Page 6 of The New Year's Party
“Na-na,” he said. “Wanna-na-na.”
“Can he have a banana?” said Bennett.
“No,” said Olivia, slitting open the package of chicken breasts. “He already had one earlier.”
“Aw, he could have another, right?”
“No! It’ll stop him up.”Slap. Slap.The chicken breasts were on the cutting board, the container in the trash. “Don’t you remember we made that mistake with Rosie?” Olivia set to washing her hands.
Bennett didn’t quite remember but made an assenting sound anyway as Alex explored Bennett’s ear with a fat little finger. Anyway, constipation was a small problem compared to leukemia.
Alex’s finger poked deep into Bennett’s ear. Bennett yelped, twisting away from his curious two-year-old and jiggling him until he laughed.
Olivia turned to watch them with a tiny smile on her face, rubbing her hands dry on a dish towel, and despite the tension between them, Bennett allowed himself to be turned on.
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 likehome.
“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 showerwithOlivia, 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 youtoomany 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 likehe 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 havefun. 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,hewas 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 fuckinginvestedit, he’dpouredhimself intoinvesting 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.
