I could.
Hazel took a couple of big bites of fried rice before handing me the box. “Rice?” she asked.
I forced myself not to wince. “I’m good with this,” I said, clutching the beef close to my chest. Maybe she wouldn’t call me out if I only ate from the one container.
“What’s the plan for Paul?” she asked, continuing to migrate from box to box as she sat cross-legged on the floor, back pressed against the bottom of the couch.
I chewed my last bite and swallowed before setting down the beef. “Are you familiar with catfishing?”
“Um, considering it’s the twenty-first century and I don’t live under a rock, duh,” she said.
This time when Hazel offered me the box that contained the orange chicken she’d just had a bite of, I took it.
“That’s the plan. We catfish him.”
She clapped her hands. “Like we get to make a fake profile? How fun! I call picking the pictures.”
I chuckled at her eagerness. “It’s a lot more complicated than that. You need to have followers, build a presence. A random account with nothing to it looks suspicious.”
“Um, spoiler alert, Reid. Paul isn’t the smartest person inanyroom. We do not have to put in that much effort.”
Her throwing that dig at her ex made my chest swell. “Even still. Better not to raise any eyebrows.” I set down the box and wiped my hand on a brown napkin that had come in the bag. I took my phone and opened a profile before handing Hazel the phone. She squinted her eyes and scrolled.
“AngelineRox? Who is this?”
“The girl that’s about to slide into Paul’s DMs.”
“This profile is fake? It looks real. There are so many pictures.”
“We’ve used it before. We actually made a few fake accounts for this exact purpose.”
“Who’s the girl?” she asked.
“Somone in the group’s cousin. We got permission to use her likeness. And this account is perfect because she has a few pictures with cats.”
Hazel eyed me, clearly not following. “So…”
“So, we message Paul. Try to be all flirty. If he takes the bait, we can work in that we have a cat and see if he says anything. If he’s as dumb as you say he is, maybe he’ll cave and use a picture of Vermont.”
Her eyes widened. “Shit, that’s kind of genius. Paul would completely fall for something like that. The only problem is that there is, like, a seventy-five-percent chance we get an unsolicited dick pick.”
That made me snort. “Don’t worry, I’ll field any incoming messages.”
“You shouldn’t have to subject yourself to that. Unfortunately for me, I’ve already seen it numerous times, so it won’t be as scarring.”
My jaw ticked. Obviously she had seen her ex-boyfriend naked, but I didn’t like hearing her talk about it.
I took my phone back and hit the “follow” button for Paul’s account. Then I popped over to an app I had for generic stock images and picked a random one of a cat sitting on a sofa that looked like the one from some of her other pictures. I added it to the AngelineRox profile stories, then went back to Paul’s profile and hit “message.”
“Alright. What should our opening line be?” I asked.
“Tell him he looks unreal in his last gym selfie. He eats that shit up.” Hazel rolled her eyes as I typed out the message and sent it. I added a wink emoji for full effect.
“Nice touch,” she said with a smile. “Now what?”
“Now we wait and hope he answers.” Before closing out of the app, I went back to her friend-of-a-friend’s profile. Kiara. “You sure there’s nothing here? I think we at least need to look into this girl.”
Hazel bit her lip. Self-consciousness practically glimmered in her eyes. “I guess I can broach the subject of hanging out again. Or potentially use Zoe as a buffer.” She said it like the idea was the most painful thing she could think of. “If we were in the same room, maybe I could get a read on her.”
