The Arrangement
Kiersten Modglin
Copyright © 2021 by Kiersten Modglin
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
www.kierstenmodglinauthor.com
Cover Design: Tadpole Designs
Editing: Three Owls Editing
Proofreading: My Brother’s Editor
Formatting: Tadpole Designs
First Print Edition: 2021
First Electronic Edition: 2021
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Kiersten Modglin
To the dream-chasers with messy hair, fire in their souls, and no idea what day it is—
This one’s for you.
“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
Margaret Atwood
Chapter One
AINSLEY
My husband had a tell like no other. When he lied to me, his skin flushed bright red. Not the slightest blush red, but I’ve just run a marathon red. It was also the color he became when he was embarrassed.
It was that shade of red I was staring at that night across the dinner table as we discussed our new arrangement.
“So, no questions at all?” he asked, rubbing his thumb over his palm.
“None,” I agreed. “It’s the only way we can be sure it will work. We aren’t accountable to each other for what happens when we’re out. We’ll each have total freedom.”
“Okay.” He was breathless, doing everything he could to avoid meeting my eyes.
“But we should have some other rules.”
That piqued his curiosity. His gaze found mine.
“Other rules… Like what?”
I tapped my finger against my lips, though I already knew what rules I would require.
“First of all, you can only make connections for your given day. You have Thursdays, I’ll do Tuesdays. Every other day of the week, our life has to continue as normal. There are to be no connections made outside of the app at all. We won’t give out our phone numbers, no phone calls or texts, etc. And, whoever you’re with, whatever you do…protection is a must. We’ll each need to get tested after every encounter.”
“Of course,” he said, nodding in agreement.
“This is just for fun, so I think we should also make a rule that we shouldn’t see anyone we’re immensely attracted to. We don’t want either of us to start making genuine connections. It’s all physical.”
He nodded again, swallowing.
“Okay, yeah. Agreed.”
“And the kids can never know,” I said, lowering my voice. “As far as they’re concerned, nothing can change. You’ll be working late on Thursdays, I’ll be working late on Tuesdays. Simple as that.”
He ran his fingers across his lips.
“Are you sure we can do this?”
I looked down at the table as the sickly feeling washed over me—the one that had been ever-present since the arrangement was proposed a week ago.
“I don’t think we have any choice.”
“You know I love you, right?” he asked, the tremble in his voice more noticeable than ever.
“I love you too, Peter. This isn’t about that. We both agree that things aren’t working as they are, and we can either give up and walk away, or we can try something new.” I paused, watching his facial expression harden. “I’m trying here.”
“I know. I know you are… I don’t want to lose you. Okay,” he said, very matter-of-factly. “So when do we start?”
“We can both set up our profiles on the app tonight and start connecting right away.” I held up a finger, jaw dropping. “Oh, I almost forgot. I think we should use fake names. It will be easier to keep it all quiet that way. We don’t want anyone to find out who we are, or that we’re married, or where we work…”
“Yeah, you’re right. I like that idea,” he said, running his palm over his face.
“Okay, great, so I’ll be Annie Green?” I said. A version of my first name and a portion of our last name—Greenburg. “And you can be—”
“Pete Patterson,” he answered quickly. Apparently, he’d already given it some thought. “I’ve always wanted that last name. Like James.” He flushed red again as he mentioned his favorite author. I nodded.
“Okay. And we need to make sure we put that we’re only looking for something casual. I don’t want anyone to get hurt in this process—us or them.”
“We’re going to end up with a lot of married people doing the same thing, I’d say,” he said then laughed. “If only there was an option to just put that as your status.”
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.
Still, I had to agree. I had to accept her conditions because I was worried I’d lose her if I didn’t. I knew my wife. I knew once she’d made up her mind about something, there was little that could be done to dissuade her.
Next, I pulled up the section that said ‘About Pete’ and got to work. I was uninteresting, particularly so because I couldn’t mention anything about my job, wife, or children. I was supposed to have done this last night, but I’d been putting it off, trying to describe myself separately from them. Who was I if not a husband, father, and architect? The truth was, I had no idea. So much of my identity was tied up in who they were, who I was to them. I was part of a package, and to separate myself from said package, left me feeling empty and useless.
Ainsley already had a few matches this morning when I checked her phone—I didn’t read the messages, I was not a masochist—but it only made it more real for me. We were really going to do this, and I had to get in gear if I wanted to line up a date by Thursday.
I sighed and typed something simple and stupid in the ‘About’ section.
40. Middle of my class at a university you could care less about.
I should probably put something cool here. So…
Something Cool.
I rolled my eyes, disgusted by the Dad joke, but it was the best I could come up with, which was embarrassing in and of itself. I skipped adding my school but uploaded two more photos, one of me outside after a hike—all the sweat, none of the flexing—and another of me at the beach before I started forming my Dad gut. Best of both worlds there. Men’s magazine and women’s. In the second picture, there was a beer in my hand, and I wore a carefree smile.
Approachable.
Nice.
I hit save and was immediately taken to a screen with a big green button that appeared to be pulsing.
Let’s find your match! it said. I allowed my thumb to hover over it briefly before pressing the button and watching it transform into a wheel and begin to spin.
The first profile loaded, bringing a photo to the screen. Creative! it said underneath her photo. Was that her name or…? The woman was blonde, younger than me, and she was pretending to laugh in her photo. She seemed cute enough. There were two buttons on my screen: a red heart and a yellow thumbs down. I hit the heart, watched it pulse twice, and then the girl’s face disappeared. I waited, wondering what would happen next as a strange sense of excitement bubbled in my stomach.
Instead of being taken to a way to chat with her, another girl’s photo filled the screen. She was Black, dressed in a yellow bikini with a genuine smile, and held a glass bottle of beer in her hand. Adventurous! I hit the heart button even quicker that time.
The next girl wore hipster glasses and her hair was cut shorter than I would’ve preferred, but there was something quirky and fun about her. I hit the heart without reservation. There was no reason to be picky, after all, when I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I didn’t need to connect with anyone, I wasn’t
trying to build a life with them, I just needed to find them attractive enough to spend an evening with and hope they felt the same way about me. Sudden excitement filled me as I realized I was being presented with a chance to work through every fantasy—every type of woman—I’d ever had any interest in.
A knock on my door caused me to jolt, and I laid the phone down, looking up as Gina stuck her head in my office. “Sorry, am I interrupting something?” She looked as though she’d caught me doing something humiliating. Maybe she had.
“No, sorry. I was texting one of my kids. What’s up?”
She laid a stack of papers on my desk, her long brown hair pulled to one side of her shoulders. She pushed the glasses further up on her nose. “Beckman wanted me to bring you this. It’s a new proposal for the Cameron development.”
I sighed, sliding the phone into the top drawer of my desk as Gina took a seat across from me. “We’re thinking the client might approve the budget change if we can get the timeline moved up by two weeks.”
I ran a finger under the top page of the proposal, looking it over again. “It’ll be tight. We were already pushing it to break ground on the twenty-seventh, but maybe I can call in a few favors.”
She grinned with one side of her mouth, her plump lips pushing out as if to say she knew I could do it. Gina was pretty in a sexy librarian sort of way. She wore oversized sweaters and tight pencil skirts, her hair was usually pulled back into a loose ponytail or bun. She was the kind of woman who could get away with a look like that and somehow still appear corporate and professional.
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