Page 2 of The Arrangement

I didn’t laugh with him, because my mind was on whom I might know that may be doing something similar. Somehow, it brought me comfort to know we may not be alone. Maybe we weren’t so messed up after all. Maybe others had tried to do this outside of Hollywood movies; maybe they’d had better results than I’d seen depicted in the movies.

That was how the idea was first brought up. During an evening of Netflix last week, we watched the latest sitcom where the couples decided an open marriage was the answer to their problems. We’d seen it a hundred times in a hundred different films or shows, but this time, something sparked inside of me as I watched the wife go out with a stranger.

Peter said some people were crazy.

I said we should try it.

He laughed.

I did not.

And now, a week to the day later, here we were.

It wasn’t as if I were some sex-crazed maniac, like some may think. I was simply a woman who loved her husband very much, yet who had been driven to her breaking point. Long ago, sometime between the birth of our first child and the tenth birthday of our third, our marriage fizzled out.

We’d become the cliché couple that you see too often depicted in movies or books. We were boring, blah, never touching, rarely talking, both so consumed with work and kids and social media that we didn’t have the time or energy to seek out what needed to be fixed.

It wasn’t that we hadn’t tried. The year before, we’d committed to a date night per week, which was pushed back to a date night per month. It had been seven months at this point since our last one.

Date nights were hard to swing with children at home. Scheduling a sitter weekly added up, cut into family time, and even when we had tried to squeeze in alone time once the kids were asleep, one of us was always too tired or had too much to catch up on.

Two people dedicated to their demanding careers in a stifled marriage made it almost inevitable that problems would soon develop. And we were not immune—problems had arisen in every way.

In the end, I supposed, the cards were stacked against us from every direction. But I was determined not to give up. I was not going to get divorced. I was not going to break up my family and tell my children their father and I would be living apart. We couldn’t subject them to a new stepmother and stepfather and all the confusion that came with that. Peter and I had both grown up that way, and we’d agreed years ago to never let it get that bad. But it had.

It was too much. So, this was what we’d come to. This was where we were. Sitting across from each other at our family dinner table, preparing to desecrate our marriage via the wonderful world of online dating—er, I guessed in our case, online hooking up.

If I hadn’t felt so desperate, I would’ve been mortified, but it would do no good. I needed to fix this marriage like I fixed so much else in our house and lives, and I’d chosen to move it to the top of the list, above shopping for Maisy’s dress for the school dance and behind buying Dylan new cleats for soccer. Our marriage needed to be fixed. And what makes the heart grow fonder quicker than absence? Animal sex with strangers, I had to hope.

I tapped my phone screen, watching it light up. “So, we set up our profiles and arrange dates. And then next week, we start.”

He nodded, rubbing his lips together, his eyes wide. He thought I was trying to trick him, as he would never have expected me to suggest anything this extreme, but he knew me well enough to know I solved problems with an unyielding sword. I was a fixer. Straight to the source. And we needed to be fixed. We’d cut the issues out of our marriage with a few romps in the sack, and then things would be better than ever. I was going to make sure of it. I’d accept nothing less.

“Okay. Well, good luck to you, Annie Green,” he said, a small, sad smile playing on his lips as he picked up his phone.

“Good luck, Pete.” I reached for his hand, squeezing it as I used my other hand to press the download button on the app that would change our lives.

The app that would fix everything.

I just had to hope it wasn’t all a terrible mistake.

Chapter Two

PETER

I hadn’t told anyone what we were doing. Not only because I’d promised Ainsley I wouldn’t, but also because I was half convinced they wouldn’t believe me and half convinced they’d tell me I had it way too good. The truth is, I wasn’t sure this was good, even as I downloaded the app and filled in my profile information.

Most of the men I knew who used dating apps went with the stereotypical photos of them flexing at the gym and soaked in sweat for their profile pictures. I was of the understanding those photos impressed other men more than they did the women they were trying to woo. Just look at the difference in magazines—Ainsley’s magazines were filled with men in sweaters and glasses, smiling in front of a soft-palleted living room. In men’s magazines, the men were always ripped, dripping with sweat, angry, and buff. What was the deal? Who were we trying to impress, after all?

I chose a photo of me at work, one that had been taken, but not chosen, for the company profile. I was dressed in a suit and tie, my hair slicked back and neat, with a small, easy smile on my face. It looked like I was saying “Come get to know me. I’m fun and carefree, but also smart and successful.” I triple checked the background to be sure there was nothing there that would give away anything personal about myself or my place of work and hit submit.

It was nice enough.

Look, I was never going to win any awards for the most handsome—I had a nice face, a kind smile, but there was nothing spectacular about me. Not like Ainsley. My wife was remarkable, with natural, auburn hair that fell to her mid-back, never a hair out of place unless we were in bed. Her skin was so porcelain I could trace my fingers along her veins when I studied them. She was curved in all the right places, thin in the others. I had no idea girls like her existed outside of dirty magazines and movies until we met.

So, when she suggested we see other people and remain married, my first thought wasn’t of the freedom it would give someone like me. Instead, it was of the options it would give someone like her.

Don’t get me wrong—I was an average, human, adult male. I had urges and desires and, of course, sleeping with the same woman had gotten old on occasion. Even the most beautiful face gets boring to look at after a while. But that didn’t mean I wanted anyone else looking at her. I loved my wife. We’d been through a huge part of our lives together, struggles and triumphs, good times and bad. We’d brought our children into the world side by side. The thought of anyone else getting to spend time with her, time that should’ve been mine, was devastating.

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