by Heather Gean
Here, Have a Husband
by
Heather Gean
All contents copyright © 2010 by Heather Gean. Cover image copyright © 2010 by Julie Miller. All rights reserved worldwide. May not be copied or distributed without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Google, Wikipedia, and any other trademarks are used in reference only and are subject to their own rights and regulations. The author is in no way affiliated with these companies.
For Julie and Amanda, without whom my writing career would’ve died years ago, and Spencer, who will never let me give up on my dreams
Chapter 1
I hadn’t expected to spend my Saturday drowning in a sea of white silk. I was twenty-one; my Saturday mornings were generally reserved for hangovers, and my shopping excursions usually consisted of jeans and flip-flops. When I’d woken up that morning, downed a cup of coffee and two aspirin, I had not added ‘buy a wedding dress’ to my list of things to do. I should’ve known when my mother called and suggested shopping that there was an oh-by-the-way.
Oh, by the way, you’re getting married.
Sure, I’d made a quick visit to the Department of Marriage Licensing a few weeks earlier, but I hadn’t anticipated such a quick turnover followed by pressuring expectations of a speedy union in holy matrimony. I’d filled out the ridiculously long questionnaire that was the government’s solution for embarrassingly high divorce rates and a viable opportunity to create jobs and revenue in a struggling economy. The system matched each person with his or her most compatible mate, and the name printed on the notification letter sent to me was the only person I could legally marry. While the process was a requirement for a marriage license, it wasn’t required that each person fill one out. But after graduating college and securing a job that paid the bills, I did what any respectable politician’s daughter and southern girl would do - I bought right into it. So it could be argued that I was responsible for all of the misery I felt that morning, rifling through endless racks of wedding gowns with my mother, but my intentions had been simple. After all, who wants to be alone?
“Oh, Rainy, this dress would look perfect on you,” my mother said. She held up a hideous mass of white chiffon with a heinous smile. Dresses like that should’ve been illegal.
“Just look at that lace,” just-call-me-Joanne said. Her Southern belle drawl was as fake as the thin plastic of her nametag. “Do you like lace?” she asked me.
“She loves lace,” my mother answered before I could open my mouth. I wasn’t sure if it was her insistence upon selecting my dress or the hangover that made me feel so nauseous. The new-carpet smell of the store didn’t help either.
“A new line of shoes just came in yesterday. Let me run into the back and bring out a few for y’all to take a look at,” Joanne said. My mother thanked her until she had disappeared into the white haze. I could not imagine a fleet of ugly white shoes to match the gowns.
“Mom, I hate lace,” I said in the most remorseful of tones. My eyes were drawn to the dress she held in the same way they would be magnetized to a train wreck.
“Don’t be difficult, Rainy. You do not hate lace.” Her tone was sugar-coated and pleading. Unless overnight I’d been turned into a five-year-old or sold into slavery, she had no right to tell me what I did and didn’t like. I heaved a sigh. My mother, I thought.
“We don’t have to buy a dress today. I haven’t even spoken to this so-called incredible man. We don’t even know he exists!” I argued. She rolled her eyes at me and disappeared behind a bridal party of mannequins.
Truthfully, we both knew he existed. Anyone I tossed the name to would have some inkling of recognition. His name was Ashley Schroeder, the latter of which could be found on refrigerators, washing machines, driers, and other random kitchen appliances in millions of homes across the world. The letter I’d received, besides including the name of the heir to this billion-dollar fortune, also included some trivial information about him as well: his New York residence, a birth date that revealed him to be twenty-four years old, and the extension to his home telephone number. After receiving the initial blow, I hoped to read on about how my responses on the questionnaire had matched up to Ashley Schroeder’s, maybe some sort of compatibility score, but the letter ended with Best wishes from the Department of Marriage Licensing. Apparently that’s all I needed to know.
“Momma, seriously.” I tracked her down in hopes of getting her out the door before Joanne returned with foot torture devices.
