I Hired a Boyfriend
When my name was called, he answered with a clear, masculine “Here.”
The professor looked up, confused. “Since when is Maya a man?”
The guy froze for a second, then inspiration struck.
“I’m her boyfriend, actually,” he said smoothly. “She’s sick, so she asked me to come record the lecture for her. She wants to catch up as soon as she’s better.”
A murmur rippled through the lecture hall.
Then, from the front row, Liam stood up. He gave the guy a polite, tight-lipped nod. The smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“Sorry, but I’m Maya’s boyfriend,” he said, his voice dangerously soft. “Who are you?”
Liam was a legend in the Computer Science department. I was a nobody, barely avoiding academic probation.
We hadn’t seen each other in a month, and the first thing he said to me was:
“Maya, if you don’t start taking this seriously, you’re going to end up as nothing.”
He glanced at his watch three times while he said it, as if every second with me was a waste of his life.
I nodded, my voice surprisingly calm. “I am nothing. I don't deserve you. Let's break up.”
To finally get away from him, I asked the guy from class—the substitute—to pretend to be my new boyfriend.
After we successfully broke up for good, his eyes lit up. “Awesome! So, does this mean I get a promotion?”
1
I’d been sitting motionless in the art studio for ten hours when my roommate called.
“Maya, you have to check the campus gossip site! You’re going viral, hahaha! You should probably go explain things to Liam.”
My fingers, stiff and sore, fumbled with my phone. At the top of the site was a video, already with thousands of views.
In the clip, the professor is taking attendance. When he gets to my name, a guy’s voice calls out. The professor calls his bluff, and the guy improvises, claiming to be my boyfriend and painting me as some kind of diligent, dedicated student.
The punchline, of course, was my actual boyfriend standing up to call him out.
The comment section was a sea of laughing emojis.
【Did the golden boy of CS just get played?】
【Lmao, this dude is so obviously a class-sitter for hire.】
【He really thought on his feet, too bad he picked a girl who already had a boyfriend in the room. Busted.】
My vision went dark for a second. I pulled up my chat with the substitute.
【You didn't think to mention you were a guy?】
This was a major-specific course. The professor knew our faces, even if he didn’t know us well. The plan had been simple: have a girl wear a mask, sit in the back, and just blend in. When I’d hired him through the app, his profile said female, so I didn’t think twice.
He replied instantly.
【I’m so sorry! It was my first time doing this, I didn’t know the protocol. (′-ω-`)】
【I panicked, I had no idea your boyfriend was there! (?_?)】
【I explained it to him afterward, I don’t think there was any real misunderstanding. (シ. .)シ】
【Seriously, I feel terrible. Can I buy you dinner to make up for it? ( TДT)】
I closed the app and sighed. This was bad. Now Liam was going to be mad about me skipping class again. It was the same fight we’d had a month ago, the one that had led to this cold war between us.
2
Liam and I grew up across the hall from each other. He was always one of those intensely self-disciplined people, while I was born to drift. When other kids were playing outside, he was forcing me to do homework. He’d stand over me, his face serious, his lips a thin line.
“This is wrong. Write it out ten times.”
It was torture.
In high school, he requested to be my desk partner, pushing me every single day.
“You have to work harder,” he’d say. “We’ll go to Northwood together.”
His ears would turn pink when he said it, his normally cool composure cracking just a little. He kept repeating it, “we together.”
For those two words, I studied like my life depended on it.
We both got into Northwood’s top-ranked Computer Science program. My parents cried with joy. They said Liam was a blessing, that without him, I would have ruined my own future.
The day my acceptance letter came, everyone was beaming, so proud of me. But on that sweltering July afternoon, I felt a chill spread through my body, a cold so deep it made me tremble.
Because in the list of majors I had painstakingly chosen and submitted, Computer Science wasn’t anywhere on it. And my scores were more than good enough to get my first choice.
Someone had changed my application.
3
I knew I hated coding from the very first day of college. The rigid rules, the unyielding logic—it all felt so suffocating, so dull. I started skipping classes, secretly taking drawing workshops and spending all my time in the art studio.
I couldn't let Liam know.
But you can’t hide something like that forever. When he found out I was cutting his beloved data structures lecture for a life drawing class, his brow furrowed.
“That’s not a serious pursuit,” he’d said, one word at a time. His tone was as stern as my parents’ had been my whole life.
The big fight, the one that broke us, happened last month. It was because I’d submitted my application to transfer majors.
Liam was furious. He said I was being impulsive, that I was throwing my future away.
In that moment, a wave of exhaustion washed over me. I didn’t want to convince him anymore. I didn’t want to explain myself at all.
