The Husband Game

by Wylder, Penny

  The Husband Game

  Penny Wylder

  Copyright © 2020 Penny Wylder

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or businesses, organizations, or locales, is completely coincidental.

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  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

  Epilogue

  Books By Penny Wylder

  1

  Unable to believe that I’m actually subjecting myself to this kind of torture—and yet also, at the same time, being painfully aware that my livelihood depends on it—I lug the heavy easel and collapsible stool and saddlebag packed with watercolors across the Hartford College campus.

  All around me, students are bundled into jackets and sweaters in preparation for the fall weather that descended upon the town without warning this week. In my bulky peacoat and brightly striped scarf, thin leather gloves and earmuffs, I like to think that I blend right in. I’m on the shorter side of 5 feet, and people always tell me that between my big baby blue eyes and my long blonde waves, I pass for much younger than I really am.

  Hopefully I can pass for twelve, though, because that’s how old some of the students trudging past me on the icy sidewalks look to my eye. Granted, I’m only 27, but still. College feels like a million years ago already. Something from another lifetime. A lifetime when I used to be able to pick up free meals whenever I wanted (albeit not great ones) from the campus cafeteria. A lifetime before I had to constantly worry about deadlines and accepting the next freelance assignment thrown my way.

  Happier times.

  Well, except for when it came to my home life. But I push any thoughts about my father from my mind right now. The last thing I need is to make myself angrier than I already feel about having to degrade myself like this today.

  My phone buzzes the moment I reach the engineering building—the directions for which I needed to check about a dozen times en route here. I went to Hartford, but I swear the buildings have all moved around since I was a student. Or maybe it’s just because, as a lit major, I never ventured this deep out into the STEM undergrads’ territory.

  The engineering building turns out to be a squat, gray, bunker-like building, hard to distinguish from any of the other squat, ugly gray buildings around it. They look nothing like the half of campus I was accustomed to, all red brick towers and ivy creeping up their sides. That half of campus looked like a New England prep school daydream, the sort of place that made you want to curl up under a blanket with a good book and talk about philosophy until 3 in the morning.

  This half of the campus looks like a dungeon crossed with a hospital. Much less cozy vibes. More run-the-other-direction-fast-as-you-can, if you ask me.

  Ignoring those instincts, I set the easel down across from the main doors into Branford 412 (even the building name sounds like a stuffy old scientist), and dig my cell from my pocket.

  Fiona. My friend, and also VP of the news outlet I’m doing this current story for. She’s building an online magazine from the ground up and has hired me on her editorial staff. Well, strike that. I am the editorial staff, aside from Fi. It has been a complete lifesaver. Until Fiona’s came through, I’d been struggling to sell more than one story a month—and at $200 pay for each, that doesn’t even come close to making my rent, let alone paying for anything else.

  Now, I can count on at least seven or eight stories with her magazine each month. I still need to hustle my ass off on top of this gig, to fill it in with other paying jobs and one-off contracts, in order to support myself. But Fiona gave me the baseline security I needed to be able to quit my shitty day job in retail and focus on my writing full-time. Thanks to her, I’m able to afford a small, if far outside of town, place of my own, instead of crashing in my mother’s basement.

  I’m also able to call myself a full-time writer, something I’d dreamed of doing ever since long before I first set foot on Hartford’s campus.

  Are you in position yet? Fiona asks.

  The only reason I agreed to take on this particular assignment was to try and repay some of the favor I owed to her. And she really wants this story. She wants an entire issue dedicated to modern love and its viability. She’s sure it’ll make her online magazine take-off.

  Just got here. Setting up now, I type out, my fingers already numb. How I’m going to coax them into painting in this weather, I have no idea. But I need to try.

  For Fiona.

  Great. Keep me posted. This is going to be your juiciest story yet! I promise, you’ll get so many eyes on it, Lila. She ends her text with a winking face.

  My heart sinks all the way down my throat into my stomach. The last thing I want, to be perfectly honest, are a ton of eyes on this piece in particular. It isn’t the type of article I want to write. It feels, quite frankly, humiliating.

  “Husband-Hunting: 1950s Style” is the current working title we’re going with, though I have a feeling it will change to something even catchier and more nausea-inducing. The plan is for me to follow a list of dating advice we found in a 1950 issue of Today’s Woman, entitled “10 Foolproof Steps to Land Yourself a Note-Worthy Husband.”

  Never mind that a husband is the last thing I actually want. Never mind that I am staunchly anti-this kind of dating advice in the first place. This kind of rote obsession with outward appearance, with meeting the so-called “perfect” match and settling down, needs to be put to rest once and for all, if you ask me. 1950s women didn’t need husbands; they needed careers and the ability to work and be treated as equals, on par with the men of their generation.

