Page 17 of The New Year's Party

Phelps took one last drag, because that’s what Jenn’s posts did to him. Then he put out the joint on the handrail of the deck and returned it to his pocket for later use.

Sometimes he worried about Will. Was Jenn for real? What shit was hiding under her glowing social media self? No one could bethatenthusiastic about their husband and small children eleven years into marriage... right? He’d tried to ask Will about his marriage, his life, man to man, the few times they’d talked on the phone in the past couple years, since Will was always too busy to drive the three hours to Michigan City, and Phelps’s life was so complicated between his job and the custody schedule he could barely imagine leaving town either.

“How are things?” Phelps might say. “Level with me. Are you really as happy and fulfilled as Facebook says?”

“This is what I always wanted,” Will might say. Or, “I can’t complain. I got everything I asked for.” Or any other number of variations on a theme.

And what did Phelps know? He wasn’t one of the fucking Wise Men. Maybe Jenn and Will were perfectly matched.Ooey-gooey sincere people who were truly as happy as they seemed. Maybe Phelps was the cynical one. Maybe he was so jaded by his own shit he couldn’t see something good even if it bitch-slapped him.

The shed shouldn’t take long to clean up. It was his man cave, from when he and Kylie lived here together. She had ruled the house and told him to do his “gross boy stuff” in the shed, which suited Phelps just fine, since he didn’t want her breathing down his neck when all he wanted to do was smoke and peace out in front of some obscure piece of foreign television. The shed, with its plywood walls and twin windows, was just big enough to fit an old plaid love seat, a coffee table for resting his feet on, a mini fridge and microwave, and a TV he’d mounted himself. The little radiator was also a must, since the place wasn’t heated or insulated. He’d installed blinds in the windows so he could watch foreign porn without Kylie spying on him, and strung Christmas lights all over the walls. It smelled musty, like weed and beer, and in the months leading up to the divorce, Phelps had slept out there more often than not. Hence its nickname, the Dog House, which remained even after Kylie moved out and married Craig Curtis, CPA. Her Insta feed was no longer the dark midnight bar pics she’d posted with Phelps, but bright sunny interiors taken in their gorgeous house with fully loaded Christmas trees, and selfies after she got extensions, or a mani-pedi.

High maintenance. She’d disguised herself as easygoing and fun, but she’d turned out to be high maintenance to the core. It cost five hundred dollars a month to keep up with her hair and nails alone! They’d fought a lot about those credit card bills. Nope. Phelps needed someone low maintenance.Like Olivia.Glam as they got, but also somehow simple. Effortless. He doubted if she spent a penny on her hair.

There was a loud humming sound. Phelps turned a littleand eyed through the glass doors the pert little figure of his surprising New Year’s date, running the vacuum cleaner through the kitchen. Someone like Allie? Maybe. He didn’t like to think too far ahead. Allie was cute, and fun, and, yes, quite young—twenty-four to his thirty-four—but she had a proper career as a kindergarten teacher and had the most glorious pair of tits. He turned back around. Ironic that Phelps thought of himself as such a tits man when the best sex of his life had been with—

“Hey.”

Phelps spun—Allie had cracked the sliding door and poked her head out. Her hair was in an adorable topknot and she’d stripped down to a tank top.

“Looking for something?” he said with a grin.

“A sponge of any kind.”

“Under the kitchen sink.”

“You need a woman in your life,” she sang out as she closed the sliding door behind her, leaving Phelps squinting again in the bright gray.

By all accounts, he should feel lucky. He could draw women. Gorgeous women too. Bunny... Kylie... now Allie... He just couldn’t seem to fuckingkeepthem.

His phone dinged and he pulled it out. Hah. Speaking of the devil—Bunny was actually coming. He’d invited her to mess with her, never thinking she’d accept. Well, well, well. Now he knew who would be performing the embarrassing musical number. He’d put that in the invitation as a joke, but maybe he’d pull out the old guitar at the right moment, hand it to Bunny, see what happened. As for the dark secrets he’d alluded to in the invitation, he’d been joking on that count too, of course.

He didn’t have very many. His mistakes had mostly been made in the open.

But the mistakes he’d managed to keep to himself? He spat some gray phlegm onto the clean snow just beyond the deck, then turned toward his kitchen, where the ingredients for the chocolate mousse were waiting on the counter.

Those would only come out over his dead body.

Chapter 7

Doug

December 31, 12:00 p.m.

Doug arrived at the EdgeTech Gutters office and smiled at Molly, his boss’s wife. John and Molly had only bought EdgeTech this calendar year, and they were a little stressed. Normally, Doug found that some light flirting helped dissipate the tension in the air, but today he had doughnuts. He slid the box onto the reception counter.

The Franklin Street storefront that EdgeTech occupied was hideous, with its drop ceiling and fluorescent lighting. The small Christmas tree on the reception counter only served to highlight how depressingly beige the rest of the place was.

“Happy New Year’s, don’t thank me,” said Doug.

“Oh, how nice,” said Molly, lifting the cover an inch, but somehow, she didn’t look too happy about the treat.

“You know, just something festive to mark the last day of the year,” he said. “So! What do you got for me today?” He rubbed his hands together like he was ready for a good day’s work. He had a good grin. Phelps may have been voted Most Likely to Be President back in high school (what a laugh), but Doug had been voted Senior Class Lady Killer, and he liked to make Molly blush every now and then to prove he still had it.

Usually, Molly smiled and handed him his agenda for the day—all the appointments for estimates. He’d go to the first home, take his measurements. Then he’d sit down with the homeowners. Both, if it was a couple—that was nonnegotiable, or else they’d use the spouse excuse to put off their decision. There was a binder, and a presentation about the gutter system. You never presented the price up front; you had to tell the story first, so they were sold on the product but also a little anxious. Doug had discovered, with pleasure, that he wasgoodat selling gutters. He’d made up a couple bullshit stories about various old ladies who didn’t clean or replace their broken gutters and got into real trouble with colonies of bees, or mice, then he’d embellished with a nest of raccoons, and the raccoon angle alone had made him two sales. He needed to work out a couple more stories. Gutters weren’t an exciting pleasure item peoplewantedto spend money on. No, fear sold gutters.

He should remember that line. It would be funny to use tonight, at the party. He could imagine himself saying it.I’m notgonnalie; fear sells gutters, people.Make everyone laugh like he used to.

“John wants to talk to you first,” said Molly.