“Rainy, this is non-negotiable. I may not know a damn thing about the DML or a ridiculous compatibility test, but I know how to plan a wedding, and I know that it’s important to for a bride to look beautiful on her wedding day. Now, we are going to find a dress, and you are going to be happy about it.” Lorraine Clarke was a mother on a mission, and I was the little girl trailing along hoping to avoid verbal injury.
Just about that time the rescue squad I’d texted for help earlier that morning waltzed through the open door to the dress shop, hours behind schedule. Liz and Sasha entered arm-in-arm, their contrasting heights suggesting them as a comedic pair from the moment they stepped through the door. Liz pushed her giant designer sunglasses into her blonde hair and squinted into the ocean of dresses. “Good morning, bride-to-be!”
Sasha elbowed her for me, the blow landing on Liz’s shoulder, and put an arm around Liz. “Forgive her for she knows not what she does,” Sasha said. I smiled for the first time all morning. “And we brought coffee!”
I took it from her as if it were the elixir of life. It was how I got through college, and it seemed the habit wouldn’t be leaving me anytime soon. I prayed that Joanne would not spot it and snatch it from me as if I were a toddler who would spill it on all of the merchandise.
“Elizabeth! Sasha! I’m so glad you’re here!” my mother said as she appeared from behind an overflowing rack. “You can help Rainy pick out a dress. You know how she is before noon.” She winked at my best friends as if they were her reinforcements.
“I am capable of picking out my own dress.”
Liz laughed, knowing that she was responsible for every cute piece of clothing I owned. “You would live in ripped jeans and faded concert T-shirts if you could. Thankfully, you have me.” She winked one of her big blue eyes at me. I was on the verge of banning that gesture for the rest of the day. As I made a face at her, I realized that she was exactly the kind of girl I’d have guessed to be paired with Ashley Schroeder: petite, fabulous, status-oriented.
I uncomfortably stood near the open front door of the dress shop, close enough to catch a few breaths of fresh air as I guzzled down the coffee. I would rather hang out in the front of the store with Sasha and the bald mannequins than dive into the millions of dollars worth of dresses behind me with drill sergeants Lorraine and Liz. I didn’t need Joanne mentioning once again that my pasty white skin was hardly any darker than the white dresses or my mother complaining that I needed to take the stud out of my nose because pretty girls don’t have facial piercings. I was ready to smother myself with one of the plastic dress bags. My distaste for shopping, along with almost every other aspect of me, should have clued everyone in that I wasn’t high society trophy wife material.
“What the hell am I doing here?” I asked Sasha bitterly.
“You’re making your mother very happy.”
“I can’t actually get married. I’m twenty-one years old! I have years of life left.”
Sasha laughed. “It’s not like you’re dying. Don’t be so dramatic. You haven’t even met him yet, how can you have cold feet? Listen, you graduated college over a month ago. You’ve got a job - a good job. You’ve got a really great fiancé.”
“We don’t know he’s
great,” I argued. “He could be an ax-murderer. Or into radio pop. And just because I can pay my rent doesn’t make it a good job.” Truthfully, I loved my job at a local art museum, but that wouldn’t have furthered my point in the argument at all. “I guess my point is - what was wrong with the trial and error approach? It worked for my parents. And my grandparents! Just because over fifty percent of the country couldn’t make a solid decision doesn’t mean no one can.”
Sasha sighed. “Something you should’ve thought about before you got the government involved?” I scrunched up my face at her in disgust. “It’s real simple. If you hate him, don’t marry him. Nobody says you have to.”
“Well, it’s him or no one.”
“Either way, just give him a chance. But remember, after you walk down the aisle there is no turning back. Good luck trying to get a divorce anymore. I heard you have to go through the Supreme Court for it.”
“Thanks, you’re making me feel tons better.”
“Well, just be glad you’re not gay. The government ignores those people all together. Be glad you got a chance.”
I forced a smile onto my face. “I’m overjoyed, really.”
