My Cousin Stole My Face to Date a Professor

My cousin used my photos to catfish someone online, posting my selfies to his feed every day. I finally slid into his DMs. “Are you ever going to stop?” “Liv, come on, just a little longer. I’m one rank away from Grandmaster. I’ll break up with him after I get it, I promise.” Later, my cousin and his online boyfriend broke up. And the professor from the department next door requested, by name, that I come to his office. 1 Lately, my high-school-aged cousin, Liam, has been acting weird. He’s been posting my selfies on his Instagram story with the strangest captions. Like: “Perfect day for a boba.” A few minutes later, another story would go up. A picture of a plastic cup. “Thanks, I love it.” My lips twitched. I messaged him directly with a single question mark. “...Crap. Forgot to hide my story from you.” I continued the interrogation. “Are you using my pictures to catfish someone?” “Liv, he’s an amazing gamer. I just wanted him to help me rank up.” I didn’t push it, but I gave him a warning. “Less gaming, more studying. And don’t you dare scam him for money, or I’m telling your dad.” He went quiet for about a week, then his feed lit up again. It was one of my selfies, bizarrely paired with a picture of a massive LEGO set. The caption: “My birthday’s coming up, and I really want this…” …Unbelievable. He was officially a scammer now. I shot him another message. “Are you ever going to stop?” “Liv, come on, just a little longer. I’m one rank away from Grandmaster. I’ll break up with him after I get it, I promise.” I wanted to drive to his house and punch him. “Ranking up is one thing, but don’t ruin my reputation. If you want the LEGO set that badly, I’ll buy it for you.” Half an hour passed before he replied. “Don’t worry about it, Liv. I already got it.” “What?” I immediately Venmoed him the cash. “Give him his money back and end this. Now.” Liam accepted the payment, replying with a reluctant, “Fine.” I still didn’t trust him, so I called and gave him a piece of my mind. He apologized profusely and promised he’d change his ways. I’m in my final year of my Master’s program, and with the holidays approaching, I was swamped. I didn’t have time to keep tabs on Liam. And his social media went completely silent. 2 The Christmas holiday arrived right on schedule. I was curled up on the sofa, peeling a tangerine, when my best friend, Tessa, sent me a screenshot. “Your cousin has some serious game.” I opened it. Liam’s Instagram was still a shrine to my face, updated daily. He had already used up the handful of photos I’d posted of myself. Not ready to give up, he’d somehow unearthed my high school senior portrait and posted it with a ridiculously sentimental caption: “Look how much I’ve changed.” So when he said he’d “change his ways,” he meant changing his privacy settings to hide his stories from me. I shot up from the sofa and stormed into the guest room, grabbing Liam by the ear. “You’re still stealing my pictures? Do you have a death wish?” “Ow, ow, ow!” he yelped, clutching his ear dramatically. “Liv, perfect timing! He wants to FaceTime. Can you just take the call for me? Please? I’ll give you all my Christmas money.” “In your dreams. You’re telling him the truth right now.” “Liv, it’s Christmas! You want him to find out he’s been scammed by a dude on a holiday? How cruel is that?” I landed a solid punch on his arm. “And you only realize you’re being cruel now?” “Just a few more days, that’s all I need to get my rank. Then I’ll tell him I need to focus on school and break up with him.” He held up three fingers. “I swear, this is the last time.” After an endless barrage of whining and begging, I finally, reluctantly, took the phone. “Livvy? Merry Christmas.” The voice on the other end was a low, smooth baritone that sent an unexpected jolt straight through me. This voice, designed for late-night fantasies, was making a heart I thought long-dormant stir with a faint, dangerous flutter. “Hi…” I started, then realized my voice had climbed a few octaves higher than normal. I cleared my throat, trying to sound as neutral as possible. “Hi. Merry Christmas to you, too.” “So, Livvy, what do you want for Christmas?” Hearing this, Liam sat bolt upright, grabbed his iPad, and swiped frantically until a picture of a new Nintendo Switch filled the screen. He pointed at it, his eyes wide, making absurd pleading faces at me. I gave him a calm, measured nod. Got it. Then I turned back to the phone. “For the new year, I want a complete set of SAT prep books.” Liam’s eyes widened in horror. In their reflection, I could see his heart shattering into a million tiny pieces. Nice try, you little con artist. “Hmm? Why that?” the voice on the phone asked, a note of amusement in it. “Because my SATs are coming up,” I said smoothly. “I need to focus on studying, so I won’t be able to play games with you anymore.” “I see. Well, you definitely shouldn’t be gaming, then. If you ever run into a problem you can’t solve, you can still ask me.” His voice remained impossibly gentle. “Okay, thank you,” I said politely, ended the call, and shoved the phone back into my stunned cousin’s hands. “I’ll be checking your progress on those workbooks every month. And you’re transferring the money for them back to him—consider it your own educational expense. If you don’t, I’m telling your dad. Merry Christmas, little bro.” I made my grand exit, leaving Liam standing there, on the verge of tears. 3 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. 