Fake Dating My Virtual Boyfriend

Mia’s POV

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princess_peach: No way will I marry you again. You fucking cheated on me, Sky!

sky006: Princess, I’m sorry. Posh is a friend. Well, a real life friend. We made a deal to pair up together in that game.

princess_peach: What am I then, AI?! Just because you can’t see me doesn’t mean I’m not hurt by your actions.

sky006: Well... I’d still like to marry you in this game. Besides, I told you already. Posh is a guy.

sky006: Here, I made a new character. He's more handsome. Marry me please?

princess_peach: I’ll think about it.

sky006: Hurry up then, you know we need to complete this task to level up!

sky006: And I know you can’t resist me anyway.

princess_peach: Fine. Let’s get married.

sky006: I do. I do. Oh, princess, I love you so much! Thank you!

```

I love you too, Sky...

I muttered to myself, the words a silent echo in my room as my fingers flew across the keyboard, typing out a more casual, less revealing response.

My name is Amelia Miller, though no one really calls me that unless it’s a professor or a bank alert. Everyone else calls me Mia.

I’m twenty-two, a senior studying Interior Design at a state college I could barely afford.

I work three jobs and drink too much instant coffee.

My room is a Pinterest board of contradictions—neutral tones and cozy textures by day, anime shrine by night.

I’m the kind of girl who can talk her way out of a parking ticket but still spirals for hours, wondering if Sky really meant it when he said I was funny.

I leaned back into my creaky chair, the kind that squeaked with every sigh of exhaustion.

The only light in the room came from my screen and the fairy lights drooping above my bed, casting a gentle glow over the posters I never outgrew. Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and one very crumpled photo of a ramen shop I swore I’d visit someday.

It was always like this with Sky… a playful push and pull that masked the very real, very intense feelings I’d harbored for him since I was fifteen.

Seven years.

Seven years of a love affair conducted entirely through pixels, voice changers, and laggy Discord calls.

A secret garden of affection tended in the digital realm, while real life—loud, messy, expensive—raged on in the background.

He lives in Florida.

My own lie, a necessary shield, placed me in California.

The truth? I’ve never left Vermont.

We started talking when we were twelve.

Telling a stranger my real location online felt reckless, even if he didn’t feel like a stranger after a few weeks.

I almost came clean once. He sent me a photo of palm trees swaying behind a gas station and said, “Bet your sunsets look different, huh?”

I typed out: “I wouldn’t know. We mostly get snow here.”

Then I deleted it.

Instead, I sent a meme about Floridians fighting alligators in Walmart parking lots.

I told him California. He told me Florida.

I think we both wanted to believe the whole of Southern USA between us was enough to protect whatever we were growing.

The time difference excuse became muscle memory.

“Oh sorry, I was out. It’s just 8 PM here.”

—Even when I’m fighting sleep at 11 PM on a school night, my laptop balanced on textbooks and an empty coffee cup.

“What? That early? I thought you’d be asleep already.”

“Yeah, haha. Pacific Time things.”

—Even though Vermont winters hit different at midnight, and I’ve got three alarms set for a 7 AM lecture and a shift at Trahn’s after that.

Sometimes I wonder if he ever second-guessed it.

If the typos in my replies, the background noises, or my half-asleep voice ever cracked the illusion.

But he never said anything.

So I kept lying.

And he kept believing.

Maybe that’s what love looked like for me back then, bending time zones just to feel a little closer.

A small lie, recycled a thousand times.

And yet, somehow, the most honest thing in my life…

was the love I felt for a boy who didn’t even know my real name.

I first met Sky—or sky006—during a mandatory team task in an MMO, the name I eventually forgot.

We decimated mobs, completed quests, and leveled up with eerie synchronicity.

Our synergy was effortless. He listened. He strategized. He laughed with me, not at me.

I remember once, in the middle of a raid, I told him my dog had died. Totally out of nowhere. I hadn’t even meant to.

He paused, mid-battle, and said:

“Do you want to log off?”

“No,” I typed.

“Okay. Then I’ll be here. We’ll kill fire elementals until you feel less sad.”

I didn’t cry that night. But I did make a shrine to him in my Animal Crossing town. A peach tree grove shaped like a heart.

The first time we ever talked in-game, I mispronounced “mana” as “mah-nah” and he corrected me in the gentlest way.

“It’s man-uh,” he chuckled.

“Ugh, like banana?”

“Exactly like banana,” he said, and that was the first time I laughed so hard I snorted in voice chat.

He didn’t make fun of me. He just said, “I’m keeping that laugh forever.”

He stayed.

Mostly.

Except for that time he cheated on me in The Sims 3.

Okay, not real cheating. But it felt real.

We’d built a digital life together in The Sims 3, a sleek, modern house that I spent hours designing.

Neutral tones, warm lighting, mid-century furniture with soft arches and layered textures.

The layout was open-plan but intimate, with a reading nook tucked into a sun-drenched corner and a minimalist kitchen Sky said looked “too expensive for our Sims’ sad careers.”

I even made him an art studio, flooded with virtual sunlight, filled with easels and digital canvases.

But it was the Sims 4 house where things really shifted.

I built it half as a joke, half as a coping mechanism during finals week.

Smaller. Warmer. Messier. Less curated, more lived-in.

It had a cactus named Stabby, floor pillows in the living room, and a second bedroom labeled “Guest Room… but Actually Yours.”

