Faking it Till They Make It

Ava's Aunt Millie's Saturday brunch was a potential disaster, to say the least. Aunt Millie was one eager woman who could spill charmingly private information with the delicacy of a foghorn. Armed with all the support she had in her relationship with Ethan, Ava faced her, gripping a mimosa with a white-knuckled devoutness to ward off what she feared might happen.

Ethan, the consummate charmer, was already fully switched into "devoted boyfriend" mode, freely complimenting Aunt Millie's flower arrangements, talking animatedly about her award-winning begonias, and even feigning interest in her detailed account of her most recent game of bridge. But there was sweat on Ava's back. This charade was getting harder. The comfort they'd built behind closed doors now felt far away, replaced by an impenetrable tension that could tear their carefully constructed illusion to shreds. This would be the danger, when Aunt Millie, with one last word about the value of elder-flower, suddenly turned toward Ava, that impish gleam in her eyes. "So, Ava, darling," she chirps, "Ethan said something about a...business trip you two got to attend together? Napa Valley?" Ava's mimosa was about to spill out. Napa Valley.

The one intricate detail that they'd both so carefully put into their fabricated timeline. A weekend jaunt that added some depth to their discovery-subtly-so-called relationship. She was sure Ethan never told anyone in the family about that sooner. Panic tightened its grip. She could feel her calm resolve start to crack.

Yet Ethan didn't let the gravity of the moment dictate his demeanor. Flashing Tessa a silently supportive smile, he assumed the role of an amicus curiae. "Yes, Aunt Millie," he said, barely above a whisper, his tone tranquilizing after Ava's tumultuous escalation. "Lovely in fact. We...uh...celebrated Ava's promotion at the winery. Just a little romantic get-away to relax and celebrate her success." Ava's heart was hammering against her ribs. Not only had he covered her, but he'd also drawn in a plausible detail about her promotion that she hadn't even thought to use. So much relief came to her; he'd just saved her from a potential disaster. When they finally escaped Aunt Millie's clutches and piled into Ethan's car, a silent pall hung between them. The close call tightened knots in both their stomachs. "Okay, so close," Ava whispered under her breath. That made Ethan frown. "Way too close. We need to change our game plan. Aunt Millie never misses anything… And I noticed Mark talking to your cousin, Chloe.

It made me come over all uneasy, as if he was investigating with a view to gathering intel about our 'relationship.'" Mark had been Ava's ex-boyfriend, a guy who loved to stir trouble and believed, albeit wrongly, that Ava was still harboring romantic feelings for him. The sheer thought of his warming up to the truth made the shudders run empty in her veins. "And it's not only Mark," Ethan continued, his voice just above a portal of a whisper. "Daniel's been conducting himself strangely in the office. He's my most ruthless business rival, yet he's been polite and almost...friendly. It's off-putting. He isn't that kind of guy." Daniel, the ruthless businessman, was famed. 

Ethan's abrupt change of mind was suspicious indeed. Ava sank back in a cushy leather seat, her deception weighed heavily on her. The semblance of casualness in their interactions now seemed a lifetime away. The act of deception had turned into a circus walk-a tightrope-to balance the performances without letting the exposed manifest within any of them. "We have to design a better plan," Ava's voice rang firm. "Something more... fool-proof." Ethan gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. "We can't leave it to the last minute. We have to have a perfect plan.. an elaborately meticulous timeline.

Every detail must come in a plausible explanation; we must expect the questions even before they ask them." The next few days would pass in a frenzied haze of planning. They carefully constructed an elaborate timeline of their "relationship," with fabricated dates, silly inside jokes, and activities they'd supposedly shared. They planned their social media presence meticulously, assembling a compilation of seemingly innocuous photos and posts intended to lend credibility to their hoax.

Every detail was carefully planned, each conversation rehearsed. They even went so far as to create an online calendar they'd share, populated with entirely commonplace events: a non-existent cooking class, a volunteer stint at a local animal shelter, or an incredibly detailed "romantic" weekend getaway (in some not-all-that-glamorous place other than Napa Valley). The intention was to create a believable history, a tapestry of shared moments susceptible to decent scrutiny.

Still, a cloud of suspicion sprayed above them. The long watch, with all the told lies, was beginning to bombard them. Where there had once been joy and spontaneity, with their mirage of amusement behind the days gone by, there now lay creaking tension, with a lingering feeling of alarm at the unstable ground beneath them. Their shared secret exchanges of laughter, once instantly comprehended, were now laced with a heavy burden of unacclaimed anxieties. One night, when Ava was going over their edited social media profiles, she noticed something funny. Mark, her ex-boyfriend, had liked a photo of Ethan and her, one in which they were apparently having a riot at what seemed a harmless gathering--that is, the very volunteer day at the local animal shelter.

It otherwise seemed to be a harmless picture, one not likely to elicit any panic. Yet, it lit within her a wrench of anxiety that torched like wild. "He's like, onto something," Ava said with apprehension. Ethan clenched his jaw. "I knew this wouldn't be easy. But now we have to be more careful. No more improv. We stick to the script; that's the only way." The next family gathering was a test of their new and improved plan. They stuck to the script that they had designed, answering questions with rehearsed dexterity. They even got through Aunt Millie's increasingly forceful inquiries about their "Napa Valley adventure," suggesting in its stead a less picturesque but equally believable weekend trip to a local vineyard. It was more a performance of sorts than a family celebration with each interaction choreographed down to the smallest detail. Every word was decidedly chosen. 

The falsehood felt thinner by raps; they were barely managing to pull it off, though admittedly for now. The subtle tension, however, was there. This painstakingly manufactured faŽade, although standing for now, felt more and more fragile and constantly threatened with exposure. Gone, it appeared, was the joy of those early days, the spontaneity of their interactions, gambled away to a gnawing anxiety. What had begun as a pretense to help them deal with their family had become a strategically war waged, a battle where anything and everything was at stake. The prospect of ruin was rising with each passing day, the edges between lie and the oncoming truth of what had started blossoming between a seamless merge that bordered confusion, complicating the already fragile situation at hand.

The stakes were higher than they had ever encountered, until very recently, and the fear of exposure of their charade and of their obvious feelings loomed large, standing ominously over their game. Their future, once a predicted path was now a maze of black holes, with the thrill and terror of gambling everything on hearts being the spectacle.