Dating a Broke Billionaire

Whenever I was on a video call with my online boyfriend, I carefully angled the camera, terrified he might see my shabby rental.

One day, the ‘curtain’ behind him slipped, revealing an original Picasso.

I said, “Nice edit. It looks like the real thing.”

He angled the camera and showed my doodle next to the Picasso.

“Yeah, my dad said that this one’s worth the most.”

When the day came for us to finally meet in real life, I lugged two sacks of potatoes, ready to help him out.

The butler, dressed in a sharp suit, opened the door. “Ma’am, Mr. Rigsby has been waiting for you to pick out an engagement ring.”

My knees gave out. “Um… Are these potatoes enough to make a pot of stew?”

My mobile screen read, “Power saving mode.”

The crappy phone was just like me. Our battery life constantly hung on at 1%.

Right there in the center of my screen was Terry Rigsby, my online boyfriend.

His good looks held up well, even on the front-facing camera.

Well, given his setup, it wasn’t surprising. His background was always a blurry thing resembling a curtain.

Terry had this mysterious but broke aesthetics going on.

“What are you doing, Sam?” His voice came through the speaker.

Without thinking, I tilted the phone upward, carefully framing my modestly decent face and the only clean white wall in my tiny rental in the shot.

"Nothing." I cleared my throat, trying to cover up the piercing megaphone blaring "Three for ten bucks! Everything must go!" from the night market downstairs.

“I-I just tidied up my apartment.”

“I see,” Terry responded. He tapped on the screen as if tweaking the angle.

As always, his background was the ever-present ‘curtain’.

“Did you have a rough day at work today?”

“It was alright. Just the same old same old,” I remarked.

My data plan was basically gone, and every kilobyte cost me cold, hard cash.

I minimized the video window and opened my data tracker, muscle memory kicking in.

The screen displayed that I had already used 1.32GB of data.

I nearly blacked out, each inhale feeling like I was breathing in burning money.

“Um…” I took a deep breath, ready to whip out my saving hack for online dating. “Why don’t we move to text? Voice notes are an option too.”

Terry paused. “Sure, you’re the boss, but you don’t have to do this all the time, Sam.”

Well, it was a strict personal rule of mine.

I had to keep the camera angled just right, so I didn’t show even a glimpse of my sad little rental.

Despite the thoughts in my head, I played it cool. “Gee, I just didn’t want you to get sick looking at my face.”

Terry chuckled, not pressing the matter.