Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

Guillaume had gotten us a booking for dinner. It was late, but it was Herbsaint, a restaurant I’d been wanting to try for a long time.

We were supposed to be getting ready, but Manon shanghaied me into this Zoom meeting to talk to the crew about what to do about Colette in the very little time we had left to do anything about Colette.

Manon was staunchly ignoring what was happening with Myrna. At the time Remy shared, she said only, “She didn’t hide her bitch very well, but apparently she did hide her psycho super well.”

Remy appeared destroyed that this was affecting me and the kids, so I’d given her a look and she shut her mouth.

And that was all the attention she gave it, outwardly. I’d have to take her temperature about that later.

Remy had updated me (but not the kids) that the break-in was, indeed, Myrna and that she’d been preparing to do something with some of my babies. What, we might never know. Though I was thinking that there was going to be a number of listings on The RealReal, because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to enjoy anything that woman touched.

I also wasn’t sharing the brunt of my feelings about this with Remy.

I wanted to be so adjusted I could just set it aside as her damage and move on with what we were dealing with at the present, and much more positively, Remy’s and my reconciliation.

But the woman had broken into my home.

She’d touched my things.

I wasn’t sure anyone was that adjusted.

But that was for another time.

Now, it was about the drama with Colette.

“Love you, but it’s sex night with Reed and I have some shaving to do. What’s up?” Kara started us off.

“You have a sex night?” Noel asked.

“Life happens during the week. Things get postponed,” Kara replied. “This can get out of hand. Momma needs her orgasms, and not just quickie self-induced ones in the shower, which, by the way, always irritate Reed. Somewhere along the way, he’s claimed dominion over my orgasms. He acts like a big baby every time I give one to myself. So we decided a few years ago, Saturdays were sex nights, no excuses, non-negotiable. And thus, Saturday nights are the best nights of the week.”

“Does the sex box come out?” Noel queried.

“Sometimes. And sometimes I play nurse and he plays doctor,” Kara told him. “But tonight, I’ve decided he’s been a naughty boy. He just doesn’t know it…yet.”

“I never thought I’d worship a woman any more than I worship Wyn, but Wyn’s got competition,” Noel declared.

“Since I already know about Kara and Reed’s sex night, can we talk about why we’re all on this Zoom?” Bernice pressed. “It isn’t Cor and my sex night, but I’ve just decided it’s going to be, so do you mind if we get things grooving?”

I knew without her saying Cor was never a naughty boy.

But Bernice could be a naughty girl.

“God, I love you women,” Noel murmured.

“Grandma hit Pépé in the face with a huge-ass glass marble and we thought she might have broken his jaw, so we had to take him to the hospital,” Manon shared as I watched the variety of reactions from my friends, eyes getting big, faces growing pale, brows rising to hairlines. “And apparently, this is a thing. She’s like…a husband beater.”

“Holy shit,” Kara whispered.

“So, like, Dad wants to talk to her and whatever,” Manon continued. “But Mom and I think he should just be done with her, and we should concentrate on Estelle, Pépé’s girlfriend.”

“His…what?” Bernice asked.

“Apparently, Guillaume has had a wife and a long-term mistress,” I shared. “And by that, I mean Estelle has been in his life for decades. Remy even met her when he was a child.”

After a moment of stunned silence, Noel remarked, “I will say this kind of thing is absolutely delicious when you’re watching people wearing Nolan Miller acting it out on television. It doesn’t seem half as fun on a Saturday Zoom call when you’re talking with people you care about.”

Bernice smiled.

Kara laughed.

I thought Noel could say that again.

“What do you mean, Remy wants to talk to her?” Bernice asked, thankfully swinging this conversation back to Colette.

“I don’t know, and he doesn’t either,” I told them. “But I think he thinks he can get her to stop abusing Guillaume.”

“He thinks he can, or he hopes he can?” Kara inquired.

“Hopes,” I clarified. “This is…a situation. It’s not a one-off. I…I don’t want him to…” I didn’t know what I didn’t want him to do.

Get anywhere near Colette?

Check.

Give her any more of his time?

Check.

Give her any more of his emotion?

And again.

Check.

“I wish we could just take Pépé and go,” Manon said.

I did too.

“Are you thinking of meeting this Estelle?” Bernice asked.

“Totally,” Manon answered.

I just nodded.

“Okay, that seems a little weird to me,” Bernice admitted.

“You’re not alone,” Kara replied.

“He loves her. She loves him too. They were supposed to take Dad and ride off into the sunset years ago,” Manon told them. “But Grandma got in the way by being…Grandma.”