She offered me a thousand dollars to be her fiancé for three months. I thought it was a prank. Her name was Renee, and she was the kind of woman in the office who made managers forget they had wives. I was Alan, the new guy who only spoke to people about code. We were from different worlds. But then she explained, her voice a low, urgent hum in the quiet of the supply closet. Her hated cousin’s wedding was in ninety days, and she needed someone tall, presentable, and—most importantly—fake, so her family would finally get off her back.
What she conveniently forgot to mention was that the cousin was Sasha. My Sasha. The ex who had detonated my life and left me for my best friend, Kian.
We drew up a contract right there on my laptop, the glow of the screen illuminating the absurdity of it all. Rule #1: No kissing. Rule #2: Handholding only when absolutely necessary for the performance. Rule #3: A clean break one week after the wedding. Rule #4: We’d split any cash gifts 60/40. It was a business transaction, clean and simple.
She made me practice my “boyfriend voice,” fixing my collar and telling me I sounded like I was reading a hostage note. I had to rehearse calling her “babe” without my skin crawling. Our cover story—a chance meeting at a coffee shop—had to be bulletproof. She prepped me like a spy going deep undercover. “Dad likes football. Mom will judge your shoes. Don’t mess this up.”
The first family dinner was a trial by fire. I said we met at a conference while she said a coffee shop. Her mother’s eyebrow lifted a fraction of a millimeter, a movement so subtle it was terrifying. But her dad just laughed. “Can’t keep your stories straight,” he boomed. “Must be true love.” They grilled me for hours. By the end of the night, they believed I was a software developer who owned a successful ranch back in Canada. On the way out, Renee gave me a theatrical kiss on the cheek. It felt like nothing.
But two weeks in, the lines started to blur. At work, we were strangers. Separate lunches, minimal eye contact. But then she started leaving coffee on my desk—an oat milk latte, extra shot. Exactly how I like it. I’d never told her that. The sticky note just said, “For the performance tonight.”
The family dinners, once a source of pure dread, started to feel… comfortable. The handholding felt less like a business handshake. Her dad and I actually talked football. Her mom, after deciding my shoes were acceptable, started sharing family recipes. And Renee would watch me, a strange, unreadable expression on her face.
Family game night was the turning point. We annihilated her siblings at charades, a seamless, unspoken partnership. Afterward, her dad pulled me aside, a glass of whiskey in his hand. “I’ve never seen her this comfortable with anyone,” he said, his voice low and sincere. “You’re good for her, son.”
In the car on the way home, Renee was uncharacteristically quiet. “Sorry,” she said suddenly, staring out at the passing streetlights.
“For what?”
“Just… all of this. Everything I’m putting you through.” I thought she meant the charade. Looking back, I realize she was apologizing for the bomb that was about to go off.
Our late-night texts evolved from logistical planning—Dinner at 7, blue shirt—to something more. You did good tonight. Then, random thoughts at 2 a.m. You awake? She’d bring up my ex, carefully, prodding at the wound. “Seriously, who cheats on a guy like you?” she’d type, the question a little too sharp.
“Some people make mistakes,” I’d mumble back, and she’d go silent, a ghost in the machine.
One night, working late at the office, the pretense finally cracked. “This is getting complicated,” I said, the words hanging in the air between our desks.
“It’s just method acting,” she insisted, but her hands were trembling.
“Renee, you brought me homemade soup when I was sick last week. That wasn’t for your family.”
“So what if I care?” she shot back, her voice tight with a frustration that felt achingly real.
“We need to stick to the contract,” I said, my own voice weak.
The cake tasting broke us both. She started sobbing over the difference between chocolate and vanilla, a complete, hysterical breakdown. I held her in the parking lot while she ugly-cried into my shirt, her words muffled and desperate. “I’m so sorry, Alan. I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I soothed, stroking her hair.
“Yes, it is,” she whispered, a confession I wouldn’t understand until it was too late.
“Pretending to care about you is killing me,” I finally admitted one night, the truth a raw nerve.
She looked at me, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Alan, there’s something…” She stopped, unable to say the words. “After the wedding,” she promised. “We’ll talk after the wedding.”
The rehearsal dinner was the first time I was supposed to meet the happy couple. I walked in with Renee’s hand in mine, feeling a confidence that wasn’t entirely feigned. I was ready to charm great-aunts and distant cousins. And then I saw her.
Sasha. My Sasha. Standing there in a pearly white dress, a champagne flute frozen halfway to her lips. Her eyes locked on mine, and the entire world screeched to a halt. Then, the universe delivered its final, brutal punch. Kian stepped out from behind her, my ex-best friend, wearing a matching pearl white tie.
The three of us were statues in a sea of oblivious, cocktail-sipping relatives. I felt Renee go rigid beside me. I turned to look at her, and in her wide, terrified eyes, I saw it all. This was what she had been apologizing for. This was the lie she couldn’t bring herself to tell.
Sasha started storming toward us, her face a mask of fury. “I can’t do this,” I heard myself say. I turned to Renee, whose own face was crumbling. “Please,” she begged, her voice breaking. But I was already walking away, leaving her standing alone, her hand still reaching for where mine had been.
She followed me to the parking lot. “Please, just get through dinner. You knew she’d be here.”
“I didn’t know about Kian,” I bit back, the betrayal a fresh, gaping wound. “But you knew about Sasha. You knew this whole time.”
It wasn’t a question. She couldn’t deny it. I got in my car and drove, ignoring the 72 texts and 21 missed calls that followed.
