Chapter 2

See attached spreadsheet of pros and cons.

– Marcella

Brigid hums through my headphones while I slouch on my couch and whack bats in the mines of Stardew Valley —the best farming sim game ever made and my single solace. While the marriage candidates may be alcoholics or basement dwellers or sexist or immature or wannabes, they have never once posted an ad for a wife online.

I appreciate that.

Even though I shun them all in favor of having a cute sewer monster roommate every time.

Krobus, man.

That little guy gets me.

“I think you should do it,” Penny says merrily.

“Let’s not rush into this decision. There has to be a trick.” Brigid sighs so loud the noise registers on our three-way Discord call. “Can someone harvest the greenhouse? I’m staying on the island another night.”

“In the mines, beating up my feelings,” I mutter, and smack a slime.

Penny chirps, “On it!”

“As I was saying—” Brigid starts.

“Do we have red cabbage?” Penny interrupts. “Jodi wants one, and I think I can get it to her before I pass out.”

That poor single mother is going to have a cabbage thrust in her face in the dead of night while she’s in bed… Concerned Ape giving us a Key to the Town, which allows us to enter any home no matter the usual operating hours, is almost as hilarious as him letting us drink mayonnaise in the latest update. Most delightful dev ever, I swear.

I say, “I left one in my fridge.”

“Got it!”

Brigid plows on as though we never cut into her deposition at all, “—there has to be some underlying reason Marsh is on the market for a wife. Did you ask why he needs one before Christmas, specifically?”

“I asked if he was going to lose a trust fund. He told me this wasn’t a romcom.”

Penny gasps. “That’s not a no .”

“Allowing his no to have any weight implies he wouldn’t lie to you. He’s a thriving business owner. He absolutely knows how to lie.”

“Smart liars don’t lie. Too much to keep track of.” Penny giggles. “It’s all about reading between the lines.”

In the game, the clock in the top corner of my screen turns an angry red as we near pass out time, so I leave my monster-beating therapy to make a mad dash back to the farm. “I’m very bad at reading between the lines.”

“We know,” Brigid comments.

My already heinous slouch worsens when I pass out two feet from my in-game bed. “I have nothing but hate in my soul.”

Penny giggles again. “We know that, too.”

The corner of my mouth lifts. “So one vote yes, one vote no?” I’m supposed to be reviewing Mr. Marsh’s list of answers tonight and really giving this some serious thought before tomorrow; however, the mines. They call to me. I yearn for them. And it’s better to take such a decision before the council anyway.

“Oh, absolutely not no ,” Brigid says. “I’ve been organizing a list on my other monitor. Pros and cons, level of importance depicted through repeating points as necessary. If we assume he’s being honest and there’s no angle, this doesn’t seem too bad no matter how you slice it. How large a sum of money are we talking just to go through with dating Marsh for a few months?”

“Ample,” I mumble, and trot to my beloved in-game coffee machine. If I had automatic coffee each morning, real life conditions would improve drastically. Unfortunately, I can’t actually afford coffee until Mr. Marsh lets me add one to the breakfast order he pays for.

Maybe that’s a pro for him.

He provides me with the pennies required to feed myself each day.

“Should I designate three or five lines as ‘money’ on the pro side, in all caps?” Brigid asks.

“Is that the only pro?” I mumble and neglect to mention the coffee thing. Because I hate him and all that.

“Absolutely not.”

“What’s something else that’s a pro?”

“Your boss is very hot.”

I think I throw up a little of my fake coffee. Even though my little pixelated sprite character hasn’t so much as drunk it yet. Wild.

“I love his hair. Can you put his pretty hair in the pro list, please?” Penny says as she, adorably, pops into my house and kitchen to offer me a rock. Penguin pebbling. Little, non-verbal I love you’s . It’s a gesture the three of us have had since we were all freshmen in high school, and I still have a bucket of non-virtual stones from Penny and Brigid in the corner of what would be my bedroom.

If I owned a bed.

“Is his pretty hair a valid pro, Marci? If you confirm that his attractiveness holds weight, I can list ‘hot’ five times, in all caps.”

Penny’s little avatar for this farm—a fully white in the hair and eyes disaster of a thing named “Smartfood” after the white cheddar popcorn—dances back and forth in front of me. “What do you say, Marciboo? Hot, rich husband, with pretty hair long enough to put tiny braids in. Many pros in that sentence. Many pros indeed.”

“I think we’re missing a pretty big point. He’s spent the past two months with customer service me. And he only got the tiniest taste of real me this morning. I am not okay with marrying someone for their money and condemning myself to a lifetime of customer service.”

“Real you is the you right now, right?” Penny asks. “Real you is a little shrimp on the couch, scowling at her screen, right?”

I blink, become aware of my face, and learn the momentary smile I experienced a few minutes ago is long gone. “Calling me a shrimp is not good for morale.”

“Is it accurate, though?” Brigid asks.

I uncurl my spine and sit myself up, wiggling my chipped ladybug toes against the cushions as I stretch my back. “Not anymore .”

