Play Me

All I wanted was to make my family happy and fend off their nagging and questions. So, while I still continued to lead a life as a raging workaholic in New York with close to no social life, I invented a boyfriend.

To my family, I fed stories about a heroic, charming and loving boyfriend … and this lie continued for two years. I constantly came up with excuses to not introduce him till my family put their foot down. They demanded to meet this new “love of my life” or else …

I should never have lied in the first place, but now I had no option but to come up with a plan. Dizzy with desperation, I asked the first guy I saw.

Damien went to the same gym as I did and even though we had never spoken to each other before, I invited him for an all-expense paid trip to Napa Valley to pretend to be my boyfriend.

Shockingly, he agreed, and now I wondered if this, too, was another one of my failed plans.

How am I going to get out of this without hurting my family? I invited a complete stranger to our home, and now it seems like he is out to prove himself to be the perfect boyfriend.