of days. It wasn't a lot, maybe twenty or thirty dollars at a time. But that was money I scraped together from my own meager living expenses, after putting every other cent toward paying off my family's debts. When my deadbeat dad died, he left behind a mountain of loans. My mom and I busted our asses every single day just to make the monthly payments. I honestly thought Silas and I were two pathetic, freezing souls huddling together for warmth in a cruel world. Who knew I was just a toy in his little poverty-simulation game. And he was a CHEATER!!! All those other scarves I knitted for him before... they were all given to other people. As his "absolute favorite," was I supposed to feel honored? But after the violent wave of rage passed, an icy calm washed over me. After some deep, strategic thinking, I decided this wasn't the right time to expose him. After all, I was currently scamming five thousand dollars a week out of him. And I didn't even have to knit the scarves myself. If Silas really just had a sick fetish for pretending to be poor and playing poverty-romance games, and I popped his bubble, he might get embarrassed, the novelty would wear off, and I wouldn't get another dime! While he was still entertained, I needed to milk him for all he was worth. However. Was there a way to make his life miserable without actually breaking up with him? I racked my brain. Three days later. I called Silas. "Want to go on a date tomorrow?" He agreed immediately. "Sure." My tone was sickly sweet. "Did you finish knitting my scarf? It's been a few days, right? We haven't seen each other because you've been so focused on knitting my scarf, haven't you?" Silas paused for a second. "Yeah." "Great. See you tomorrow." The exact second I hung up the phone. I got an eBay notification. Z: [Are they done?] I glanced at my dorm desk. Sitting right there were the cheap scarves I had just picked up from the Amazon locker that afternoon. I left him on read. Z: [Expedite this.] [Can you deliver it tonight? Your shipping is always super fast, we must be in the same city.] Me: [That's a little difficult.] He Venmo'd me five thousand dollars. Me: [...Fine.] [Same address as usual?] Z: [Yes.] He Venmo'd me another hundred bucks: [For the Uber. You can drop it off yourself or hire a courier, I don't care.] I picked up the Amazon scarf and inspected it. Honestly, the machine-knit quality was a little cleaner than my hand-knit stuff. Then I opened the Uber app to look for a package delivery driver. It was the middle of the night. My campus was miles away from his gated community, on the complete opposite side of the city. The app quoted me forty bucks. I gritted my teeth and hit request. No one accepted. I bumped the tip up to sixty bucks, waited another half hour, and still, no drivers took the bait. Bumping it higher would just be bad business. I threw on a baseball cap, dark sunglasses, and a surgical mask. I shoved the scarf into a fancy gift box and snuck out of my dorm. The gated community was massive. Even though the security guard had been expecting me and gave me directions, I still drove in circles for twenty minutes before I finally found the right mansion. I messaged Z on eBay: [I'm here. At the front door.] I pulled my cap down lower, adjusted my sunglasses, and pinched the wire on my mask. Before leaving my dorm, I had even borrowed my roommate's perfume and sprayed a cloud over myself. I really didn't want him to recognize me. But as I stood on his doorstep, my mind started racing. What if he did recognize me? What kind of chaotic, disastrous scene would that be? But very quickly, reality slapped me in the face. I was overthinking. A girl wearing a designer trench coat and carrying a Prada bag walked right past me. She expertly punched a code into the electronic keypad on the front door. The heavy mahogany doors swung open. A blast of heated air hit my face, carrying the heavy bass of thumping rock music. I could see a crowd of people inside. It was wild. They were throwing a massive house party. The girl turned her head and glanced at me. Her eyes dropped to the gift box in my hands. "Delivery? Who bought it? Silas? What's inside?" She curiously tapped the box, but didn't dare open it herself. I didn't answer. I was too busy staring at the scarf wrapped around her neck. She rolled her eyes, bored. "Whatever. Want me to take it inside for you?" Right at that moment. A lazy, deep voice echoed from the foyer. "Why are you standing out there? It's freezing." The girl and I turned our heads at the same time. Silas was leaning casually against the doorframe. His slightly long bangs were pushed back, revealing a pair of sharp, untamed, arrogant eyes. The quiet, brooding, poor boy act was completely gone. His gaze briefly flickered from the girl to the gift