“We stan a lass with good posture,” Penny chirps. “The point is, we love the you that you are right now. He’s interested at all because unhinged, drunk you wrote him an unhinged, drunk novella. Customer service you isn’t the sarcastic mess that drunk you happens to be. He has to be smart enough to be interested in the real version of you, doesn’t he? He obviously knows how to read people. Are you against giving him credit because you hate him and flinch at the notion he’s seen any part of who you really are?”

My nose scrunches, and I grab some extra Spicy Eels before marching myself out of my little farmhouse and to the mines again. “I dislike giving anyone credit for things they don’t have to work for.”

Brigid cuts in, “Okay, so let’s say you take this offer and stop feeding him customer service Marci. You’ll still have that down payment whenever he realizes you were right. As long as he’s not malicious, you get an amicable breakup. And I really don’t think he’s malicious if he went through all the trouble of answering his own questions and printing them off for you. You don’t lose, unless, of course, by the point of breakup it’ll sting to have him tell you that he can’t stand your character?”

“Oh, no. I’m totally used to people telling me that the second I’m comfortable enough to be myself around them. The issue here is that I am very much not eager to be myself around the bouncing, bubbling manchild.”

“Is he really that immature? He always seems so pretty in pictures and interviews, which I watch, hoping I’ll catch a glimpse of you being super adorable in the back with your little LeoPad.” Penny joins me in the mines, gathering coal like a princess while I beat up all the Dust Sprites and protect her.

“I feed and dress him every day, while he smiles foolishly and never stops moving. He’s a picky eater, too. I’m supposed to plan his meals around a nutrition guideline that would put public school lunch ladies to shame, and yet I’m still needing to adjust and adjust and adjust because he didn’t provide me with a list of foods he doesn’t like. And, sometimes, it isn’t even the food he doesn’t like. It’s the combination. He sorts mixed vegetables, Penny. I once got him stir-fry noodles then watched him disassemble it for an hour during a Zoom call with his shareholders. Every leek, chicken, and broccoli was segregated into three distinct piles before he took a bite. A cold bite. And that wasn’t okay, so he made me heat it up in three different frying pans. That I had to go out and buy and now keep in the break room to take with me whenever we travel anywhere.” I rake in a breath, let it out slowly. A manic laugh leaves me. “If I were his wife, I’d end up killing one of us. Possibly both, him and then myself to avoid prison.”

Brigid clears her throat. “ Wife is already off the table. Completely off the table. That boy doesn’t need a wife. He needs a live-in mother, and that is not going to be you.” A pregnant pause slips into the static, and I don’t like it. “However…three and a half months of giving it a chance…then going debt-free?”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Penny murmurs. “He’s absolutely giving off little helpless puppy vibes, so not husband material, but also not unsafe.”

“Leading him on for money is incredibly dishonest. Maintaining this relationship for three months at such a capacity that he doesn’t break up with me before I get all the money I need to pay off my debts then saying ha ha no when he thinks I’m going to go through with marrying him is dishonest.”

“Is it though?”

“Yes.”

Brigid clears her throat. “But… is it ? He kind of seems to like normal you, so maybe you don’t have to pretend. He can’t blame you if three months isn’t enough time for you to accept a proposal. You’ve told him the truth. If he wants to take you on a few dates and find out for himself, you’ve been perfectly honest.”

“Truly,” Penny chimes in, “to not let him find out for himself insults his intelligence, which is unkind. Get the told you so moment, or get the full amount to pay off your debt. Either option sounds great to me.”

I sag back into my couch cushions, realizing Penny and I have done just about an entire day in the mines. Except I’ve stopped moving forward, so she’s just running circles around me beside a neglected ladder to the next cave level. Once I’ve returned to my true form as a shrimp, I mutter, “That is the most depressing I told you so I can think of. I told you I sucked and we wouldn’t work out. I told you I was entirely disagreeable.”

“You said that an affront against your character wouldn’t bother you,” Brigid reminds me.

“It wouldn’t bother me. I’m just explaining that there is no joy to be found in this particular telling so.”

“Fair.”

“Do it!” Penny cheers. “Do it for me, please? Let me live vicariously through you. I’ve always wanted to date a rich man. I’ve been stuck with losers who have said no to dessert at restaurants a little too fast for a little too long. I am dying for a Coca-cola cake from Cracker Barrel and someone with enough spare change to get it for me.” She sniffs. “I would simply go feral for that kind of man. Do you hear me? Feral .”

The bar is on the floor. It’s embedded in the tile.

Why is my precious Penny dating the moles who would dig under it?

Brigid says, “As the happily married woman among us, I won’t ask you to do it for me. I won’t say that men aren’t wholly disappointing sometimes, even when you do love and cherish them, unto death. I will just confirm that you have been perfectly honest with him, and you can continue to be because I sincerely can’t think of an angle where this benefits him beyond accepting that he likes you for you. It’s one autumn. Can you stomach one autumn in exchange for a lifetime of being debt-free?”

One autumn.

One autumn of crippling embarrassment.

One autumn of dropping the customer service fa?ade and being my raw, sarcastic, disagreeable self for a man’s perusal and judgment.

One exhausting, dreadful autumn.

“Fine,” I mutter. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow during lunch.”

Riveting spreadsheet. Are you aware I can access the edit history? You deleted HOT fourteen times.

– Finnegan