The agency called it a "bespoke personal arrangement." Maya Chan called it the weirdest job offer she'd ever accepted — and she once performed stand-up at a funeral. The deal: Cole Harrison, CEO of Harrison Tech and a man who apparently communicates exclusively in controlled silences and expensive suits, needs someone to play his bitter ex-girlfriend at a series of family events. His mother has produced five marriage candidates. He needs a reason to decline them all. Maya needs rent money. The math is simple. What's not simple: the contract Cole hands her is fourteen pages long, includes a clause about not slapping him in public — which raises questions — and requires her to spend the next month publicly performing resentment toward a man she's never met. Easy, Maya thinks. She's a comedian. She performs things she doesn't feel for a living. Except Cole Harrison, it turns out, is not easy to fake-hate. He's specific in ways she didn't expect. He remembers everything she says. He watched her worst set before they'd met and hired her because of what she was hiding inside it. He keeps three hundred unsent emails on a private server and he tilts umbrellas exactly one degree when he doesn't know what else to do. And somewhere between the first dinner and the fourth performance and the coffee shop that isn't a date and the parking structure that isn't a kiss, Maya stops being able to locate the edge of the performance. Which is a problem. Because she's still taking his money. Hating You Is My Job is an enemies-to-lovers story with a twist: they were supposed to be enemies the whole time. The fake relationship is the antagonism. Every moment of softness, every accident of kindness, every slip of something real — happens against a backdrop where they're both supposed to be performing contempt. It was supposed to be simple. It was never going to be simple.