4
I opened my chat with Liam. The last messages were from a month ago. I hesitated, then started typing.
【Liam, guess what today is!】
No reply. I sent another.
【If you can't guess, you owe me a kiss.】
An hour passed.
【Okay, fine, I know you’re just pretending not to know so you can get that kiss.】
【It’s World Oceans Day! We should get dinner to celebrate!】
【Where are you? I’ll come find you :)】
A knot of frustration tightened in my stomach. I was making it so obvious I wanted to make up. Why was he ignoring me?
I ate dinner with my right hand, my left endlessly scrolling up through our old conversation, waiting for his name to pop up with a new message. The Wi-Fi in the dining hall was spotty, and I was terrified I’d miss his reply because of a delay.
I stretched a single meal out for over an hour.
He never wrote back.
5
I texted one of Liam’s roommates, who told me he was at the lab. When I got there, he was hunched over a monitor, debugging code, his focus absolute.
I waved, trying to keep my voice light. “Liam!”
He glanced up, his eyes meeting mine for a fraction of a second before he quickly looked away, feigning indifference. “What are you doing here?”
I wrapped my arms around his and stood on my toes to give him a quick peck on the lips. “Don’t be mad anymore, okay? I’m sorry.”
A faint pink blush crept up his ears. The icy resolve on his face seemed to melt, replaced by the soft light of a winter morning.
“Okay,” he mumbled. “What are you sorry for?”
“...Let’s go get dinner. You have dark circles under your eyes. You pulled another all-nighter, didn’t you? I bet you haven’t eaten.” I was desperate to change the subject. To be honest, I didn't think I'd done anything wrong.
His face went blank again.
“Excuse me, you two,” a voice cut in. “Dinner’s not an option just yet.”
I turned. It was Sophia, one of Liam’s frequent hackathon partners. She offered me a smile that felt more like a courtesy than a welcome.
“We have a huge competition deadline coming up. Liam and I have to grind this out. I’m sorry, he can’t go with you.” She paused. “I ordered us some food, it should be here soon. You’re welcome to stay and have some, if you want.”
There was a subtle arrogance in her tone that rubbed me the wrong way, a hint that this was her territory, not mine. But Liam had told me how important this competition was to him.
“It’s okay, I don’t want to get in your way,” I said. “Liam, I’ll see you when you’re not so busy. We can get dinner then.”
He gave a noncommittal “Mm.”
“Okay, then. We won’t see you out,” Sophia said, her smile firmly in place.
The last thing I saw before the door clicked shut was Liam and Sophia leaning in close together, their heads nearly touching as they pointed at the screen, completely absorbed in their work.
A sour feeling churned in my stomach.
6
Liam must have been really busy.
Another month passed after I saw him at the lab. He never texted, not once. His roommate told me he was practically living there.
Ever since we got to college, it felt like he was always busy. Too busy to answer my texts. Far too busy to ever reach out first.
This past month, I’d thrown myself into my art and hadn’t reached out to him either. The result was a month of complete silence. It was hard to believe we were even in the same major, let alone the same city. We were living in different worlds. His was a world of GPAs, research, and competitions. Mine was a world of skipped classes and charcoal-smudged fingers.
He was collecting awards, becoming a campus celebrity. I was skirting academic probation, a person of interest for my academic advisor.
When did we drift so far apart?
7
I finally broke the silence and called him.
While the phone was ringing, a notification popped up from my friends’ group chat. My roommate had shared a link to an article from the campus paper. It was about Liam and Sophia winning first place in their competition.
The photo showed the two of them on stage, accepting their award. They looked confident, radiant. They looked good together.
My roommate tagged me: 【Your boyfriend is amazing!】
Before I could reply, another notification appeared, a suggested news story. 【Power Couple, Both Early Admits to Grad School…】
I slammed the “dislike, show less of this” button, but a wave of sadness washed over me anyway.
Suddenly, the call connected. Liam’s voice, tired and distant, came through the line. “What’s up?”
My mind was still stuck on that headline, and a childish sense of hurt colored my voice. “Liam, why haven’t you called me? I just saw—”
“Busy,” he cut me off.
“...Well, do you have time to get dinner with me?”
“Where.”
“Just the dining hall. It won’t take long. Five o’clock?”
“Fine.”
“See you there?”
“Yep.”
He hung up.
8
I waited for him at the entrance to the dining hall for one hour and twenty-one minutes.
Liam finally arrived as dusk settled over campus. “Sorry. Something came up.”
I opened my mouth to ask, Why couldn’t you have just sent a text? But I didn’t. We were finally getting dinner. I didn’t want to ruin it.
