Chapter 26
Bennett
A body hit the ground with a thud.
The group stood in stunned silence. Had Jenn just shot—
“Fuuuuuck!” said the body, raising both forearms and then slamming them down.
“Doug?” said Hellie, sprinting forward.
“Doug!” everyone exploded.
Bennett ran forward.
“Who the fuck shot me in the ass? Twice?” Doug’s voice was high-pitched, hysterical.
“The cornfield!” Jenn sounded a little hysterical too. “It moved! We all thought it was a wild animal!”
“I said I had to take a piss!” roared Doug as Bennett crouched and hooked an arm under Doug’s armpit on one side. Phelps was
already on the other. “I literally said, hey guys, I’m going over there—aaaaaah—”
Bennett and Phelps heaved Doug upright. His front was muddy from his tie to his trousers.
“I’m calling 9–1–1,” said Allie.
“No!” said Doug.
“Don’t call an ambulance,” said Hellie. “We don’t have insurance.”
“We can cover the cost,” said Will. His cheeks were pink in the cold, his expression troubled. “If it was our fault—”
“Fault? It was an accident!” Jenn shouted. “We were all scared! I didn’t mean to—”
“Stop,” said Hellie viciously. Bennett had always thought of Hellie as a delicate, small person who deserved to be protected.
But right now, she looked scary. “Just stop talking.”
Jenn backed away. Olivia slipped her arm around Hellie.
“He needs medical attention,” insisted Allie, her phone still in her palm. “The cost is secondary—”
“Secondary?” Ted let out a cool chuckle. “Can we talk about the elitism inherent in—”
“What I need is for someone to pick the BBs out of my goddamn ass so I can fucking sit down again,” said Doug.
“I’ll do it,” said Hellie.
“Bennett and I will do it,” announced Phelps. “There’s a first-aid kit in the Dog House. We’ll set Dougie-boy straight and
then return him to the party.”
“Sold,” said Doug, sagging against Bennett, who staggered a little under his friend’s weight. “Then I’m going to need a fresh
pair of fucking pants.”
“You can wear my pajama pants,” said Bennett.
“I have my own, man, okay? I have my own,” said Doug.
“Yeah, sure, I didn’t mean to—” said Bennett.
“Let’s get you inside,” said Phelps as he and Bennett moved toward the Dog House, which sat about three hundred feet behind
the picnic table, which was now surrounded by broken ceramic. It occurred to Bennett that picking ceramic shards out of Phelps’s
mud pit of a yard wasn’t going to be an easy job. “The rest of you, go get warm! There’s darts in the basement and enough
alcohol to kill Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. Go!”
“Shouldn’t we pick up all the broken plates?” Bennett heard Hellie saying as Phelps muscled open the door to the shed.
Bennett and Phelps lugged Doug up the small wooden step and over the threshold. It smelled like weed, beer, and burnt popcorn. Phelps flicked on the lights.
Bennett had been in here a couple times before. The shed was small, but not as small as it looked from the outside. It was
a simple setup: a saggy plaid sofa against the back wall, a coffee table covered in beverage rings, and a huge flat screen
mounted on the wall. A small fridge was tucked in beside the sofa, with a microwave on top. Blinds covered the windows, and
twinkle lights hung in big swoops along the walls.
Phelps kicked the door closed behind them. “Just cleaned the place too, don’t thank me.”
“It feels like the Godzilla of bees left its fucking stinger in my ass,” moaned Doug.
“You’re going to lie on this table and pull your pants down,” instructed Phelps as he and Bennett helped Doug lower himself
to his knees on the coffee table.
Bennett had already located the wall-mounted first-aid kit. He grabbed a few packets of antiseptic wipes and pulled out the
tweezers as Doug unbuckled his belt.
“Why is there a first-aid kit on the wall?” said Bennett.
“Previous owner,” said Phelps.
“What if they’re embedded so deep in my ass that—” moaned Doug.
“Shut up and pull your pants down,” ordered Phelps. “I’ll sanitize. Bennett, you tweeze.”
Doug lay face down on the coffee table. His ass was pale and hairy. Bennett leaned over, hoping his stomach would remain steady.
He was normally okay with blood, but . . .
Ouch. Bennett could see right away the two raised welts with the dark centers, right in the center of Doug’s right butt cheek.
Okay, he could do this. He clacked the tweezers to get a feel for them.
“Bennett, we have to talk about five years ago,” said Phelps as he ripped open an antiseptic wipe with his teeth.
It took Bennett a second to even realize what his friend was saying. “Wait—now?”
“Yes now, because we may not get another moment to ourselves,” said Phelps as he swabbed Doug’s ass. “I didn’t sleep with
your wife.”
“Whaaaat?” Doug piped up, raising his head.
“Don’t move!” said Phelps.
Doug chortled. “You and Olivia—”
“Shut up!” Bennett and Phelps said together.
“This isn’t the time, Phelps,” said Bennett.
“You dig for treasure in Doug’s ass, I talk. Five years ago, your wife got really drunk. Okay? She was feeling sick. You were
nowhere to be found.”
“I said this isn’t—” said Bennett in a tight voice, but Phelps kept going.
“I offered her my bed. We started talking. I kind of ended up dumping on her—the restaurant, my divorce—it was a real sobfest.
Okay? Okay. Then she says, ‘Hey, I have shit too,’ and tells me all about this jackass professor in college who, well, fucking
raped her, and—”
“What?” Bennett exploded.
“Ow!” screamed Doug. “Fucking pay attention!”
