Faking In Love [bxb]

1. The Great Sandwich Betrayal

First chapter is up. Dedicated to Chennelle because she is a terrible enabler. Motivated me to write this story and all.

In retrospect, everything started all because of that stupid sandwich.

Ever since he got to the office Amir had been craving an egg and chicken sandwich for some strange reason. He had a pretty hearty breakfast of yogurt and muesli (totally not boring in his defense) but somehow his stomach had been craving for this particular sandwich and it seemed as though all hell would break loose if he didn't get it during lunch.

It was a slow day at the office for him. He was currently writing an article on the effects of the new trade policy implemented by Parliament weeks ago - or something similar to that since he'd blanked out halfway through writing it. His mother had sent him another email about a woman in her yoga class who had a "sweet" and "charming" son who was single and also very successful and he was trying his very best not to cringe at her ninth attempt to match make him.

It was an obvious mistake to give her his work email because now he had no real reason to pretend he didn't see her emails until two days (or one week) later. He'd given her a strict "Mum this is my work email you can't just bombard it with cute pictures of your friend's grandchildren" talk but obviously to no avail.

Amir's mother was a very determined woman who always got what she wanted eventually.

Unfortunately, she'd decided that she wanted grandchildren and nothing was stopping her from reaching this particular goal.

His finger had been lingering on delete for the past five minutes. Jenna from the next cubicle gave him a little peek "Pssst, Amir."

"No need to hiss Jenna. This isn't bloody Year 5." He replied without taking his eyes away from the screen.

She huffed "Alright fine. Did you get the memo on Wilkin's opening for a new editor-in-chief?" He had. The current editor-in-chief was being lured away to another highly lucrative magazine called Sparkle (think Vogue but with less Kardashians gracing the cover) and had entered in a month's notice. There had been chatter all around the office about who TJ Wilkin, the owner, would appoint at the new editor-in-chief.

He paused "What of it?"

"I think you're perfect for the job." Jenna said with a proud grin.

"Nope."

"Why not?" She asked frowning.

Amir sighed "Because I just don't want to. It's not in my plans yet."

"Oh shove that, you'll make a great editor-in-chief." Jenna scoffed shifting her chair closer to him "In fact I might just put in an ad for you with TJ."

"Don't even dare." He threatened.

She shrugged "Maybe. But you've got to tell me why you don't want it. Lots of people in this office would kill for that position yet you're the most qualified of us and you don't even want it."

Amir sighed dreading this conversation. It was always hard for him to explain why he did or didn't do certain things. In secondary school his form master and the principal had been quite baffled when he refused to accept the role of school prefect because he didn't want any responsibility that would make him lose focus on his coursework.

In the end it paid off when he got accepted into UCL and his mother screamed and wailed with joy and managed to call all the family members to "casually" discuss his achievement. Dalia's son was good enough to enter University College London (take that Aunt Laleh, your kids aren't sliced bread just because they got into Cambridge).