Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

We were all holding together tightly, our heads touching and our arms around each other like we were in a scrum. Yves’s breath was loud and coming fast and difficult. Manon was whimpering. I was holding my baby boy’s gaze and trying to smile at him through my emotion. Remy was holding us all together with his long arms.

It was Sabre who broke the moment.

“We are such huge-ass dorks.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Manon shot back.

“We are dorks,” Yves agreed and tore his gaze from mine to look at his father. “Dad, I’m so sorry.”

“Not another word, kid,” Remy returned.

Yves shut up.

“It has to be said, Dad, we totally blew this,” Manon pushed it.

“Baby girl,” Remy replied.

It was gentle and sweet.

It was also a command to stop talking.

She did as her father not-quite told her.

“Okay, so what do you need from this, honey?” I asked Yves. “Should we go out and buy champagne or something?”

“Do I get a party because I’m hetero?” Sabre asked.

“Sure,” I answered.

“Me too?” Manon queried.

“Of course,” I said.

“Can I ask for a Nordy’s gift certificate instead?” she inquired.

I smiled at her.

Then I said, “No.”

She rolled her eyes.

We started to edge back, because we were close, touchy and affectionate, but we weren’t weird, and that was when the next strange thing came from Remy.

He stopped us from completely disengaging by clamping down hard on my hip and keeping me tucked to his side.

The kids did move back, not far.

But I couldn’t move away, at all.

And the way this was, I was stuck with my arm also around him.

Like we were holding each other.

Uh…

“We have one more thing to talk about before I hit the wine fridge to grab a bottle,” he stated.

All our kids looked to their dad.

I tested his hold on me.

It tightened.

I stopped testing.

“Myrna is moving out.”

I went completely still at his announcement.

“Oh my God,” Manon breathed, and then she let slip a quiet, “Yay.”

Yves emitted a noncommittal, thus hiding his real reaction (he didn’t say much about her, but my sense was that he wasn’t big on Myrna either), “Erm.”

Sabre demanded, “Are you serious?”

I examined my oldest and something hit me that I hadn’t noticed, or it was something he’d never let show.

He had a crush on his dad’s girlfriend.

Ulk.

“I am serious,” Remy confirmed. “She was supposed to be out today…before this meeting. I’m uncertain why that didn’t happen. She will be out by the end of the week.”

I had no idea why I had to be there, and attached to Remy, while he shared this information that was none of my business with our kids.

But although I wouldn’t mind a glass of champagne to toast my youngest having the courage to share his truth and us moving on from that as close as ever (as such, with their mom and dad split up), I was acutely uncomfortable in my current situation because I was entirely comfortable and familiar with it.

Manon was too, as well as more, which she was giving me indication of as I stood in the curve of her father’s arm. She did this with a rapid up and down of my position and repeat before bugging her eyes out at me.

I clenched my teeth.

“You’re dumping her?” Sabre asked.

“Myrna and I are moving on with our lives not together,” Remy answered at the same time didn’t.

“What the fuck?” Sabre’s voice was rising.

Remy’s patience instantly slipped.

“Do we speak like that in front of women?” he growled.

That was another part of my ex that I’d loved, and it sucked not because he had it, but because the reason he did was that both his mother and father drilled it into him.

He was a thoroughly modern man.

But there were things that were old-fashioned about him.

One of them being that he was and never lost being a traditional Southern gentleman.

This was communicated as well in his voice, which was the part that wasn’t the same as Yves’s (alas). Remy had a faint, upper-crust, New Orleans accent that was tinged with the melodic purr of French.

This was because Guillaume and Colette lived mostly in New Orleans, but they owned an apartment in Paris and a villa in Toulouse, and outside other occasions they went to France, without fail they spent every Christmas in Paris and every summer in Toulouse and that had rubbed off on their boy.

There were, of course, caveats to this particular rule, as Remy had recently demonstrated when he blew his stack. And Remy let loose however when he was around me.

But this rule for his boys wasn’t just about that.

It was couched in an overarching rule about respect for women.

That respect was both practical (when they were younger, he’d given them The Talk which included him telling them he’d provide them with condoms whenever they needed them, taking them to get HPV vaccinations and explaining to them that they got clear consent before even kissing a girl, and if he ever heard word they’d taken advantage of a woman who was in no state, he’d lose his mind). As well as traditional (you opened doors, picked up the tab, gave the girl the seat with the best view and pulled it out for them, made certain their food and beverage were served before yours and didn’t use foul language in their presence).