I agreed to pretend to be my friend's boyfriend. It was a bad idea.

As featured online @ Daily Telegraph on 27 September 2016

“So how did you two meet?”

Imagine having to come up with a creative story with no warning.

I didn’t even want to be at this stupid birthday drinks. I’d copped sh*t from my fellow journos at Rosehill for wearing a dinner suit to the races. It was a dinner shirt! The bow tie and suit were genuine formal race wear. Anyway I’m from Melbourne; I set trends, I don’t follow them.

I just wanted to go home and watch the footy.

“I really need you to do this birthday drinks thing with me,” my friend Ashlee* said. “Please, just do this one thing for me.”

I folded because I’m nice (aka a complete pushover). Little did I know this “one thing” was to pretend to be someone that I wasn’t.

So there I was with an ice water and lemon talking to Ashlee about the Bachelor, when a friend of hers who I didn’t know headed our way.

She was in a dress and had a name and a face, but I don’t remember anything else. I was desperate to check the footy score — but I’d left my phone in my car — when this girl hit me with a curveball: “So how did you two meet?”

I thought that was odd — people don’t normally ask how friends meet.

Ashlee laughed and leaned an arm on my shoulder and said to me, “Oh honey, I know we said we wouldn’t tell anyone but I couldn’t help but tell Britney-Lynn* about us.”

I was about drop my glass and walk straight out, not least because she called me “honey,” but because she had told someone we were boyfriend and girlfriend. She flat-out lied and now wanted me to. I wanted to tell the truth, but she gave me puppy-dog eyes, as if she’d be humiliated if Britney-Lynn found out she was single.

I obliged and took up the story. Because I’m nice (a.k.a a complete pushover).

“So how’d you meet?” Britney-Lynn asked again.

“Through a fish tank,” I said.

Britney-Lynn didn’t pick up on my Leonardo DiCaprio/Claire Danes/Romeo and Juliet joke.

Thinking I was going to blow her cover, Ashlee’s face became awash with despondency. So I went all method and I lied. In other words, I proceeded to tell the best meet-cute story that never happened.

“I’d just got home from work when it started to rain. I had washing on the clothesline so I raced out the back to get it off. By the time I got back to my apartment, the wind had blown the door shut. I was locked out. Luckily I had a wallet and phone on me, and was able to call a locksmith. Only, he was going to be three hours. I needed to kill some time.

“I’ve got this cinema just around the corner from my place. In I trudged, soaking wet, thinking I’d watch a film while I waited. I asked the girl behind the counter for a ticket to whatever was playing right now and she told me The Choice was on and that I would be the only one in the cinema since no other tickets had been sold.

“That was it; the only movie that was on that at that time was the biggest chick flick of the entire year — The Choice.

“I’d never been in an empty cinema before. For the 15 minutes it took for the previews to pass, I hoped like anything that no one else would walk in. For once, just once, I wished to have an entire cinema to myself. I thought my wish had been granted, until this random chick plonked herself down beside me.

“She asked: ‘Is there a leak in the roof above these seats?’ She thought she was being funny. Still annoyed at locking myself out in the rain, I thought she was being... annoying. ‘Thought it would be a bit strange if the only two people in the cinema didn’t sit next to each other,’ she added. ‘Even if you have just come from swimming in your clothes.’

“Again, I gave her nothing, and didn’t for the rest of the movie. I really wanted to move away and sit on my own, but my conscience wouldn’t let me. Instead we sat there beside one another, in the darkness until the very end.

“The credits finally rolled, which gave me a chance to get away from this girl, but she started talking again. ‘So you totally liked this movie,’ she said. ‘A girlie, Nicholas Sparks sop-fest, and you totally liked it. I could tell by the changing expression in your face.’

“She was right, I did kind of like it, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I got up and walked out of the cinema thinking how funny it was that she’d spent much of the movie looking at me and I hadn’t looked at her once.

“It had stopped raining. I looked at my watch. Two and a bit hours had past, which meant the locksmith was still a little while away. Watching the seconds tick, I heard a voice: ‘Excuse me, have you got the time?’

“She had some kind of strange English/Jamaica accent, but also these eyes that had me in a trance from the moment I looked up at her. She was stunning. ‘Eight... quarter... quarter to eight,’ I stumbled.

‘Dinner time,’ she smiled back. ‘What do you say? Do you like burgers and chups?’

“Sitting down to takeaway, I told her I’d locked myself out my apartment and had been sitting in the rain waiting to be let back in, before asking what she’d been up to. She said: ‘Movies. I saw that one about the guy and the girl and the puppies... The Choice.’

“Everything hit me all at once. The accent was definitely fake, this was the girl who was sitting beside me in the movie, and I was a complete idiot for not looking at her and seeing how beautiful she was. She was gorgeous, and I had almost stuffed up everything.

"I’m sorry," was all I could muster.

“She smiled: ‘It’s OK. I was going to lead you on a bit longer, but figured you’d start to see through my woeful accent.’

“We spent very little of the next 45 minutes eating. We just talked and laughed and fell in love I suppose. I could have sat there with her all night, only the locksmith rang. He let me back into my apartment and suggested that I get a spare key cut, and give it to a friend or neighbour in case I ever got locked out again.

“I took his advice knowing the perfect person I could give it to. Only thing is she keeps using it to let herself in unannounced now. Not that I mind.”

I looked at Ashlee with a loving smile just to further sell the genuineness of the fake tale.

“That is such a cute story,” Britney-Lynn said.

I left them to catch-up and headed for the street curb outside. Ashlee came and found me about 10 minutes later.

“Hey boyfriend,” she said, “Whatcha doing out here?”

“Thinking about stuff,” I replied.

“How you missed the footy finals?” she asked.

“No, actually. Thinking... how I’ve thought about how cool it would be to tell that story to someone, about the girl I really loved, and how we really met. And how that’s now ruined because of some made-up story I told, because you wanted me to.”

She initially thought I was joking, but then must have seen my face become awash with despondency.

“A meet-cute story is that important to you?” she asked somewhat curtly.

“Yeah, it is.”

“You’re being a bit precious, don’t you think?” she said.

Lying about a story and then being called precious for caring about it, left me with no energy but to get up and leave.

“So, what, I’ve gained a boyfriend, but lost a friend?” she asked.

“Maybe.” I answered.

I haven’t seen her since, and I’m not sure I will again.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent (and the not-so-innocent)