box in my hands. "I ordered that. Bring it in for me." The girl let out a small "Oh" and took the box from my hands. The warm, golden light from the mansion spilled out onto the porch. Silas stood up straight, about to close the door. He casually swept his eyes over me one last time, but his gaze suddenly locked onto my sunglasses. In that single, frozen second, my heart slammed against my ribs. I had rushed out of the dorm so fast I forgot to take them off. These were the exact sunglasses Silas and I had won at a carnival game a few months ago. He raised an eyebrow, his thin lips parting slightly. "You're the seller?" I nodded stiffly. He let out a mocking scoff, offering a casual critique: "Wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night? Take the money I just paid you and buy yourself some designer frames." I stood frozen. After dropping that line, Silas smoothly turned around and slammed the massive door shut. Cutting off the music, the heat, and the party inside. I slowly trudged back to the streetlight, pulled off the sunglasses, and rubbed the plastic frames. The cheap plastic was fading, the color chipping off unevenly. It looked incredibly weird. When we won them at the carnival, I was so excited. I thought they looked edgy and cool. I put them on and smiled brightly at Silas, asking, "How do I look?" His ears had turned bright red, and he gave a small nod. "You look beautiful." Because he said that, I cherished these cheap plastic sunglasses. Why did they suddenly look— So tragically pathetic and hilarious? The next morning, I walked out of my dorm building. As I approached the campus dumpsters, my hand reaching into my bag, I locked eyes with Silas. When he saw me, the corners of his mouth immediately curved upward into a sweet smile. My hand froze inside my bag. I had forgotten to throw the sunglasses away last night. I was planning to toss them in the dumpster this morning. Silas walked over and gently wrapped a scarf around my neck. The exact same Amazon scarf I had bought. "Do you like it?" he asked softly. I forced a radiant smile, pulling my empty hand out of my bag. "The stitching is flawless. I absolutely love it." His thin lips curled into an imperceptible, satisfied smirk. "I'm glad you like it." I let him take my hand. I couldn't even be bothered to interrogate him about his "knitting process" or his "diner shifts" anymore. He wouldn't feel guilty; he'd just calmly and confidently invent another lie. Silas and I went to the amusement park. Right as we lined up for the first roller coaster, we bumped into a slender, very familiar silhouette. It was the girl from last night. She was wearing her designer trench coat, carrying her Prada bag. She was staring intently in our direction. I instinctively glanced at Silas. He locked eyes with the girl and gave a barely noticeable raise of his eyebrow. The girl immediately plastered a bright smile on her face and sauntered over to us. "Silas! Is this your girlfriend?" He gave a noncommittal "Mhm." I looked at him, my expression perfectly normal. "A friend of yours?" Silas stared at the girl for a few seconds, interlacing his fingers with mine. "Not really." "Hey." She pouted. "Don't act like you don't know me." She tapped her chin, pretending to think. "Hmm... Silas's family is super poor, right? So back in high school, I hired him to tutor me. I guess you could call me his former employer." As she said this, she looked at Silas, her eyes dancing with amusement. Silas's eyelids lazily drooped. "Employer?" "Yeah. Shouldn't you show a little more respect to the person who used to sign your paychecks? Poor. Boy." The girl smiled brilliantly. If I didn't already know the truth, I probably would have felt terrible for Silas right now. Having to swallow his pride and get mocked by his arrogant former boss. But hearing it now? I just wanted to laugh in their faces. Were they seriously flirting right in front of me? "What rides are you guys hitting? Let me tag along." The girl pulled out her phone and waved it at Silas. "I actually need someone to keep me company. I'll pay you five hundred bucks to hang out with me today. Pretty sweet deal, right?" Silas's face instantly went cold. He glared at her. "Stop interrupting my date with my girlfriend." The girl looked at me. "Five hundred bucks. You're not going to let your boyfriend make some easy money?" "Do you want to make some easy money?" I asked Silas. Silas paused for exactly two seconds. "Sure." I fell silent. I didn't say another word. Silas rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand, lowering his voice. "I'll Venmo you the money later." I just smiled. Before we got on the drop tower, the attendant reminded us to take off loose items, including scarves.
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