Chapter 17
Bunny
“Hiiiiii!!!!” Bunny effused as she stepped inside, casting her coat in the vague direction of Nathan Phelps and opening her
arms to show off her dress, a turquoise halter that showed a generous amount of side-boob. It was a hundred and fifty dollars,
but right now, watching Nathan take her in, it was worth every penny. She put her hands to her cheeks and stomped her high
heels, very aware of how the motion made her boobs jiggle. With any luck, Nathaniel S. Phelps was regretting that he no longer
got to touch them. “Oh, my God, you haven’t changed a bit!”
This wasn’t true, but she was feeling generous.
“I accept your kind lie,” quipped Nathan, moving to the entryway closet and adding her coat to the pressed chaos of winter
gear within. When he said this, Bunny remembered with a warm flood how he used to see right through her, always. The problem
was, she hadn’t been able to see through him.
“I’ll need your keys. Sobriety check required to get them back,” he said.
She handed them over, suddenly noticing the ridiculous hat on his head.
“What is that on your head, by the way?”
“I’ll give you one guess,” he teased.
She laughed. Ah. A dick. Clever.
What was it about her ex-fiancé, anyway?
It’s not like he was devastatingly handsome like Bennett .
. . and he had a little paunch to him, he always had .
. . It was just a way about him. A confidence, a swagger.
A cleverness, a presence in his body. It all just felt so sexual, somehow.
Whereas Elliott the Ex, for example, though technically much better-looking despite the minuscule dimensions of his noggin, now struck Bunny as a paper doll. No meat, nothing to really
grab, nothing to entice.
“Well, I wasn’t kidding, you really do look great,” she said as Nathan closed the closet. She leaned in for an air-kiss. Their cheeks brushed. “And your house looks
great too, wow! And it smells soooo good . . . I’ve missed your cooking soooo much . . . Weren’t you supposed to open a restaurant?
Where did I hear that . . . ? I thought by now you’d have a Michelin star or something . . .” It was verbal diarrhea, but
like with her credit card charges, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. There was a certain exhilaration in digging yourself
deeper. She coaxed her extensions over her shoulders and hoped her coat hadn’t ruined the carefully done waves.
“The condition of the house is Allie’s fault,” Nathan said as a petite, curvy girl came skipping over and snuggled up to his
side. “Credit where credit is due.” She was so short, her head fit right at the crook of Nathan’s underarm, and Nathan wasn’t
exactly super tall. “I didn’t know how sexy a woman could look vacuuming.” He kissed the top of Allie’s head.
“You’re so bad,” Allie protested with a smile. She had a cutesy voice and was wearing a cutesy party hat covered in cutesy red-and-pink
heart stickers. Bunny instantly hated her. “That’s incredibly sexist, Phelpsy.”
“What would you prefer me to say?” He raised a brow. “That you looked plain and unremarkable while you vacuumed?”
They bantered back and forth a little more while Bunny ran a quick analysis of their interaction.
Allie was squished into a very short black dress.
Plunging V with a mound of cleavage pushing out, and if she bent over .
. . They’d met at a bar, Bunny just knew it, she could practically smell it on them. That cheapness, that—
“Sorry, Phelps is making me rude!” Allie said, pushing on Phelps’s chest to stop their spicy back-and-forth. “It’s nice to
meet you, Rebecca.”
“Oh, call me Bunny like everyone else,” said Bunny. “And tell me, Nathan! How did you two meet?” She touched Nathan’s arm.
“Please tell me it wasn’t at the high school, because you can’t be a day over seventeen, sweetheart!”
Allie smiled. “I’m twenty-four, actually. We met at a bar.”
Bingo.
“A pool hall in South Bend,” corrected Nathan. “She’s a kindergarten teacher.”
Really?
“Awww, that’s such a great skill, how cute! Managing all those little kids! Good for you, girl!” gushed Bunny.
Okay, she’d had enough of all the mutual admiration. Time to move farther into the house.
“Let me in, I have to sit down—these heels are killing me,” she said. She could kick them off—she had registered that Allie
was barefoot and Nathan in socks—but the heels, sky-high and a striking cobalt blue suede—made her ass look too good to give
them up yet.
“Make yourself comfortable, everyone is in the dining room,” said Nathan as he headed deeper into the house with Allie close
behind. Like his lap dog, thought Bunny. Like his yippy, dippy little lap dog. “We’re making hats this year.” He reached up and twanged the pipe cleaner
dick as he retreated.