I gave him a tour like I always did—rambling through furniture choices, cracking dumb jokes about our fake espresso machine.

He didn’t say anything.

Just walked his Sim through the space, paused in the hallway, and held still for a long time.

Then, out of nowhere, in the softest voice,

he said,

“I think I’m in love with you.”

And I laughed. Of course I laughed.

Because what else do you do when the one person who doesn’t know your real name says something like that?

And then one night, I logged in to find his Sim cuddling with londonposh’s Sim in our living room.

On our couch.

In front of Mochi, our virtual Welsh Corgi.

I’d cried. Over pixels. And it wasn’t even PMS week.

Sky swore it was for a task. A challenge. A joke.

I called it betrayal. A boundary. A line he crossed.

And I refused to speak to him for a day.

He wrote me poems in Animal Crossing.

He changed his Sims 3 lot name to “Please Come Home Princess.”

He built me a secret room under the digital house and filled it with paintings and little in-game gifts...

And then he removed the door until I forgave him, which earned him a cold shoulder for another day.

He even made his Sim sleep on the couch.

I wish I could say I held strong, but the moment I saw his Sim crying while painting a sad clown portrait, I caved.

The next time we logged in, he greeted me with, “Welcome home, Princess,” and I felt like someone out of a dumb Hallmark holiday movie.

Because Sky had this way of making you feel like the most important person in the world.

Even when he ghosted me for three days last November.

No text. No DM. Not even a Discord status.

At first, I thought he died.

Then I thought I said something wrong. That I’d crossed some invisible line. That I was too much, too clingy, too… me.

I spiraled, watching our chat window light up with nothing but my own desperate pings.

I even messaged londonposh, Sky’s in-game friend who supposedly knew him IRL. I asked if he’d heard anything, if maybe Sky had lost his phone or gone on a trip.

Even he was confused.

He just replied: “Haven’t seen him. Probably fine tho. He disappears sometimes.”

Probably fine.

That’s what people say right before someone’s declared missing.

For three nights, I barely slept.

Every time my phone buzzed, my heart would leap like a stupid puppy.

When he finally came back with a casual “sorry, busy IRL,” I pretended to be mad for two whole minutes before melting into relief.

Because Sky was perfect, I told myself. He had to be.

I used to wonder what it would be like if Sky ever saw me in real life.

Not the digital me, not the princess_peach version that cracked dumb jokes and wore pink armor.

The real me... dark circles, second-hand boots, and stress acne.

Would he still say he loved me?

High school was survival mode.

I couldn’t afford to be “that girl.” The weird one. The poor one. The geek who loves online games and anime.

So I became the version of myself people expected: brunette, slim, smiley, good grades.

I joined cheer. I dated jocks I couldn’t stand. I laughed at parties I didn’t want to be at.

Dad died when I was twelve. Sudden, cruel. Like a power outage in the middle of a show you love.

One minute we were a family with a small-town bakery and matching aprons.

The next, Mom was selling the business just to stay afloat, and Killian was applying for scholarships to colleges in California.

That was the end of normal.

I’d started working at Trahn’s Coffee in high school, originally to buy more Nikes and a new graphics card.

But after Killian left, and Mom used the last of our savings for his tuition, my “internship” turned into survival mode.

Phone bills. Electricity bills. Groceries. Oh, and college, too.

I never had the luxury of just being a student.

I became the helper, the scheduler, the late-night budgeter. The girl who didn’t just dream about interior design, but calculated square footage between shifts at a café.

On paper, I’m a normal 22-year-old senior.

In practice, I’m one missed shift away from losing Wi-Fi.

Playing games isn’t free. Escaping isn’t free.

I work double shifts. I skip meals. I budget like my life depends on it, because it kind of does.

That’s probably why I clung to Sky.

He was the only thing in my life that didn’t come with a receipt.

When I log in, I’m not the girl who owes rent.

I’m princess_peach. Fierce. Funny. Unapologetically loud. Sky’s partner in crime.

He knows my favorite anime. The manga I reread every time I get overwhelmed. The dumb songs I hum when I’m zoning out in Stardew Valley.

He even knows the exact shade of pink I use when building Sims' bedrooms. He calls it “Peach Pink.”

He doesn’t know my real name. But he knows my soul.

And soon… he’ll know my face.

We made a pact. Years ago. After college, we’d meet.

No more avatars. No more guessing. Just him and me. IRL.

Florida. A beach we picked out virtually. A spot we marked on Google Maps.

It’s stupid how much I think about that day. What I’ll wear. What I’ll say. If I’ll cry.

Sometimes, when I let myself dream, I imagine it like a scene from a Studio Ghibli film.

Me standing at the edge of the pier, wind in my hair, and him running toward me, a little awkward, a little out of breath, but smiling like he just spotted a rare Pokémon in the wild.

But what if he’s disappointed?

What if I’m disappointed?

What if I see him and realize this entire thing was just a beautiful lie I clung to because real life felt too damn hard?

No.

Sky is perfect. He has to be.

Because if he’s not…Then what was all of this for?

My phone buzzed. Alarm for 6:45 AM.

Opening shift at Trahn’s in two hours.

I shut the laptop, the final pixelated image of Sky’s avatar burned into my eyelids.

One more semester. One more chance to turn my entire life into something real.

And maybe—just maybe—someone real to share it with.