Elsie Hannaway, a theoretical physicist, finds herself being rescued by Jack Smith. Jack is the older brother of one of the men Elsie pretends to date as a part-time employee of Faux, a mobile app that connects users to individuals who pose as their partners for a fee for various purposes. Jack has whisked her into a bathroom stall to protect her from being discovered, to Elsie’s great embarrassment, while she wonders which of her previous choices led her to this moment.

Twenty-four hours before the events of the prologue, Elsie attends a family gathering with Greg Smith, a man who has hired her to pretend to be his girlfriend through the Faux app. Elsie has had Greg as a client for months, though this goes against Faux’s guidelines, as she feels sympathy for him and is slowly becoming his friend. Elsie explains how she ended up working with Faux: because she did not get the stable position in academia she hoped for after she obtained her PhD, and her multiple jobs as an adjunct professor cannot pay her bills. Greg uses Faux because his wealthy and clingy mother, Caroline, is fixated on the idea of her son having a partner.