The Husband Game

Every comment that I read makes my heart swell, and my hope grow. Mom is right. Maybe her relationship failed, but that doesn’t mean mine is doomed.

And even Mom seems to be coming around on Charlie, after spending a few nights this week getting to know him. I knew she would. Nobody can resist his charm for long.

“So tell us all about the big day!” Anna insists, as Pat starts cutting up and serving slices of the wedding cake the team bought for us.

“Well…” I pause and glance at Charlie with a shy little smile. “It was more of a small day. But it was perfect. It was just what we wanted to—”

“To pull off your big lie?” From behind us, a voice interrupts. My heart leaps into my throat.

I turn around slowly, already expecting who I’ll see there. But to my surprise, it’s not Sammy, Charlie’s neighbor, standing behind us. It’s another girl I recognize though, one of the ones who had been in her group of friends during the intermission when Anna introduced me to the team members’ girlfriends.

This girl has an arm looped around the waist of one of Charlie’s defensemen, who looks equally pissed off. “Dude,” he says, eyes fixed on Charlie. “What gives? Is this seriously all some kind of publicity stunt?”

“What are you talking about?” Charlie frowns. I’m sure my face is doing the same. I’m not following what’s going on.

But then, as we all watch, the whole room around us gone silent, the girl holds her phone aloft, a familiar icon on it. The icon of the website I write for, the one Fi founded. Except that’s not a site link. It looks like a podcast?

“This just came out a few minutes ago,” the girl declares, glaring right at me like she’s proving something. Then she hits play. A moment later, a voice I do recognize floods the room.

Fiona.

“Tell us exactly what you overheard,” she says softly.

There’s a pause. Then, another voice. Sammy’s. “I live next door to Charlie. He and I were pretty close friends, actually, before he and Lila got together. Once they started seeing each other, I hardly ever saw him, though. He cut himself off from our friend group… that’s never a good sign. Plus, I mean, you know she’s older than him, right?” Fi makes a little sound that may or may not be disagreement, before Sammy continues. “Anyway, I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I overheard voices in the hallway one night as I was getting ready to walk my dog.”

Beside me, Charlie has gone stiff and tense. Behind us, Anna and Pat look confused. I don’t blame them.

My stomach sours. Even though I know what’s coming, it still hits like a punch to the gut, hearing it.

“I heard Lila ask, loud and clear, ‘What if someone finds out this is all fake?’ Then she asked what Charlie’s family would think if they found out about her using their relationship to advance her career. It was pretty easy to put the pieces together.”

“So you think she and Charlie pretended to be in a relationship in order to write the articles she’s been publishing. In order to get more well known, attract more publicity.” On the podcast, Fiona sounds so goddamn concerned. As if doing just that hadn’t been her fucking idea in the first place.

Color drains from my face. Replaced with blinding, white hot fury. How fucking dare she.

“I mean, it happens, doesn’t it?” Sammy is asking on the podcast. “People write fake memoirs all the time because their own lives are boring, but non-fiction sells better than made-up fantasies about happily ever afters.”

“Too right,” Fi crows.

“Turn it off,” Charlie says, his voice low and dangerous.

The girl obliges, but now most of Charlie’s teammates are staring at us. Even Anna, when I turn to look at her for support, has a crease along her forehead, her eyes wide and shocked, like she doesn’t quite know how to process this information. She’s still holding a piece of cake in her hand, too, a piece with Charlie’s face on it, gazing into mine.

I bite the inside of my cheek to damp the swell of nausea I feel.

“What the hell, man?” one of the teammates barks. And then that lets loose the floodgates.

“Was that for real?”

“That was Sammy on that podcast, wasn’t it?”

“Is this all just a game?”

“Do your parents know you’re faking?”

Charlie is saying something, arguing back. But it’s all too much. The glares, the angry expressions. From the corner of the room, someone boos. The girl who played the podcast boos too, her expression twisted and furious.

But I can’t blame her. I can’t blame any of them. After all, this was all a lie to start. Maybe it was stupid of me to think we could turn it around. Make lies into truths.