Chapter 1 #2
She was just so damn sexy. He remembered his wedding, when a drunken Phelps pulled him aside during the dancing, smelling
of aftershave and gin, and slurred into his ear, “You won the fucking lottery. Don’t fuck it up.”
Bennett had gone back to this memory so many times in the past five years. Played it over and over in his head.
“I won’t,” Bennett had promised, high on life, high on the wedding party he never would have imagined he could afford, and
the pale length of his wife’s back, mostly exposed in her high-front, low-back ivory gown. No one ever talked about backs;
then again, no one else got Olivia’s back.
“Because I will take her from you,” said Phelps, squeezing Bennett’s neck tight in the crook of his arm and breathing straight
into his ear. “I will fucking take your wife if you fuck this up.”
Bennett laughed. “I won’t!” He escaped with one wrenching move and captured Phelps’s neck in return.
“Hands off my hot wife, man.” Still, he had been pleased Phelps was jealous.
Anyway, Phelps had his longtime high school girlfriend, Rebecca, or Bunny as they all called her.
Bunny had boobs for days, and Phelps made no secret of how much he enjoyed them.
“I’m happy for you,” said Phelps when Bennett released him. They were both red in the face by then, the groom and his best
man, their ties askew.
“Thanks, man. You know I love you.”
It was probably the most openly sincere moment they’d ever shared. There was always sincerity between them—it was just buried
ten levels down, under the banter and the ribbing and the bullshitting and the sarcasm—that way of talking that, to Bennett,
always felt like home.
“A shower, you were saying?” Olivia, dish towel clutched between her hands, leaned against the counter.
“Yes,” said Bennett. Alex wriggled loose and scurried off. Bennett stuffed his hands in the pockets of his slim-fit khakis.
“Go. Unburden thyself.”
He was secretly hoping for a shower with Olivia, which often came with benefits. She could go upstairs, he’d make sure the kids were all ensconced in the next movie,
and . . .
Olivia chewed her bottom lip and gave one slow-motion nod. “Yeah. I do need to shower before the party. That sounds nice.”
She gave him not quite a smile but something maybe close.
“Don’t rush. Make it a nice long shower,” encouraged Bennett. His voice went teasing. “Also, I don’t want to give you too many ideas about what the party may hold, sugarplum, but . . . A night off, you and me . . .”
She slowly lifted one eyebrow. “On an air mattress?”
“Who cares?” Bennett sashayed forward, kicking his long legs up at the knee and sinking his hips low in a silly walk like he imagined Fred Astaire might do across a stage.
He looped an arm around a surprised Olivia’s waist. He may only have been thirty-five, still in his prime, but all of a sudden, he wanted to remember what it felt like to be twenty-five.
With a jaunty grin, he started to sing “Fly Me to the Moon” in a faux-jazz voice. Their wedding song.
A real smile was lurking just under the tight line of Olivia’s lips. Bennett squeezed at her ribs, and sure enough, the line
broke, and her mouth split into a smile as he spun her. She tossed her hair back and laughter spilled out. Her dish towel
flew to the floor. A warm wave of desire mixed with joy flooded Bennett. God, he loved loosening her like this.
“Let’s do more than just show up. Let’s have fun. Be my date tonight,” he crooned in her ear. “Be my date and get drunk and let me fuck you on the air mattress.”
“Bennett!” she cried, jerking her head toward the kitchen entrance, where a pajama-clad Rosie was gazing at them, milk cup
in hand, wide-eyed. If he had a favorite, it was four-year-old Rosie, dark-haired where their other kids were a dirty blondish-brownish,
with her adorable lisp and a clear penchant for Daddy. Rosie was the pregnancy during the Year from Hell that almost broke
him. But Bennett hadn’t broken, and now when he looked at Rosie, he saw triumph.
“I’m romancing your mom,” he informed Rosie.
“Thandwich!” she cried, and with one smooth move, Bennett scooped her up, making a sandwich of the three of them. They spun
in the kitchen until Olivia was pink in the cheeks and Rosie was cackling wildly, and now that Bennett could feel the little
zip in his wife, he was getting more excited about tonight.
Excited to see the old crowd, yes. Absolutely. He loved those douchebags with all his heart. But also, to show them all that
he hadn’t just won the lottery fifteen years ago when he met Olivia.
He’d fucking invested it, he’d poured himself into investing it, and his life was now full of its returns, as rich as they were hard-won.
Olivia, three gorgeous kids, this house in Chicago he referred to affectionately as their “little slice”—pure glory.
And New Year’s, which they had celebrated with this crowd for nine years in a row before the four-year hiatus that followed, would be the perfect time to revel in how far he had come from his humble Rust Belt beginnings, from that house where his dad yelled and his mom struck back with silently resentful meals of Hamburger Helper dumped on sandwich bread—a place where he’d felt mad for freedom, for something else, for a bigger life, for a sense of self that transcended his tarnished beginnings.
All of them had wanted that, the Original Four: Bennett and Phelps, Doug and Will. Ever since they started hanging out their
freshman year at Marquette High School, they had dreamed of their prison break out of the depressed post-industrial wasteland
of northern Indiana.
After high school, each of them had made their own version of an escape—Will to Ball State for college, where he met Jenn;
Bennett to IU, where he met Olivia; Phelps with his brief stint in Nashville during his ill-fated engagement to Bunny; Doug
with his year in Portland working for that fitness start-up that, in retrospect, may or may not have been a complete fabrication.
But somehow, they’d all boomeranged back to the area they’d so desperately sought to escape, like some irresistible force
was working against them—except for Bennett.
Bennett alone was securely outside state lines, free from the place that made him feel like fingers were closing around his
neck. Doing what he dreamed of—living in Chicago, teaching high school, and coming home to his personal Blue Heaven.
He couldn’t wait to waltz back in tonight with Olivia by his side. A man who finally knew who he was, what he wanted, and
what he was willing to do to keep it.