Here's a thing they don't tell you about fake weddings: you still wake up the next morning with mascara on your pillow and thirty-eight unread texts from people who think you eloped for real.
I blinked blearily at my phone.
Mom: "Call me."
Dad: "You really got married and didn't invite us?"
Aunt Lila: fire emoji fire emoji crying emoji fire emoji
I groaned and rolled over. Leo was snoring beside me. Shirtless. Not fake. My brain short-circuited a little.
We hadn't... I mean, it was just a kiss. And then we'd passed out watching reruns of Chopped and sharing wedding cake directly from the box.
Totally innocent. Sort of.
"You awake?" he murmured, eyes still shut.
"Not really."
"Good. Let's not move for three years."
Tempting.
But Brittany was calling. And we had a company to save.
"You've officially broken the internet," she said the second we walked into the office. "We've doubled our pre-orders overnight, every tech blog is calling us the 'engaged geniuses,' and some influencer just offered to officiate your 'real' wedding if you want to monetize."
"Oh my god," I muttered. "This is a fever dream."
"A profitable one," she grinned. "But there's more."
I tensed. "Good more or bad more?"
"Depends how you feel about ex-boyfriends."
I stared at her.
"Jason," Leo growled. "What now?"
Brittany swung her monitor around. There he was, smirking through a livestream, holding up a flash drive like it was a trophy.
"I have proof they stole my original idea," Jason said to his twelve viewers and one very confused cat. "This is the real origin of the app. And I'll be sharing it... at my press conference. Tomorrow."
I blinked. "Press conference? Who does he think he is? Elon Musk's less stable cousin?"
Leo leaned in. "He's bluffing. He didn't build anything. He was an intern. He barely knew how to comment code."
"Doesn't matter," Brittany said. "He's already got a few tech gossip channels biting. And if he shows anything that looks legit, your fake wedding becomes a real scandal."
Awesome.
**
That night, we sat on Leo's kitchen counter with a bottle of wine, stress-eating spaghetti straight from the pot.
"I say we leak our beta," he said. "Get the jump on him. Show the world our version before he even gets a mic in front of his face."
"And what if he does have something that looks real?"
"Then we tell the truth."
"Which part? That we faked a relationship? A wedding? A shared pasta dinner with no clean forks?"
He looked at me. Really looked.
"We didn't fake all of it."
My stomach flipped.
"We were just supposed to play pretend," I whispered. "Somewhere along the way, I stopped remembering where the script ended."
He reached over. Brushed a speck of marinara off my chin like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Then let's stop pretending."
**
We stayed up all night. Polishing the beta. Cleaning up code. Rewriting copy. At one point we danced in the living room to an old Lizzo song while the code compiled. Just because. By sunrise, our landing page was locked and loaded.
We launched at 8:00 a.m.
By 9:15, we were trending.
By 10:00, Jason's press conference began.
And by 10:03, it had imploded.
**
"...as you can see," he was saying, "this version was clearly inspired by—wait. Where's my folder?"
The screen flickered. The file was gone. Vanished.
Jason's face went pale.
"I—I had it. I swear."
Someone in the audience coughed. Another person booed.
Brittany, watching from the office, cackled like a cartoon villain. "Guess who emailed Dropbox support last night. Hint: it was me."
We stared at her.
She shrugged. "What? You two were busy flirting over pasta."
Leo and I looked at each other, then burst out laughing. It felt good. Real. Like breathing after holding it in too long.
**
By the end of the day, Jason was a meme. One of those classic reaction GIFs with a caption like, "When your evil plan gets deleted mid-sentence."
And Leo and I were something else.
Something real.
We didn't need a fake wedding or a crisis to keep us together anymore.
Just coffee.
And maybe a slightly-too-public first real date.
"So," Leo said, holding out his hand like we were starting from scratch, "will you go out with me, officially-not-as-a-cover-up?"
I grinned. "Only if I get to pick the restaurant."
"Done."
He kissed me. For real. No cameras. No audience.
Just us.
That night, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling with a goofy smile on my face. This started as a con. A PR stunt. An act. But somewhere between cupcakes and code, I'd fallen face-first into real feelings.
Brittany texted: "Still trending. You two are the Internet's OTP. Also, please come into the office tomorrow, I cannot explain the surge in signups alone."
I replied with a selfie of Leo and me half-asleep and smiling. No captions. Just truth.
Whatever came next—press, investors, new users, another PR storm—we'd face it.
Together.