Chapter 20
Bunny
Bunny was back in the kitchen to carry out the next round of mousse. To her surprise, Nathan and Olivia seemed to be conspiring
behind the fridge door. They were standing very close together. She could see their legs from the thigh down. Their feet,
just an inch apart.
“What exactly do you remember?” she heard Nathan say.
“Mmmm, what are we whispering about?” said Bunny.
Olivia popped out, breathing fast and shallow, her face totally pale. God—had she and Nathan been making out behind there?
“I’ll take these out,” Olivia murmured, holding up two glasses of mousse and hurrying out. The paper streamers fluttered behind
her.
“Gimme, gimme,” said Bunny, scrunching her hands toward Nathan as she occupied the place Olivia had been standing. As he handed
her two more glasses, she leaned close and lowered her voice. “I always knew you had a thing for Olivia.” She winked. “Don’t
worry, I won’t tell your date . . . what’s her name? Abby? Audrey?”
“Oh, my God. Why does everyone think I’m such a douche?
” Nathan sounded exasperated, which definitely confirmed to Bunny something fishy was going on.
“Do you honestly think I would ever mess around with my best friend’s wife?
” He gave a bitter laugh. “Though now that you mention it, you’re not the first.”
I don’t know what to think, Bunny wanted to say. I never would have guessed you’d leave your fiancée in the night with no note or explanation either. Instead she said, “Hey! I wouldn’t blame you. She’s gorgeous. Though . . .” She did a baby voice and jiggled her boobs. “A
little flat-chested for your taste?”
“Rebecca,” he said with a serious note of warning. “Behave.”
Behave. The word was like a little dagger, straight to her heart.
“You’re one to talk, Nathan,” she spat, then marched back to the dining room to hand out the mousse.
Ugh. Her comeback hadn’t been cutting enough, hadn’t been witty. She was never witty when she felt flustered, and Nathan had
a way of making her feel all kinds of stupid, even though, come on! Who was actually the stupid one? Maybe one day she’d put
him on the spot. Look him in the eye and just say it. Why did you leave me in Nashville?
Her deepest wound. Her recurring nightmare. She still dreamed about it once a month or so. The dream was always the same:
she woke up in the dark to the screech of wheels. It always felt so real too, like she was really awake. She got up and ran through the dark house. There were always obstacles—closed doors, piles
of boxes, unexpectedly placed furniture—but if she was just fast enough, she could catch him, stop him, make him come back
to bed with her . . . She would finally burst out into the street, and the car would be driving away but still close enough
to catch, if only her legs would run, why wouldn’t they run? She slogged forward, straining against an invisible resistance, heaving with sobs, suddenly realizing she was pregnant,
that’s why she couldn’t run. It was the weight of the baby dragging her down, the last of Nathan she’d ever hold, the baby she didn’t ask for and couldn’t possibly raise alone . . . She would wake covered in sweat and crying, and oooh, how she hated crying, the wetness of it, the weakness.
Nathan never said why he left. At first, when she woke up and he wasn’t home, she’d thought he’d been in a car accident. Maybe
he’d gotten carjacked. Kidnapped. Like a prime idiot, she called all the area hospitals. She was about to open a missing persons
case. On her way to the police department, she called Will so that he could do the painful job of breaking the news to the
friend group, and Will said, “Bunny . . . Phelps is back in Indiana. He didn’t talk to you before leaving?”
Oh, how it hurt. Stupid little Bunny.
The last one to know she’d been left.
She was back at the fridge. But her mood had done a one-eighty in the past thirty seconds.
“Here,” said Nathan, handing her two more mousse glasses. Bunny took them but didn’t move. She felt sick to her stomach. She’d
come here to interrogate Will, not dig into her shit with Nathan, but here she was like a fly, circling the toxic pile of
their past.
Nathan slowly registered that she wasn’t moving. Olivia came back in. Bunny handed the glasses to her and crossed her arms
over her chest as Olivia disappeared into the dining room.
“What?” said Nathan. Now he sounded pissed. “I don’t have a thing with Olivia, okay? I may not be a saint, but—”
“Why did you leave me in Nashville?” she said.
Nathan pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed, “Jesus H Christ.”
“Tell me the truth, Nathan. For once in your life, look me in the eye and tell me the truth.”
Her tears were a nasty surprise. Little dots of hot ice rolling down her cheeks. She didn’t want Nathan to have the power to make her feel things anymore. Instead, here she was, feeling all the old feelings and doing her least favorite thing, crying, in front of her least favorite person.
He heaved a sigh and looked at her. “It was a long time ago.” He reached behind him to the counter and ripped off a chunk
of paper towel. He handed it to Bunny.
“Time doesn’t heal all wounds, Nathan,” she said, registering in some small part of herself that she should write that down
in her Notes app, because it was a great line for a song. Not that she even could write songs anymore. It had been so long.
She patted her cheeks with the paper towel.
“Come on, Bunny,” said Nathan. He sounded tired. “It’s New Year’s Eve.”