I went to get a bowl of spicy ramen, and he went for his usual: a pre-packaged salad. He always got that because there was no line, and he could eat it fast. For a guy like him, even eating was a waste of time.
By the time I brought my steaming bowl to the table, he was already halfway done. He glanced at my food and frowned, but said nothing.
The ramen was hot. I took my time, carefully picking out the cilantro. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Liam raise his wrist and check his watch.
One. I started counting. It was a habit of his, something he’d been doing since high school. Timing his meals.
When he finished his salad, he checked it again. Two.
I pretended not to notice his growing impatience.
“Liam,” I said, trying to sound cheerful, “the university is having a small student art exhibition, and even though I’m not an art major, one of my paintings was selected! I’m so—”
He lifted his wrist. Three.
It was as if every single second he spent with me was a precious moment of his life slipping away, wasted.
9
“Maya, if you don’t start taking this seriously, you’re going to end up as nothing.”
A month apart, and that was the first real sentence he’d said to me. I couldn’t believe it.
I swallowed the noodles in my mouth and looked up at him, my gaze level.
“You’re right,” I said calmly. “I am nothing. I don't deserve you.”
“Let’s break up.”
I’d been thinking about it for a long time. Liam and I were just too different. He was serious and disciplined; he hated it when I was goofy or affectionate. The order and stability he craved were the very things that made me feel trapped. I despised the coding he excelled at. He disdained the passion I had for my art. We couldn’t even agree on food—I loved spicy, he wanted bland.
Maybe Sophia was the one who was more his type.
Liam’s brow, which had been furrowed in disapproval, tightened even more. “I’m just trying to help you.”
There it was. That was always his line. He’d say it in that cool, detached voice—I’m just trying to help you—and it made me feel like I was the one being irrational.
“You need to calm down.”
He stood up. “I have to go.”
He didn’t look back as he walked away, his figure disappearing into the crowd.
I looked down at my bowl and kept eating. But then a tear fell, then another. I fumbled for a napkin, but the more I wiped, the more they came.
10
When I got back to the studio, my easel and canvases were tossed in the hallway like garbage. Dark, dirty shoe prints were stamped across several of my paintings. The tears I’d just managed to stop threatened to spill over again.
I gathered my things, wiping away the grime, and carried everything back inside. I decided I would stay the night. Maybe I could channel all this miserable energy into a new piece.
I had just started to sketch when the security guard came in.
His face soured. “You again?” he grumbled. “Get out. You’re not supposed to be here.”
The studio had a rule: if a student was working, a guard had to be on duty. Because my dorm cut the power at midnight, I often came here to work all night. And every time I did, this particular guard would make his displeasure known. “Great,” he’d mutter, loud enough for me to hear. “Now I have to stay late.”
When he found out I wasn't an art major, he started refusing to let me in at all. I had to sneak past him. I guess tonight was his shift.
He seemed to be in a particularly bad mood. He reached out and grabbed my easel.
I tried to reason with him, my voice shaking slightly. “The rules don’t say non-majors can’t use the studio, and I’m in the process of transferring. Please, can you just let me work? You don’t have to stay, you can just go.”
He sneered. “I say you can’t, so you can’t. I’m in charge here. You think a student can tell me what to do? Now get out!”
“I’m not leaving!” I sat on the floor, clutching my easel to my chest, a hot wave of anger washing over me.
My parents told me not to paint. Liam told me not to paint. Now this stranger was telling me not to paint. It felt like no one in the world supported me except for myself.
It was so hard. I felt like I was about to break.
11
In the middle of our standoff, a woman walked by, drawn in by the noise. “What’s going on?”
I recognized her immediately. She was the professor for a class I’d been unofficially auditing.
The guard’s demeanor changed in an instant. He put on a worried expression. “Professor Avery, I was about to lock up when I saw the light on. We’ve had some students report things missing from the studio lately, so I thought, you know, maybe it was a thief. I came in and saw this girl holding onto this easel for dear life. I tried to take her to campus security, but she refused to go…”
There were security cameras in the studio. They would prove my innocence. But all the guard had to do was say he made a mistake, and he’d face no consequences. But if a rumor started that I was a thief, even if it was cleared up, the truth wouldn't matter. People would just see me as trouble. I’d be barred from this place, my sanctuary.
I was trembling with rage. “You’re lying!”
The guard just smirked at me, a defiant look in his eyes.
Professor Avery’s gaze shifted to me. She studied my face for a long moment, her brow furrowed. Then, her expression softened.
“It’s you, isn’t it?”
First, search for and download the MotoNovel app from Google. Then, open the app and use the code "254599" to read the entire book.
MotoNovel
Novellia
Bookworm« Previous Post
Too Late For Sorry
Next Post »
My Wife's Husband