At 4 a.m., she was at my door, a wreck. “The wedding’s in ten hours,” she sobbed, her body shaking so hard her teeth chattered. She looked like she’d slept in her car. I pulled her inside, away from the prying eyes of my neighbors.
She collapsed on my couch, showing me old photos on her phone. Two little girls in matching sweaters. Sasha and Renee. In every picture, Sasha was the star, the homecoming queen, the one surrounded by family, while Renee lingered in the background, a shadow.
“She always got everything first,” Renee whispered, her voice raw. “Better grades, the lead in the play, the promotion I was promised. When she announced her engagement, my own mother turned to me and asked why I couldn’t be more like her.”
The pieces clicked into place with sickening clarity. She had known exactly who Sasha was when she hired me. She had orchestrated this entire nightmare. I went to the kitchen, my hands shaking with a cold fury, and started making coffee. Two scoops. Water to the four-cup line. I reached for the oat milk. Her coffee. Not mine.
She followed me, showing me dozens of unsent draft messages, all written in the dead of night, all attempts to tell me the truth. But every time I mentioned my ex, my face would change, and she couldn’t bear to be the one to cause that pain again.
“You knew!” I slammed the mug on the counter, coffee splashing everywhere. “You knew I’d walk into that room and see them together! You knew what that would do to me!”
She slid to the floor, her body wracked with sobs. “I fell for you,” she cried. “I fell for you, and I was a coward, and I ruined everything.”
My phone buzzed. It was a voice message from her little nephew, Nathan. “Where’s Uncle Alan? Why is Aunt Renee so sad?” The sound of his small, worried voice broke something inside me. These people, this fake family, had become real.
We sat on my kitchen floor as the sun began to rise. She laid out the options. Option One: I come to the wedding, we stick to the contract, and she pays me extra for my silence. Option Two: I stay home, she tells everyone we broke up, and we never see each other again.
“What’s Option Three?” I asked, not knowing why.
She went still. “We go to this wedding together,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Not as fakes. As us. Whatever that is. And we face this mess as real people.”
I drove to the venue and parked across the street, watching the guests arrive. I saw Sasha in her perfect dress, laughing. It didn’t hurt. It felt distant, like watching a movie about someone else’s life. Then I saw little Nathan, clutching the stuffed dinosaur I’d given him, his small face scanning the crowd for me. That’s when it hit me. That’s why I was here.
I walked in just as the ceremony was starting. Renee’s eyes went wide as I slid into the seat beside her. I took her hand, not for show, but because I needed to. She squeezed back so hard my knuckles cracked. During the vows, as Kian promised to be faithful, she leaned over. “We can leave,” she whispered.
“No,” I whispered back. “We’re seeing this through.”
At the reception, the bouquet toss became a declaration of war. Sasha locked eyes with Renee and threw the flowers like a weapon. Renee caught them out of pure reflex. “Maybe you’ll be next,” Sasha sneered, loud enough for everyone to hear, “if you can find someone real.”
Something snapped. Before I could stop her, Renee had a microphone in her hand. “I’d like to make a toast,” she announced, her voice ringing through the silent ballroom. “To my cousin Sasha, who always gets what she wants. Whether it’s a promotion… or even other people’s boyfriends.”
Gasps rippled through the crowd. “But I want to thank her,” Renee continued, her eyes finding mine. “Because her choices led her to him… and they led me to Alan. And I have to confess, I spent three months pretending to love this man for money, only to discover that what we have is more real than anything built on lies.”
The room erupted. Sasha screamed and threw her bouquet at Renee’s head. Renee caught it and threw it right back. “You ruined my life first!” she yelled.
I took the microphone. “She’s right,” I said, my voice clear and steady. “It started as a lie. But watching her with her family, seeing her kindness and her strength… I fell for her for real.” I looked at Sasha and Kian. “So thank you. Both of you. You led me to someone who actually fights for me.”
Security escorted us out into the cool night air. We sat on the hood of my car, watching the chaos unfold through the ballroom windows.
“Are we still breaking up in a week?” Renee asked, her voice small.
The next day, a video of our “toast” went viral. We were famous. Renee was fired. We sat in my apartment, the architects of our own beautiful disaster, and finally talked.
“When did it stop being fake for you?” I asked.
“The night you did dinosaur voices for Nathan,” she confessed. “You didn’t know I was watching. There was no one to perform for.”
The day after that, we met for coffee. Sasha stormed in, fresh from her honeymoon, ranting about how we’d ruined her life. Her marriage, it turned out, was already imploding.
“Do you really love her?” she demanded, turning to me. “Or is this all just revenge?”
“I love her,” I said, and the truth of it settled in my bones. “Not for revenge. But because she brought me soup when I was sick and memorized how I take my coffee and fought for me when I walked away.”
After Sasha left, Renee looked at me, her eyes wide. “I have to tell you something,” she said, her voice trembling. “There is no thousand dollars. I spent all my savings on the suit I bought you and all those family dinners. I’m completely broke.”
I started to laugh. A deep, genuine laugh. I pulled out my phone and deleted the contract file. “Good thing I wasn’t in it for the money,” I said. I showed her my Amazon history, filled with dinosaur toys for Nathan. I showed her the hidden notebook where I’d written down all her favorite things.
Our story, born from a lie, became our truth. We moved to Seattle. We built a life, not on a contract, but on promises whispered in the quiet of our new home. Six months after the wedding, standing in the middle of Pike Place Market, she asked me to marry her. I pulled out the ring I’d been carrying for three weeks.
It turned out our fake scaffolding had held up a very real love, stronger and more resilient than we could have ever pretended.