When my boss told me she needed me to pretend to be her husband for 1 year, the first thing that fell out of my mouth was, “Do we have to sleep in the same bed?” Yeah, I actually said that to the most feared woman in our company. My name is Adam Bennett. I am 28 years old, born in a dusty little town in Texas, and for the last 5 years, I have been trying to build a life in Denver.
I work as a junior copywriter at Sterling Marketing Solutions. It sounds cool when I say it out loud like I am some creative hot shot, but the truth is less shiny. I sit in a gray cubicle downtown and write taglines and social posts that most people scroll right past without thinking.
Every morning I ride the light rail into the city with a crowd of people who look half awake. I wear the same few faded shirts. I grab cheap coffee from the lobby machine. Then I sit at my desk and try to make buy local beer sound fresh for the 10th time. Outside, my life is not much better. I rent a small one-bedroom in a rough part of Capitol Hill.
The paint is peeling, the heater rattles, and the neighbor’s dog barks at random hours. At night, I eat takeout burritos, stare at my laptop, and send what little money I can back home to my mom in Texas. Mom is 62. She lives alone in our old house outside Austin. My dad used to fix trucks for a living until his body gave out.