  Same with me. I don’t need a man right now—I need a career break. I learned a long time ago that you can’t trust a man to help you in that regard. Just look at my mother. She and my father agreed when she first got pregnant with my older brother—Mom would quit grad school and take ten years off to raise us kids past our early years. Get us settled into school, all of that. Then, she would go back to grad school while my father would step back a bit from his career to pick up the slack with the family duties.

  Instead, the minute the time came for Dad to step back, he announced something completely different: that he needed a break from everything. Work, yes, but also marriage, and his family. He took off with most of the cash in their joint bank account and his secretary in tow, and vanished to California somewhere.

  I haven’t spoken to him since. My older brother tried to track him down, and managed a couple polite, if stilted, phone calls. Dad lives in Seattle with a different woman—not the secretary—and a pair of dogs. He has no interest in talking to me or my younger brother. No interest in rekindling our family life.

  That is what happens when you trust a man to help out with your career. My mother never could go back to grad school—she had to take two jobs just to make enough money to support our family. She claims she doesn’t regret it, that if she had to sacrifice everything for us all over again, she would.

  But I saw the way she teared up with pride at my graduation. And I notice how proud she is
every time I publish a new article—how she shares it with all of her friends and across her social media accounts (my mom is a big lover of social media, though she still uses it with all the efficiency of someone twice her age).

  The last thing I would ever do is go down the same road she did. I know she wouldn’t want that for me. And I don’t want it for myself either. I want to support myself, to build my own career. To be the strong, independent career woman my mother could—and should—have been allowed to become.

  I grit my teeth and prop up a canvas in front of my easel. I wrestle my stool open and settle in.

  If becoming a successful writer means I have to do a few humiliating things in order to make my career happen, then so be it. This article will just be one of many. I can grit my teeth and bear the awkwardness for a little while.

  I pull out my watercolors next, and an old water mug that I plan to use to mix them. While I do that, I use my free hand to tap open the photos I took on my phone, of the original article in an old issue of Today’s Woman. The image looks so old it has yellowed along the edges.

  I zoom in, just to make sure I’m following the instructions to the letter. To that end, I skim the first few lines of the article.

  Step 1: Make sure you go after a husband with a successful career (or future career potential!). For all you ladies lucky enough to live close to a college campus, this should be a no-brainer! Men love a creative, mysterious woman. Set up an easel outside the classroom building (science or engineering buildings are best!) and paint until a lucky young suitor starts catching your eye. You’ll know you’ve hooked him when he stops to ask what you’re working on!

  Addendum: Don’t worry if you haven’t got much talent in the painting realm, ladies! Most men in this career path wouldn’t know a Rembrandt from a Monet. If he questions your style, simply tell him it’s modern art! You’ll seem even more hip and with it, then!

  This writer sure did love exclamation points. I sigh and crack my neck, then squint past the easel up at the double doors of the engineering school. If I read the class schedules right online, I have about ten minutes until the bell rings and class lets out.

  Ten minutes until I have to pretend to flirt with college kids, in order to write an article about how dating techniques from the 1950s apply nowadays. No pressure or anything. I heave another sigh, and then I decide that the only thing I can do at this point is have some fun with it, if possible.

  I crack open the watercolors and mix a daub of water with a few of the colors. Then I cast my eye around campus. Whether the article recommends modern art or not, I’ve never been a fan of painting directly from my imagination. I prefer to at least have some real-world inspiration to focus on.

  It’s been a while since I painted anything. I’ve been so busy pitching articles and scrambling to meet editorial deadlines lately, I don’t really have any time for hobbies or fun activities on the side. It’s just work work work, no play. And I’m fine with that, for the most part. Really. I love what I do.

  But I did used to love art classes. I took them my junior and senior years as electives. Nothing too strenuous, not the types of classes actual art majors had to take, which kept them in the studio from morning until night. Just the fun elective kinds of classes, which gave me an excuse to focus on something creative that didn’t involve words. Something that I didn’t plan to build my whole career around.

  It gave me a welcome respite, especially during the madness of my thesis-writing period. When I had to break my back putting in ten hour days at the library on top of my classes, art was a nice little escape. Somewhere my brain could relax.

  I try to channel that energy again as I settle on painting the big maple tree outside of the engineering building. Unlike the squat, ugly gray structures all around it, that tree has natural beauty. It’s stately, with a thick trunk and expansive branches. I can only hazard a guess at how old it must be—at least a hundred. It boggles my mind that something has managed to survive here, amidst so much unnatural concrete, for so long.

  Plus, it’s beautiful. Autumn officially began last week, but this week, it feels like it skipped straight past fall into hard winter. But unlike many of the leaves in town, which just went from green or greenish yellow to dead and ugly brown, this tree has managed to change colors properly. Its fat red maple leaves have gone bright scarlet around the top, like a halo, and trail down to deep, burnt oranges around the middle, with a smattering of bright yellows mixed in.