The cold breath of the fridge raised goose bumps over Bunny’s chest and arms, but the protection of the open door was their
small confessional, and it was her turn, damn it. Her turn to get the closure he would never give her unless she squeezed
it out of him, so that she could stop circling and move the hell on.
“You already hurt me. The damage is done,” she said. “Now you owe me the truth.”
He breathed, long and hard, out his nostrils. Recomposed himself. “You’re—you’re not as talented as you think you are. Okay?
So . . . that’s it. Are we happy now that you’ve dragged that out of me?”
She shook her head. “I don’t get it. What the hell does my music have to do with anything?”
He licked his lips. His tone was light, like he was hoping this wouldn’t be a big deal. “I never really thought you could
make a career out of music, okay? I know I led you on, I know I told you I was your biggest fan and all that . . . I was just trying to be a good boyfriend.”
“Fiancé,” Bunny corrected automatically.
“Fiancé.”
She could feel her pulse behind her eyeballs. “You said I was as good as Carrie Underwood. You said I could take it to the top. You said—”
“Come on.” His voice was low. Almost compassionate. “Do you really think you ever could have? Think of how much talent is
out there. I honestly never thought you’d even try. I thought it was all talk, and we’d settle down here, in Michigan City.
I figured you had your bachelor’s, and you’d get a job as a music teacher or something. Then you actually moved to Nashville . . .”
Nathan rubbed a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t do it, okay? I mean, I did . . . I moved too, but . . . I was scared, okay?”
“About what? My supposed lack of talent?” She was feeling hysterical. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
His voice hardened a little. “Watching you fail. I couldn’t stay there and watch that happen.”
Oh, oh, oh. This was worse than she thought.
She’d been prepared for you were too controlling, which she knew she was at that age, or living with you wasn’t what I imagined, which, to be fair, living with him wasn’t either, or even you snore at night, which she did really hate about herself. But not this. Not this.
Her songs were good . . . weren’t they? Oh, God. Had everyone just been laughing up their sleeves at her? Was she completely
deluded? A farce? A joke?
“When you left, I was pregnant,” she said, crumpling the paper towel in her fist.
Nathan’s jaw practically dropped.
“You were pregnant?” he said in a hot whisper. He reached forward and gripped her arm. “Bunny, what the actual fuck? I have a child I didn’t
know about?”
“Actually—” she said, feeling as vicious as she’d ever felt in her entire life.
“Phelps! Bunny! We’re waiting on you guys!” came a shout from the dining room. Doug. “We’ve run out of Star Wars hot takes, and we can’t start dessert without you!”
Nathan and Bunny looked at each other.
“Actually what?” said Nathan urgently. Bunny saw the fear in his eyes.
She grabbed the last glass of mousse and stomped off, her whole body zinging.
Take that, Nathan Fucking Phelps. Let him wonder if there was a small Phelps out there.
Let him agonize. Let him feel an ounce of the agony she had felt, all alone in Nashville with her broken dreams. And fuck him, that she hadn’t written a song since
he’d left her. Not a single goddamn song.
“Finally!” cried Doug as they both returned to their seats. “Let’s dig in!”
Bunny felt lightheaded as everyone attacked their mousse. She clutched her tiny dessert spoon in her hand and looked at Nathan,
who was determinedly not looking at her. She couldn’t bring herself to take a bite.
Talk. That’s what Nathan said: it was all talk. His specialty—and the specialty of everyone at this table. Bullshitting. Shooting the breeze with careless words. Lethal
words. Words she had hung her life on. She never would have moved to Nashville after college without Nathan’s belief in her. Never would have assumed she was that talented
unless he had blown her up like his stupid inflatable Santa. Compared her to Carrie Underwood, Shania Twain, the country greats.
And she had believed him. Even after he left her, even after he broke her heart, even though she allowed herself to get consumed with side hustles,
with Elliott the Ex, with having kids, even though she stopped songwriting, in some small corner of her heart, she had still hung on to Nathan’s belief in her music.
She looked across the table at Will, who was dipping into his chocolate mousse as Doug told a long confusing story about the most expensive gutter sale he’d ever made.
Lies, she knew it, that’s all these assholes were capable of.
Doug, Nathan, Will—disgusting. Enough was enough.
And wasn’t this how the patriarchy propagated itself?
Lying, asshole douchebags who went unchallenged year after year, secure in their power.
Thinking they could do whatever the hell they wanted and get away with it.
No more. She was going to face Will, as soon as possible.
Force him to confess by any means necessary that he had betrayed her confidence and ruined her chances at getting her rightful inheritance. And then?
Demand restitution. Or else.
She’d had visions of revenge earlier. But seriously—keying a car? Food poisoning? Not fucking enough. It was suddenly so easy
to imagine herself stabbing her dinner knife into Will’s chest. Twisting it in. He’d stabbed her first.
Bunny Kaminski really wasn’t a violent person. But tonight, the vision made her feel good. Powerful. Nobody’s victim.
Maybe there was a killer in Bunny, after all.