He was tempted to tell her that his choice of footwear was not really going to make him any happier. He didn’t want to attend this party no matter what he wore. Instead, he said, “When do I have to be out there?”

“By nine, please. And you don’t have to stay long. Just until after the toasts.”

With that, his mother leaned over and kissed him on the top of his head.

“Mom, I’m not six.”

“I love you, Owen,” she whispered, as if he hadn’t said anything at all.

Reid Warwick loved a good party—the feeling that the night ahead contained unlimited possibilities. That anything could happen.

He did not expect James Sommers’s anniversary party to be a good party, though. James was one of the few truly respectable people Reid knew. Maybe the only one, come to think of it. To Reid, that meant that James and his new bride’s friends were also respectable people, and therefore the party would be a bunch of stiffs sipping chardonnay while they discussed their children’s school achievements or swapped home renovation stories.

There were other places Reid could have gone if debauchery were his true objective for the evening. In fact, when he received the invite, Reid had assumed that he’d be at one of his usual haunts while James and Jessica celebrated their anniversary. But two weeks ago, Reid had the good fortune of being presented with a business opportunity that required James to consummate it.

That meant that, as far as Reid was concerned, tonight was more akin to a business meeting, which was why he had decided to wear a suit, pairing it with a plain white shirt. A tie would be trying too hard. He did shave for the first time in several days, though.

Tommy Murcer called for the second time that day while Reid was getting ready. Reid pressed decline on his phone. He’d fill Tommy in on James’s response once he knew it. The Pollock sketches were now firmly in Reid’s possession, so there was nothing Tommy could do to screw him over at this point.

The last Jackson Pollock canvas to come to auction had fetched $40 million, and that was nearly a decade ago. The record for a sale of his work was approximately $200 million, made in a 2015 private sale.

Unfortunately, Tommy didn’t have paintings. What he’d entrusted Reid to sell were preliminary sketches. Unsigned too. That meant the price per sketch would be below a million.

On the bright side, Murcer had four of them. And Reid’s take was 35 percent.

To make this payday happen—for himself as well as for Murcer—Reid needed James’s connections in the art world. It was a fairly small universe of people who could afford to shell out the price of a McMansion for a piece of paper with some paint splatter on it. Reid didn’t know even one, but James’s contact list was chock-full of such people.

Even if he had to cut James in for half of his take (and he was hoping it wouldn’t come to that), Reid would still end up netting somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million bucks. And he’d do his best to keep James’s take below that. Either way, it wasn’t a bad day’s business, considering that he was doing little more than introducing a guy with access to some Jackson Pollocks to another guy who knew people who could afford them.

Haley Sommers was already two glasses into the bottle of chardonnay she had opened as her evening’s plans. A Saturday night spent drinking and feeling sorry for herself had become almost the norm these days.

Sometimes she wondered how she could have fallen so far, so quickly. Two years ago she was a married investment banker, and now she was . . . a cautionary tale. Closing in on thirty, divorced, no children, and unemployed. Not to mention bitter to the core.

All too often, Haley felt the hate burn within her. A fire that could be extinguished only with alcohol, of all things. And then only temporarily.

All of her and James’s friends had long ago chosen sides. Some took longer than others, pledging pious promises to keep loving them both, but it was only a matter of time before loyalties were tested and battle lines inalterably drawn.

Even though lunch invitations and movie nights with James’s social set were now a thing of the past for Haley, his friends still cared enough about their friend and follower counts on Facebook and Instagram that they had not blocked Haley on social media.

Mandy’s feed had been especially helpful. Tonight’s entry captured her in a full-length shot wearing a little black dress and posed to show that she barely had a rib cage. In the caption she wrote: Anniversary Party at James and Jessica Sommers’ Loft. #truelove.

James and Jessica’s first anniversary had actually been last week. Haley had commemorated the occasion with a series of thinly veiled tweets about how certain people were destined to burn in hell. As the evening had worn on and her alcohol intake had increased, she’d upped the ante—calling James and hanging up, just so he knew she was thinking of him. Then, around midnight, when she was well past drunk, she left him a voice mail. In the morning she could no longer recall the exact words she’d used, but the gist of it had been that she was looking forward to his death and sincerely hoped it was preceded by immense suffering.

Her admittedly juvenile shenanigans violated the restraining order that prohibited Haley from engaging in any direct contact with James or Jessica. It also required that she stay fifty yards away from Owen. Haley knew the restraining order had been Jessica’s idea. And, sure, showing up at Jessica’s son’s school for the sole purpose of telling him that his mother was a gold-digging whore might have been over the line, but that didn’t make Haley’s comment any less true. Besides, she’d been drunk . . . though that excuse was running a bit thin at this point.