I stood there, brewing over my coffee, when Liz shrieked from across the store. “I’ve found it!” she said. While my mother jetted to her side, I slowly shuffled that way.
“Found what? Your mind? Well, thank God for that,” I murmured unnoticed. Liz ignored me and another shriek followed. When she spun around, I was surprised to see that the dress she held wasn’t atrocious.
“This has to be it,” she said. I was captivated by the dainty beadwork on the bodice and the flowing folds of the skirt. I didn’t hate it, and that frightened me. It was actually quite perfect, as far as white wedding gowns went.
“Um,” I stuttered. “Okay. Maybe.” Surprise raised my mother’s brows.
“You like it?” my mom asked. The two vultures stared anxiously.
“Yeah,” I confessed. “It’s… not bad.”
“Coming from Rainy, that’s a compliment,” Liz noted.
I thought my mother was going to faint from excitement. “Joanne,” she called, “we need a fitting room!” Then she took a moment to give me that misty eyed look, the same one she’d given me when I graduated high school and college, and I realized that there was no getting out of trying that dress on.
Liz proudly hooked the satiny neck of the hanger over my hand. She had fabulous fashion sense, and I trusted her with my wardrobe and most of my secrets, but somehow I felt as if I’d just sold my soul to the government. She saw the hesitation in my eyes. “Just try it! If you don’t like it we’ll find something else.” Like the dress or spend hours hunting for the right one – what pressure.
“It’s going to look amazing on you!” Sasha said. Though I wasn’t sure she was capable of telling me otherwise, I took it as a compliment.
When the door in the fitting room shut behind me, I imagined that just-call-me-Joanne was a magician who had just shut me into a box. All she needed was a top hat and a wand and I would gladly disappear.
~*~
The long, pink garment bag loomed as ominously as that happy sort of color could as it hung in my closet. It looked out of place among all the earth tones and neutrals packed on either side of it. A matching pink box sat atop the mound of junk on the floor under the hanging rack. I didn’t need a crystal ball or x-ray vision to know that inside of it was a pair of white heels that would be hell to walk in. The whole ensemble made me shudder.
Liz and Sasha sat on my bed while I balanced on the back legs of my desk chair. We had ended the painful shopping excursion, and late afternoon found us lounging around my apartment and giggling like high school girls over a crush in a yearbook. For the past half-hour we’d entertained ourselves by Googling my fiancée. I was amazed by the utter crap that could be found on the internet.
The obvious things showed up first. Wikipedia had a wonderful collection of information regarding his richer than God parents, their German heritage, the household appliances company that his father had single-handedly started and skyrocketed into recognition, and Ashley’s two debutante sisters. Christopher Ashley Schroeder, known by his middle name, attended a slew of private schools, including a boarding school in London for a short time, and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in business and international affairs, going on to work as the Vice President for his father’s company. He was a notorious bachelor, rarely seen in public with women, but his classic, blue-eyed, chiseled sort of handsome stared at me from the left side of the screen and argued otherwise. He had played the piano since age five and was a champion lacrosse player throughout high school. Obviously the guy was well-bred and well-educated, and his squeaky clean biography intimidated me as we scrolled through it.
Sure, I had a set of diplomas and degrees with the names of private education institutions scripted across the top, all in the Memphis area where I’d lived since birth. I’d briefly played soccer and tennis during high school, and the lesser known cheerleading in middle school, but none of that made the news. I could be found as a subnote on a Wikipedia page about my father, newly re-elected Representative Charles Clarke of Tennessee. Otherwise, my existence was unbeknownst to the majority of the population, and I had enjoyed it thus far. I liked that my musical interests and uneventful love life weren’t up on the internet for discussion, and the fact that his were put him on a different level of being prestigious and wealthy, a level that I had rarely even considered.