“Sorry,” said Bennett. He could see the first little pellet. It was close to the surface. It was just hard to grab. The tweezers
weren’t exactly surgical grade.
“Damn it, I wasn’t supposed to say that.” Phelps rubbed his face. “Forget the professor, okay? I forgot you didn’t know. The
point is, Olivia and I had a really deep conversation about the stuff that fucked us up. Then she fell asleep. And then I—”
He sucked in his breath. “I . . . jerked off. I went into the en suite fucking bathroom and jerked off, and I’m not proud
of it, but I didn’t realize anyone was fucking listening.”
“Oh-hoh-hoh—” said Doug, his head coming up again.
Bennett dug the tweezers deeper and Doug’s laughter turned to a small scream. He dropped his head.
“First one,” Bennett announced, holding up the pellet before dropping it on the floor. It rolled toward the wall.
“I know it sounds . . . well, whatever. I know how it sounds,” said Phelps. “But I didn’t touch her. Okay? I wasn’t even in
the same room.”
“Why?” said Bennett, squinting at the second BB and preparing his next move. He was too stunned to feel much of anything.
“Just—why?”
“Because we just shared all this intimate soul-shit! And she looked so beautiful lying there in the bed. You know I have a
thing for your wife, okay? I told you from the start. And I had just lost my wife to a divorce, and . . . I indulged, okay? I indulged in a little fantasy, and I masturbated quietly in the bathroom—in
the corner of the fucking bathroom, in what I thought was privacy—and then I left the room thinking no one was the wiser.”
Doug yelped as Bennett tweezed out the second BB. Then, as Phelps swabbed Doug’s wounds with antiseptic, Bennett rolled back
on his heels and onto his rear end. He leaned on the wall with the TV just above him, eye-level with Doug’s hairy mound of
butt cheek. He set the tweezers down carefully on the edge of the coffee table, near Doug’s knee.
“I’m sorry,” said Phelps as he opened a big square bandage. “However much of a piece of shit I am, try to understand that
I honestly figured she didn’t know, and you didn’t know, and what you didn’t know couldn’t possibly hurt you.”
Bennett closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
He felt dizzy. This was what he’d struggled over during the Year from Hell?
As he told himself he had to do the hardest work of his life and become the man his father had never been?
As he forgave his wife and his best friend and made the choice to live forever in the kind of sacrificial isolation that keeping that kind of secret requires?
Phelps masturbating? Privately—or what he thought was privately?
As gross as it was, as inappropriate as it was . . .
“Sorry, I’m new to the party, so let me get this straight,” said Doug, propping himself up on his forearms as Phelps squirted
Neosporin on the inside of the bandage. “You thought Olivia cheated on you with Phelps five years ago? And you didn’t call
Phelps on it until tonight?”
“Yes,” said Bennett, tilting his head back against the wall. The ceiling was pitched. He’d never particularly noticed that.
There was a discolored spot up in the corner. Phelps should check for a leak. What was he thinking? This was a shithole shed, and the fact that it had a wall-mounted first-aid kit, frankly, was creepy
as hell. Who cared if it leaked.
“But why did you think that?” said Doug. “Who told you?”
“Yeah, who told you?” echoed Phelps, patting the bandage. “You’re done.”
“A text,” said Bennett, focusing back on his friends. “More like half a dozen texts.”
Doug was on his knees now, pulling up his mud-streaked pants.
“Texts from who?” said Phelps.
Bennett spasmed, and before he could get control of himself, he laughed. He laughed because he felt stupid and confused and
mad and too many other things to name. He laughed because he didn’t know what else to do. The laughter pressed out like there
was someone else inside his skin, making their mad escape.
Of course it had occurred to him that whoever had sent those texts had to have been at that New Year’s party five years ago.
Had to have seen or heard something.
He used to think of this person as some kind of conscientious reporter of facts. He’d imagined Hellie, or maybe Will. Feeling guilty, but also feeling responsible. Figuring Bennett deserved to know, so they would just have to do their duty.
He no longer had kind feelings toward the mysterious texter.
Whoever it was had really fucked with him.
Had they sent texts to Olivia too? Why else would she think she’d slept with Phelps?
Olivia’s confession in the car came slamming back into Bennett.
The guilt in her face. The flat desperation in her voice.
Even as he laughed and tears rolled down his cheeks, he felt sick. His gorgeous, incredible wife had tortured herself for
five years over something she’d never done.
He needed to talk to her. She needed to know she was exonerated.
And then, he needed to know who had tried to ruin his marriage and hadn’t even had the balls to say who they were.
He wheezed out his final laughter, then breathed in, long and deep. There was a cramp in his side. He wiped a few tiny tears
off his cheeks.
Bennett looked at his friends, who were watching him in stunned silence. His primary feeling was, They have no idea. Phelps and Doug had no clue what he had been through. What Olivia had been through. What it meant to have lived five years
in the destructive shadow of a lie they’d both believed. Sure, it was partly a relief to find out they’d been wrong. But there
was another edge to this sword: the stolen time. The stolen joy.
Bennett could hardly count what had been taken, it was so staggering.
If the mysterious texter was standing in front of him right now, he’d be very tempted to kill them. To put his hands around
their neck and squeeze. Let them feel how quickly joy could be stolen. Let them feel the destructive power of their lie, coming
back at them through Bennett’s hands.
“Texts from who?” Phelps repeated, more gently.
Bennett took a deep breath and felt his fingers squeeze and release, as if the neck of the guilty party was within his grasp.
“I don’t know.”