  It takes me a while to mix the colors correctly. Once I have them, I start to blend from the yellows first—let those dry, and then work my way up through orange to the deeper reds.

  As I paint, I forget about the chill in the air. I forget that my hands, now exposed, feel numb and tingle with each hoist of the brush. I forget everything except the feel of the brush stroking across the canvas, and the paint slowly expanding from dots of color into a real, recognizable image.

  I’m so deeply entranced by the process, that I don’t even hear the bell ring to signal the end of classes. I barely notice the chatter as students spill out of the engineering building and tromp past. All I can see is the tree; all I can feel are my hands, creating something out of nothing.

  Art is a little bit like magic, I think.

  That’s what I’m thinking when a tingle sparks at the back of my head, and I realize, belatedly, that there’s someone standing behind me. Very close to me, in fact.

  “That’s pretty,” a voice says, low and masculine.

  I swallow hard and lower the brush. My mind skips to the next part of the article. What did it say to do after Step 1? Why didn’t I read ahead to review Step 2 again?

  Probably because I didn’t think Step 1 would actually lead any guys on this campus to talk to me. Crap.

  I vaguely remember something about smiling a lot, and a word of advice about listening more than you talk… But how were you supposed to begin the conversation? Talking about art again?

  Oh well, too late now to check the article. So I plaster on my most winning smile—I’m sure 1950s housewives everywhere would be proud—and swivel on my portable stool to face the guy behind me. “Do you think so?” I ask, in what I hope is a convincingly demure tone.

  The guy behind me is tall and lanky, with stringy dark hair and a broad smirk. “You really have an eye for nature. Or natural beauty, at any rate.” He bends closer. Too close. And he is not looking at the painting at all.

  I shrink back on instinct, feeling like he’s invading my space, and swallow around a warning lump in my throat. “Um. Thanks.”

  “Makes sense, given how gorgeous you are.” His eyes sweep from mine over my body, and I can’t help but notice the way he lingers on my hips, even though he can’t be able to see much. I’m wearing a peacoat, for Christ’s sake.

  I wonder what the 1950s husband-searching advice is for creepers. I also wonder if there’s any way I can salvage this for the article somehow. 1950s advice leads to stalkers? I clear my throat, trying to rack my brain for some polite way to scare him off. “Listen, it’s been great chatting, but—”

  “Why don’t you come grab a drink with me?” he interrupts, bringing his hand to rest on my shoulder.

  I flinch, and brush it off, before I can stop myself. Whether I’m impersonating an old-fashioned girl or not, there are some instincts I cannot—and will not—ignore. “No thank you,” I say.

  “You aren’t very friendly, you know.” He plants himself next to me, in the universal Guy Who Cannot Take a Hint stance.

  One I’m all too familiar with. See? I mentally scream at Fiona—well, at her editors who wanted this story, anyway. This is why we shouldn’t take advice from decades ago.

  This is why we shouldn’t bother with dating at all. I snap my watercolor case closed and shove it into my bag, getting ready to flee. “My mother told me I shouldn’t talk to strangers,” I reply, a cold note of disdain in my voice.

  That was probably a mistake. He laughs and reaches out to sna
tch my painting from the easel. My heart sinks. I can, and will, leave without it if need be. But I’d started to get attached to that painting, performance piece or not. “Do you always do what your mother tells you?” he asks, smirking. “Or do you ever branch out and try to be naughty once in a while?”

  I narrow my eyes and shove to my feet, drawing myself up to my full, completely not intimidating height. “Give that back,” I demand. I’m proud that my voice doesn’t shake.

  All around us, clusters of other students hurry past, boys and girls. None of them so much as cast a glance in our direction. If I scream, would they help? Probably. But I don’t want to cause a total scene. Especially when I’m not a student, and I came onto campus posing as one of them in order to flirt undercover.

  Could I get into trouble for this? I wonder belatedly. I mean, everyone here is at least 18—and everyone in the engineering wing is older, because I’m pretty sure most are in the grad school. So like, early 20s. But still, I do feel strange being here, doing what I’m doing.

  Especially now.

  “I’ll give it back,” the much younger than me, and yet still twice my size guy taunts. “If you come over here and give me something in exchange.”

  “Fat fucking chance,” I snarl, any of my housewife manners long since abandoned. I dig in my pocket for my keys. I’ve taken enough self-defense classes to know where I need to stick these. How to throw a punch, too, in a way that will do more damage than this guy will be expecting me to throw.

  Luckily I don’t have to find out whether I can get arrested for attacking a creep of a student, because a second later, another voice rings across the green.