Yes, the notorious craft. There was always a craft. There had been masks one year . . . something with a message in a bottle
another year . . . What had happened to those messages?
There was a prompt: Share a secret wish you hope will come true.
They’d stuffed their secrets into wine bottles, which they decorated with stickers and sequins.
Then they were supposed to open them five years later to see if their wishes came true.
Had they all opened them at one of the parties Bunny hadn’t attended?
Would they have opened Bunny’s, in her absence?
Laughed? She seemed to remember writing something embarrassingly sincere . . .
All the hubbub was in the dining room, but after Nathan and Allie were out of sight, she didn’t rush there, despite how hard
her arches were protesting her shoes. Instead, she took her time looking over Nathan’s living room walls, which were graced
by a giant farmhouse-style clock and various groupings of family pictures. His ex-wife must have put them up, because no straight
man would buy frames with FAMILY or LOVE carved in scrolling letters at the top.
She leaned in. The frames held half a dozen pictures each, mostly of the boys . . . but, ah—there was a family picture with
Nathan and Kylie, the boys standing in front of them in adorable bow ties, and a tall awkward-looking girl slightly to the
side. The girl must be Kylie’s teenage daughter from her first husband . . . Huh. Either it was pretty ballsy to keep a picture
of you and your ex-wife on the wall, or it was pathetic.
It was interesting, getting this unexpected view into Nathan’s life. She hadn’t seen him in this house before. After parking
just a few minutes ago, she had taken a moment in the driver’s seat to really take it in. The inflatable Santa in the yard
was drooping. The yard itself was a mud-fest. The house, underneath the festive lights, was a dingy, depressing box. Thank
heavens, because if somehow, while she was living in a slummy one-bedroom in Nashville while she went toe-to-toe with Elliott
the Ex in court, Nathan was living in some kind of gorgeous house with a picture-perfect life, she might have imploded. Or
exploded. This was good, that his life hadn’t amounted to much, because then he could look at Bunny and wonder if he would’ve
had it better with her. And he would have.
In her circuit around the room, she now had a view through the archway toward the dining room.
She could make out Olivia, looking like a goddess in a silky yellow number, and Hellie in some cheap empire waist slinky green thing.
Bunny loved Hellie, but did she try to look like a little girl, was that a conscious choice, or .
. . ? And Jenn, in a black halter top and silky bias-cut skirt,
obsessively placing little sequins on her paper top hat. Will was smiling at something Hellie was saying, but his expression
looked strained. Bennett was watching Will and fidgeting with a piece of construction paper, even though he already had a
hat on his head. Damn, Bennett looked good. Bunny had always had a thing for tall men. And Doug—God, he did not look good: sweat stains the size of Montana, his cheeks a blotchy red, his hair curling around his face in sweaty locks,
wielding a glue gun in a very unsafe-looking way.
She focused her glare on oblivious Will. Why did you screw me over? she mused. Of course, seeing the group all together like this, she had to allow that it might not have been Will . . . or
at least not directly. He might have told someone else, under the guise of confidentiality, of course, who then told Grandpa
Max. Bunny didn’t grow up yesterday; she knew how gossip worked. How secrets could snake from ear to ear until they made it
to the very person you never wanted to know.
Oh, God . . . Nathan. Did he know?
Her heartbeat drummed uncomfortably. What she needed to do was get Will alone and grill him until he squealed.
And then what?
What would she do once she had the culprit’s name?
She allowed herself dramatic visions of punching whoever it was in the face (did the thumb go inside or outside the fist?).
Slashing their tires or keying their car—ooh, she could write a country song about that. Girl-power revenge songs always did well. Or . . . poison. Not a deadly poison, she wasn’t a killer, but something to make
them really fucking sick. She imagined them leaning over the toilet all night, feeling as shitty as she had felt after her procedure, all alone with cramps that felt like they were eviscerating her.
Will was the first to notice Bunny standing there. Was it a trick of the light, or was there a second of unpleasant shock
in his expression? If it was even there to begin with, it was quickly replaced with a big smile.
“Hey, it’s Bunny!” he cried. The room exploded.
“Back from the dead!” she joked, opening her arms for the barrage of hugs as everyone surged forward. “And I hope you’re all
in the market for essential oils or sex toys, because no one is leaving here without making a purchase! Time to update your
dildos, ladies!”