4 It was the first day back on campus. My advisor called me out of the blue. “Olivia, Professor Hayes from the physics department needs to see you about something urgent. You should go to his office now.” I hung up, completely baffled. Ethan Hayes. The youngest, and by far the most attractive, professor in the entire physics department. A candid photo of him, teaching in a crisp white shirt and gold-rimmed glasses, had gone viral on TikTok, easily racking up hundreds of thousands of likes. Someone of Professor Hayes’s stature… even if he needed an errand run, why would he ask for me? With a knot of nerves in my stomach, I knocked on his office door. I’d barely tapped the wood when the door swung open. The first thing I saw was a perfectly tailored white shirt that hinted at the kind of lean, athletic build that a well-tailored shirt can’t quite hide. My eyes drifted up. The top few buttons were undone, revealing a pair of elegant collarbones and the subtle curve of his throat. When I finally lifted my gaze to his face, I found myself locked in a pair of deep, dark eyes. “Professor Hayes, you wanted to see me,” I said, my voice steady despite the frantic colony of prairie dogs screaming in my chest. “Yes. Come in.” He stepped aside. As I walked past him into the office, a faint, clean scent of sandalwood drifted by, nearly making me lose my footing. Before I could even find a place to stand, he spoke. “Why did you break up with me?” I froze, turned, and scanned the empty room. No one else was there. I glanced at his ears. No earbuds. “Sorry?” I asked, my face a mask of confusion. He looked down at me, his gaze intense. “You said if I bought you the Switch, you wouldn’t break up with me.” …I felt myself turn to stone. “The… the Switch?” “Yes.” He gave a slight nod. “If there’s something else you want, I can get it for you. As long as you don’t end things.” “Professor, I think you might have the wrong person,” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. Even though the clue of the gaming console was screamingly obvious, I refused to believe it. My image of the brilliant, untouchable Professor Hayes couldn’t possibly include getting catfished online. Ethan stared at me for a second, then held out his phone, its screen lit up. “I don’t think so.” His lock screen was a picture of me. Me, curled up on a sofa, happily sipping a strawberry macchiato boba. …That was the boba my cousin brought over the day he came to visit. I remembered it now. He hadn’t started his photo-stealing campaign yet, so when he asked to take a picture, I didn’t think anything of it. Looking back, that boba was probably bought by Professor Hayes. Seeing me just standing there, stunned into silence, Ethan took a step closer. “Still want to deny it?” His proximity brought back that intoxicating sandalwood scent. I opened my mouth, then closed it. “Professor, you’re not going to believe this, but… I think you’ve been scammed by my sixteen-year-old cousin.” He frowned slightly. “What?” “The person you’ve been chatting and gaming with… that was my cousin, Liam.” “You forget, we spoke on the phone. I remember your voice.” “It was really him,” I insisted, quickly pulling out my own phone. “Look, this is my actual account.” He glanced at my screen. “Whichever account you use, just add me back first.” “Professor…” I tried to explain again, but my phone rang. “Liv, I’ve got the files you wanted. Where are you?” Speak of the devil. I excitedly told Liam my location and ordered him to get here immediately. Ethan, looking completely unruffled, picked up a book and began to read. I couldn’t help but stare. He sat in the leather armchair, one long leg crossed over the other, his clean, elegant fingers tracing the edge of a page. Sunlight streamed through the window, illuminating the angles of his face and making him look impossibly refined and coolly detached. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. How could a man like this, so composed and otherworldly, get catfished? More specifically, how could he get catfished by my sixteen-year-old cousin and be tricked into buying him toys and snacks? Was his awareness of online scams really that low? A ringing phone broke my train of thought. “Liv, which building was it again? I’m lost.” With a sigh, I ran downstairs to get him. It took a while before I saw him waving a folder in the air. “Liv, over here!” “Great.” I grabbed his sleeve and started dragging him toward the building. “Whoa, where are we going? Are you treating me to dinner?” he asked, stumbling along beside me. I gave him a sweet smile. “Nope. I’m taking you to meet your online boyfriend.” His face went pale. He dug his heels in, refusing to move another inch. “Liv, you can’t be serious.” I pushed the office door open. Liam was still plastered against the wall, so I gave him a swift kick in the rear. “Professor Hayes, my cousin is here. Punish him as you see fit. Don’t hold back.” An awkward silence descended upon the room. My cousin, in his school uniform and backpack, looking utterly pathetic, stood face to face with Ethan Hayes, in his white shirt and black trousers, his expression cold and unreadable. Liam glanced at Ethan once, then quickly looked away, guiltily picking at his fingers. “I thought you loved scamming people,” I whispered menacingly. “Go on. Introduce yourself.” Under the pressure of my glare, he finally spoke, his voice cracking. “Hi… I’m your online girlfriend, Sweetest Strawberry.” Ethan sat at his desk, his fingers tapping lightly on the surface. His eyes were impossible to read, but the oppressive aura of a disappointed teacher filled the air. Liam didn’t dare look up. From behind, I could see his shoulders shaking. He was probably crying. I felt a pang of pity, but he totally deserved it. After a long moment, Ethan turned his head to look at me. “Olivia. Your cousin deceived me emotionally. As an adult, don’t you think you should take some responsibility for his actions?” “Yes.” I bowed my head, accepting the blame. “I’m so sorry, Professor Hayes. I’ll reimburse you for all your financial losses.” “That won’t be necessary,” he said, taking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s just… I don’t have anyone to play games with now.” “Huh?” I looked up, confused. “I’m heartbroken by your cousin’s betrayal. Don’t you think you should take responsibility for that?” I glanced at Liam, who was still trying to impersonate an ostrich. My mouth twitched. “My cousin… broke your heart?” Ethan said, with complete seriousness, “Yes. I bought him boba, sent him gifts, played games with him. Even though it was online, I was very serious about it.” “…” Are you really? Because I don’t believe you. But I didn’t dare say it. He raised an eyebrow. “I’m emotionally wounded by your cousin’s deception and I need companionship. Since he has to study for his SATs, I suppose you’ll have to do.” I was speechless. A slow smile spread across his face, his eyes full of meaning. “From now on, I’ll be in your care, Olivia.”

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