I Agreed to Be Her Fake Boyfriend for One Night and Now She’s My Wife

I pretended to be someone’s boyfriend for one night and now we’re married. I was sitting at a bar downtown on a Friday night, minding my own business and nursing a beer, when a woman I’d never seen before walked up to me, grabbed my face, and kissed me.

Not a peck, a full kiss that lasted 3 seconds and tasted like wine. In desperation, she pulled back her hands, still on my shoulders, and looked me directly in the eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, “but I need you to play along, please.”

Before I could ask what the hell was happening, she turned around and smiled at a couple who’d just walked up behind her.

“Mom, Dad, this is my boyfriend, the one I’ve been telling you about.”

Her mother was a stern-looking woman in a blazer who looked me up and down like she was calculating my net worth. Her father was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing an expression that said he was ready to interrogate me about my intentions.

I should have said something. I should have told them this was clearly a mistake, that I’d never met their daughter before, and that I was just a random guy at a bar who’d been ambushed by a kiss.

Instead, I heard myself say: “Nice to finally meet you both. She’s told me so much about you.”

The woman’s grip on my shoulder tightened in what I assumed was gratitude.

“Interesting. She hasn’t told us anything about you. Not your name, not what you do, not how you met. Nothing.” Her mother’s expression didn’t change.

“That’s because I wanted it to be a surprise.” The woman said quickly.

“I knew you’d be in town this week, and I wanted you to meet him in person rather than just hearing about him over the phone.”

“And your name is?” Her father crossed his arms.

I looked at the woman. She looked back at me with eyes that were equal parts pleading and panicked.

We hadn’t discussed a single detail of this fake relationship, and now I was supposed to have a name that matched whatever story she’d invented.

“Andrew,” I said, picking the first name that came to mind, “Andrew Fletcher.”

“And what do you do, Andrew?” her mother asked.

“I’m in software development. Web applications, mostly.”

That part was actually true. The woman seemed to relax slightly.

“How did you two meet?” her father asked.

The woman jumped in before I could answer.

“At a coffee shop 3 months ago. I spilled my latte all over his laptop and felt terrible, so I insisted on buying him a new drink.”

“We got to talking, and…” she trailed off, looking at me to finish.

“And I asked for her number before she could leave,” I continued. “Best coffee shop accident of my life.”

Her mother’s expression softened slightly, which I took as a good sign. Her father still looked skeptical.

“3 months,” he said. “That’s not very long.”

“Long enough to know she’s special,” I said.

The woman squeezed my shoulder again. We were improvising a relationship in real time and somehow not completely failing.

“We have dinner reservations in 20 minutes. I assume you’ll be joining us, Andrew?” Her mother checked her watch.

My beer was still half full on the bar behind me. I’d been planning to finish it, go home, and watch basketball.

Now I was apparently going to dinner with strangers while pretending to date someone whose name I didn’t even know.