Information: Rye needs someone to accompany him to his aunt's wedding, and rents someone to come with him.
Rye's POV:
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you to the absolute lowpoint of my life. I sighed, sipping my tea while I sat down behind my computer.
A few months ago, when I was still with my now ex-boyfriend, I'd told my aunt I'd take someone to her wedding. Seeing as we had split up a week ago, I was now in desperate need of someone to take with me to her wedding, as I didn't want to show up alone.
That would mess up all the planning my aunt and her fiancee had done for their big day, as they had one less person, and an uneven number of guests, which was unfortunate for the games we had to play in pairs. See, I'd thought all of this through.
Except for one thing. It was now friday evening, the wedding was on sunday, and I still didn't have anyone to bring.
I'd started off asking some guys I vaguely knew, and vaguely fancied, but they all turned the offer down. Seeing as I didn't want to force any of my actual friends to be all lovey-dovey with me, I only had one resort left.
I opened a tab, and typed in: www.rentafriend.uk.
The website immediately popped up, and I was welcomed with a bright red banner announcing the name of the company, and underneath it a little introduction to the site.
Welcome! We are glad to welcome you to our brand new network: Rent A Friend.
We provide rental companionships for up to 24 hours. The client will pick their match based on characteristics and location. Conditions to the agreement will be determined by the rental companions. 100% safe, 89% of our clients are satisfied.
(For us to keep this business as safe as possible for clients as well as rental companions, a full background check is required to access the network. Rent A Friend is not a dating network.)
Join our network now! Become a rental companion on your own terms! click here to apply
The tricky part was not only that I'd have to find someone who could come to the wedding with me on the short notice of two days, but also had to be willing to be in on the act of being in love with me, to make this whole thing believable.
Okay, here goes nothing, I said to myself, clicking the red button to start the process.
After I'd filled in an entire questionnaire about myself, I clicked send, and it immediately took me to another questionnaire. This one said:
Thank you for your cooperation! It is now time to find the ideal match for your occasion! Select your preferences on the page below. Keep in mind, however, the more critical you are, the less of our companions will be compatible to you. Now, go ahead!
It continued to ask me a bunch of things about country of residence, as well as the physical appearance of the companion, which I found to be somewhat shallow, but hey, a good looking boy next to me couldn't hurt anyone.
After 5 minutes, I finished putting in my preference, and I finally got to see all the profiles of the boys.
The profiles consisted of name, availability and location before anything else. When you clicked on the profile, you'd get to see reviews, descriptions, pictures and prices.
My god, this honestly looked like a human traffic market, with all the prices next to the pictures.
It turned out that availability in combination with location was a big deal. For some reason, all the boys that were available on Sunday, lived up north.
