Rent a Boyfriend

Chloe: Chapter 1: Match.com on Steroids Chloe CHAPTER 1 MATCH.COM ON STEROIDS
November 26

Almost everyone is nervous introducing their boyfriend to their parents for the first time, but I was about to pee my sweat-soaked undies because, well, I hadn't met him yet either.

Since he already knew my life story (at least the parts that mattered), it was "highly recommended" we not meet before the "assignment" to minimize confusion. Which meant my Uber picked me up from the airport and picked him up a block away from the destination, i.e., my parents' house. Thanks, George, Toyota Camry, for earning your five-star rating by not asking us what the bejesus was going on.

As we waited on my parents' stoop and the doorbell echoed through my feng-shuied three-bedroom, three-bathroom childhood home, I couldn't bring myself to look at him. I was sure he was trained to keep the judgment out of his eyes, especially because I was the hand that was feeding him, but maybe the real problem here was that, between the two of us, he wasn't the one judging me.

My parents flung the door open and exclaimed, "Jing-Jing!" before wrapping me in hugs.

Over my father's shoulder, my gaze flicked to my "boyfriend" instinctively, to try to explain with my eyes that I had two names. But then I remembered I had only given the company (and thus him) my Chinese name, which was usually only heard between the embroidered wall scrolls of this house. My decision to list my legal but seldom-used name had been strategic in nature: to put it eloquently, I knew my parents would lap that shit up. It had to be true love if he was the first person outside our little Chinese community I'd told my real name to, right?

I'd dubbed myself Chloe in second grade after the hundredth joke about Jing-Jing sounding more like a song than a name. On a whim I'd started telling everyone to call me Chloe, after the universally loved golden retriever in my neighborhood. I think I had unconsciously hoped

Gloria Chao is the critically acclaimed author of American Panda, Our Wayward Fate, and Rent a Boyfriend. When she's not writing, you can find her with her husband on the curling ice or hiking the Indiana Dunes. She does not regret putting aside her MIT and dental degrees to write, and she is grateful to spend her days in fictional characters' heads instead of real people's mouths. Visit her tea-and-book-filled world at GloriaChao.Wordpress.com and find her on Twitter and Instagram @GloriaCChao.