Page 4 of The Arrangement

With that, she nodded, patting the door with her fingers before she walked from the room. I immediately began to type up an email to our contracting company. My eyes drifted toward the drawer where my phone waited, the allure stronger than I’d expected it would be. I wanted to pull it out, to check it, to browse through the masses of available women again, but I had to pace myself. I had to carry on with my life and make sure I still managed to get work done, too.

I finished the email, adding in the proposed changes to both the budget and timeline, as well as a request that they get back with me before three p.m. I pressed send and glanced back down toward the drawer.

Five minutes.

I’d allow myself five more minutes, and then it was straight back to work.

I checked the clock, as if to enforce it, and opened the drawer. My phone screen was blank, so no matches yet, but had I been expecting anything different? I pressed my thumb to the button that would unlock my phone and opened the app again, brought back to the quirky girl’s face. I hit the heart, watching as the next face appeared. The girl appeared to be fake, or if she wasn’t, everything about her was. The tiny shirt she was wearing was stretched across her extra-large breasts. Her hair was white-blonde, a stark contradiction to the orange of her tan, bright pink lips, and too-thick eyeliner. I supposed some men might find her attractive, but she seemed to be trying far too hard for me. For the first time, I hit the thumbs down button, almost feeling the need to apologize if she were real.

Within seconds, a new face filled the screen, tearing me away from my guilt, and I swallowed.

What?

Gina’s green eyes stared back at me from behind her thick glasses. She had her hair down in the photo, messy and unkempt, a cream-colored oversized sweater hung off one shoulder, and her pale lips were parted slightly.

I stared at the photograph, wondering what to do. It went against all the rules I’d set for myself, but could it have been fate that she was on there? If I hit the heart button, I could explain to her that I was just looking for fun. Maybe she’d be okay with that. I didn’t want anything messy, but the woman in the picture didn’t look messy at all. She looked uncomplicated. Fun.

Maybe I could ease myself into the arrangement by dating someone I knew.

No. Not dating.

Sleeping with.

The thought had my heart racing, my whole body taking notice of the sudden surge of adrenaline.

I stared at the picture a moment longer, wondering what she looked like underneath that sweater. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t pictured it a million times at that point, but now, I might have the chance to find out.

Without allowing myself to think about it any further, I slid my thumb down the screen and pressed the heart button. It pulsed twice, then to my surprise, instead of disappearing like the others had, it exploded, a swarm of hearts trailing down the screen.

I furrowed my brow.

What the—

The hearts disappeared, revealing a white, nearly blank screen with block lettering in the center.

You’ve made a match! Click here to connect.

Chapter Three

AINSLEY

When Peter arrived home, I was at the table waiting for him. The kids had disappeared to their respective corners of the home, as was the routine—sometime around their eighth birthdays, they each decided they no longer needed to spend time with us unless absolutely necessary.

The thought crashed into me as I sank into memories of the four of us waiting anxiously for Peter to arrive home from work back then. I remembered the way Dylan and Riley, our oldest boys, would rush toward their father before he could even shut the door, anxious to tell him all about their days. It used to frustrate him. I recalled so vividly him asking that they wait until he’d had a moment to breathe before they pounced on him. If only we’d known how many moments to breathe we’d have as they grew older.

With Maisy, our youngest and only girl, it was different. Peter had always seemed to have time for her, despite the fact that, of all our children, she was the most independent. Perhaps it was because he saw how fast time had gone by with the other two, perhaps it was because she was the easiest child of our three, or perhaps it was because he realized our time was dwindling with our babies in general.

Now, granted, they weren’t ready to move out or anything. We still had time with them—Dylan was fourteen, Riley twelve, and Maisy ten. But it seemed like a blink from the time we brought them each home until we had a house of teenagers and preteens. I think the truth was, we’d both realized how quickly time had gotten away from us while we were busy doing other things. How easily we’d let it slip on by. And now, we realized that we had just eight years left, less than Maisy’s whole life, which seemed short in comparison to so much else, and then our babies would leave us. They’d be out of the house, on with their lives. And we’d be left with…what?

Our marriage? The one we’d neglected over and over again?

Our home? The one we’d put off repairing in favor of new shoes for the children and extracurriculars?

We had nothing left of what we’d built together in the beginning, and I thought that was what this arrangement had come down to. We needed to decide if there was anything left to fight for.

I didn’t want to be the kind of wife in a loveless marriage or the kind of mother who divorced her children’s father when the youngest turned eighteen—I knew people like that. They were exhausted—tired and bitter, worn down by a life without romantic love. I didn’t want that to be us, but I didn’t know what else to do to fix our marriage aside from this. Date nights and random attempts at couples counseling hadn’t worked… This was my last resort. If this didn’t work, I wasn’t sure there was any hope for us. It had to work.

Peter appeared in the doorway of our kitchen, looking worn out and drained as usual. He sighed, running a hand through his hair, and nodded in my general direction without making eye contact. “Hey,” he said, his voice conflicted. I didn’t have to ask what it was about. It was Tuesday, which meant we had reached the official start of our arrangement.

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