Over my father’s shoulder, my gaze flicked to my “boyfriend” instinctively, to try to explain with my eyes that I had two names. But then I remembered I had only given the company (and thus him) my Chinese name, which was usually only heard between the embroidered wall scrolls of this house. My decision to list my legal but seldom-used name had been strategic in nature: to put it eloquently, I knew my parents would lap that shit up. It had to be true love if he was the first person outside our little Chinese community I’d told my real name to, right?

I’d dubbed myself Chloe in second grade after the hundredth joke about Jing-Jing sounding more like a song than a name. On a whim I’d started telling everyone to call me Chloe, after the universally loved golden retriever in my neighborhood. I think I had unconsciously hoped that there was some secret sauce in the name and that adopting it would make people like me more—which, sadly, worked. Soon it became who I was, more so than Jing-Jing. But the first and last time I had a friend over and she called me Chloe in front of my parents, my mom choked on her soy milk and my dad swallowed a tea egg whole. From then on, I kept my two worlds apart.

With the confidence of an Asian American who is used to lying to her dragon parents—the ones who named me Jing so I would shine in everything I do—I said, “Mǎmá, Bǎbá, this is Andrew.” Shit. Had I remembered his name correctly? Not that it mattered: his “correct” name probably wasn’t his real name anyway, so Andrew Shamdrew, po-tay-to po-tah-to, right?

My dentist parents examined now-Andrew up and down like he was a mystery specimen under their loupes. I had to hold back a laugh. In some ways, Andrew wasn’t hiding anything, and in other ways, Insert Name Here was hiding everything.

“Ǎyí, Shǔshú hǎo,” he greeted my parents, calling them the polite and more-than-appropriate “Auntie” and “Uncle,” which usually made me pause because the direct translation didn’t make sense to my Americanized ears. You can’t mix cultures that way, my mother always scolded.

It took me a moment to notice that Andrew’s perfect Mandarin had been spoken with a Taipei accent. Damn, this company was good, like Match.com on steroids, except they were matching him to my parents, not me.

Andrew smiled a healthy, toothy grin that made my parents’ eyebrows shoot up in pleasant surprise. I wondered whether the company had paid for those sparkling, just-Cavitroned pearly whites.

“Aiyah, you have great oral hygiene,” my dad said, which, okay, if it was that easy, why did I have to pay a make-your-nose-and-gums-bleed amount to rent Andrew today? Good aiyahs weren’t easy to come by, but I guess anything teeth-related was a shortcut.