Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

“Why does it have to be at Remy’s house?” she shot back.

Why did she care?

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I didn’t quiz Sabre on the whys and wherefores. My eldest son has never asked us all to get together. I’m more preoccupied with Sabre calling a meeting at all, and it being so important he’s driving up from Tucson with Manon, and what that might mean, than nagging him about why he picked his dad’s house.”

“Well, I know why,” she declared.

And she did.

This was why my heart had stopped beating.

Because she knew everything about everything.

And when this skill she had came down to me, it was everything about Remy and why he was always behaving one step up from caveman.

Or one step below dick.

Or jackoff.

Or motherfucker.

Or asshole/alphahole (that second one was her favorite).

There was no denying Remy was an alpha. There was also no denying he was hypermasculine. And last, there was no denying these things had an effect on our marriage.

But there was further no denying they were both part of the reason why I fell in love with and married him in the first place.

Bea went on to tell me why Sabre had called the meeting at his dad’s.

“Because he wants that bitch there.”

Okay.

I was not a big fan of Remy’s live-in girlfriend, Myrna. She and I didn’t often have opportunities to be in each other’s space, but when we were, we avoided each other like the plague. And I (quietly) did not like her due to some of the things Manon, my daughter, told me about her. (Suffice it to say, Manon didn’t like Myrna either—it wasn’t hate, but there was not a lot of love lost between the two.)

But I wasn’t hip on calling another woman a bitch unless she was categorically, well…a bitch.

And as far as I knew, Myrna wasn’t that.

At least not categorically.

“If he does, wouldn’t it make sense that he’d call the meeting at Remy’s?” I asked, the words coming out of my mouth even as I wondered why in the heck I was explaining family things to Bea in a manner I was actually defending them. “He’d hardly ask Remy and Myrna to my house.”

“Remy has no problem showing up at your house,” she pointed out, but I wasn’t sure why.

Though, it did get me to thinking, because no, he didn’t have a problem with this.

Even if we barely had anything to discuss anymore. All the important decisions had been made, and now our kids were old enough to make their own.

Yves, a senior in high school, was the only one home, but he had a car. He stayed where he wanted when he wanted, and he spent just as much time with Remy as he did with me.

As for Sabre and Manon, they were both down in Tucson at the University of Arizona, but like Yves, they had cars, and when they were home, they stayed where they wanted, when they wanted.

And the truth of that was that Manon was often with me, not only because she wasn’t a fan of Myrna’s, and Sabre stayed with his dad, because he and Remy (along with Yves), were two (three) peas in a pod.

It was just that Yves was at a time in his life where he still needed Mom and Dad.

Manon was sallying forth in this world as a young woman, and therefore, she needed me.

And Sabre was at a time where it appeared he needed to be around his dad.

I found this all entirely natural and had no qualms with it.

Of course, I’d like to see my first son more. But even if he slept at his father’s house, he was like Manon: his life was so busy, sleep was mostly all he did there.

We had our mother/son times. It wasn’t like he ignored me. Just as Manon spent quality time with her dad.

But Remy did often show at my house to “discuss things.”

I didn’t have a chance to get a lock on remembering what those things were in my present moment.

Bea was, as I was just then noting was her usual, on a roll.

“So you have to be around her during a family meeting, which is a slap in the face.”

“I honest to God don’t know why we’re having this conversation. It’s none of your business what Sabre wants or what I decide to do about it.”

Those words came out mostly because I was ticked, and I had the tendency to get ticked at the drop of hat. As such, I didn’t tend to allow myself a second to think on that emotion before I did something about it.

And in that second, I considered how that might have affected a number of things in my life, and…

Damn.

“Did you just say that to me?” she asked, sounding deeply wounded.

“Bea, you phoned and asked me over for wine, pizza and Netflix, and I told you I couldn’t because I had this meeting then I had to get to the warehouse. It’s kickoff night. You know we have a ritual on kickoff night. Then you started in on Remy, and Sabre, and Myrna, and really, I must say that I don’t know where this vitriol comes from. But I’m worried my son is going to tell me he got some girl pregnant, or he’s decided to change his major even though he’s graduating in May, or something like that. And you’re spewing loathing for Remy when our divorce has been final for two years and we’ve both moved on.”

“First, if you remember, he divorced you, and you did not want that,” she retorted. “And second, ask yourself, Wyn, have you moved on? Have you really moved on?”