In addition to the basic stuff, Ashley had something of a fan club floating around online. Three entire websites were devoted to him. Countless blogs specialized in Ashley sightings. In a matter of thirty minutes we’d learned that his favorite color was red, he liked his coffee black, he had a whole room in his house dedicated to a gnome collection, and was allergic to cockroaches. I scrolled down one of the most popular Ashley blogs we’d come across, which had so many hearts and blinking, glittery animations on it that it was difficult to read. “He hates dogs,” I read aloud. I glanced over at my black and white pit bull rescue, Ringo Starr, who was lying across Liz’s lap. “Sorry, buddy.”
“What the hell? No naked pics? No sex tapes? C’mon, where’s the good stuff?” Liz asked. We politely ignored her.
“This stuff cannot be true. He doesn’t sound like your type,” Sasha said. She rubbed Ringo affectionately behind his ears as he yawned. Any guy who didn’t like dogs was not my kind of guy.
“Rainy has a type?” Liz asked. I shot her an evil glare. “What? It’s just been a while since you’ve dated, that’s all. I’m not sure what sort of guy you were hoping for.”
“He’s a vegetarian. That’s a plus,” Sasha threw in. I grimaced.
“I dunno. I was hoping for someone a little less… famous.” Bored with sifting through horribly misspelled forum posts, I headed for the kitchen. “Someone take over. I need a drink.” This day easily transformed drinking before five o’clock from an alcohol abuse problem to a strong dose of sanity.
“Grab me something,” Liz said as she slid into the hot seat. I could always count on Liz to drink with me, no matter the occasion or the time of day, unlike Sasha who guzzled down gallons of purified water and green tea on a regular basis.
Just as I reached the doorway Liz let out the most scandalous oh-ho-ho I’d ever heard in my life. Sasha leaned in closer, and I found myself hovering over the two of them and the computer screen within seconds. “Ashley Schroeder is reportedly something of a playboy,” she divulged. Then, she began to read aloud. “He likes wooing women with wine and expensive things. He prefers positions that will give him control. He indulges in things like handcuffs and blindfolds. Ashley loves to dominate. He has also been known to suck women’s toes.”
“What the hell are you reading?” I said. “How can he go from being boring and never dating to being a sexual miscreant?”
Sasha looked horrified. “This stuff obviously can’t be trusted.”
Liz, who had been known to be somewhat promiscuous herself, seemed intrigued. “Maybe he likes to be dominated. That wouldn’t be all bad.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll just pull out my dominatrix kit and get right on that,” I said sarcastically. Then, more than ever, I needed that drink.
Before I could even get out of my bedroom, the doorbell rang. Ringo’s ears perked up, and he jetted for the door. The doorbell drove him insane, and because of this, anyone who knew me would knock instead. Once I wrestled him into his kennel, I jogged for the door.
A pimply boy wearing the most ridiculous green uniform stood on the other side. His eyes darted over me nervously as if I was the wildly barking animal. The glass vase he held in his trembling hands looked as if it might topple to the floor at any moment.
“Uh… hello. Delivery for Miss Clarke?” he squeaked. I looked again at the vase. Masses of red roses bloomed out of the narrow neck of it. Somehow, I thought he’d made some mistake.
“Rainy Clarke?” I asked.
He blinked a few times before checking the clipboard in his other hand. “Lorraine Clarke, yes.” I stood dumbfounded for a few moments, examining the velvety petals of the roses. No one ever sent me flowers, and no one ever used my real first name. I had always been Rainy; Lorraine Clarke was my mother. “Is Miss Clarke here?”
I stuttered before collecting myself. “I’m Rainy Clarke - Lorraine, whatever.” He handed over the vase and a white envelope.
“Sign here.” The clipboard he held was shakier than the vase had been, probably because Ringo’s barks continued to echo through the apartment. I balanced the vase between my arm and hip then attempted to scrawl my signature across the bottom line. “Thanks, ma’am. You have a nice day.”
“Yeah… you too,” I said as he scampered down the stairs.
I immediately returned to my bedroom. When I placed the ornate vase onto my desktop, Liz’s eyes grew as large as the delivery boy’s had been. “Holy shit. Who are those from?”