Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

“Jesus, Wyn,” she said.

“Oh!” I cried. “And he kicked out his live-in girlfriend after he found out she’d poked holes in his condoms and stopped taking birth control in order to trap him with a baby he did not want, and now there’s a slim chance she’s going to start stalking him.”

Fiona was silent.

A waiter showed up, put a glass of water in front of me and asked, “Can I get you a drink, ma’am?”

I looked up at him. “Dirty martini.”

“Keep them coming,” Fiona ordered.

He nodded and took off.

I looked to her and shared, “I drove.”

“Okay, I’ll drive you home and Davey can follow, because, sis, you need to get drunk.”

I smiled at her.

My smile faltered and I feared I was going to burst into tears (the state, incidentally, I’d been in since I’d slunk out of my own closet to see if Remy was gone then locked the doors behind him).

I got a handle on that, and Fiona reached out and wrapped her fingers around mine.

So obviously, I lost my handle on that.

To grab hold again, I squeezed her fingers and said, “Now you. Please tell me you’re in Phoenix to scout locations for a movie and you want me to consult on costumes.”

She took her hand away and asked, “Do you want to get into costume design?”

“I want so much work I can’t think about anything else, so”—I shrugged—“sure.”

“I know you’re an intelligent, together woman or I wouldn’t allow you to dress me, so I know that you avoiding your issues is a temporary thing and I know you’re going to buck the hell up and get your shit sorted after you give yourself this temporary thing,” she said quietly.

I reached to my water.

“I also better not hear you have issues with your boy and this Adidas model,” she said.

I took a sip and shook my head. “No. Absolutely not. I mean, does it hurt that he was so worried what his dad would think about him being gay that he hid his boyfriend from us for six months? Yes. Do I get why he did that? Not really, since his father is one hundred percent not that man. But I’m not gay. He experiences things in our society about who he is that I do not. I might not get it, but then I never will. I just have to allow him to take his journey as he needs to do it and provide cushioning as best I can if times get tough, and encouragement for the same if that’s what’s needed.”

She grabbed her drink again and nodded before saying into her glass, “I hear that,” and then taking a sip.

Of course she did.

“This friend?” she asked when she put her drink down.

“Bea. And that’s tougher. Because it’s easier to think on, so I haven’t been avoiding it. And in thinking on it, the bad outweighs the good, by a lot. We have, however, decided not to give up, because there is good. But we need her to understand we can’t carry on the way we are and hopefully more, let her know we’re there if this behavior means she needs our support for something deeper.”

“You’re good people, Wyn,” Fiona said.

I smiled at her. “Thanks, but there’s more bad to that.”

“And that is?”

“I have a feeling that…” I couldn’t finish because I’d been thinking about it, however I wasn’t sure I’d wrapped my head around it.

“You have a feeling that…?” she prompted.

I cleared my throat and looked to the bar to see if I could assess how long it would take to get my martini.

“Girl,” Fiona called.

I pushed out a sigh and looked back to her.

“I have a feeling that Remy was pissed at me that he took her abuse, and I didn’t shield him from it.”

“I have very little information on this, outside the fact you’re you, and you wouldn’t be sitting a friend down to have words about things if it wasn’t extreme, so my guess is, whatever she was doing to him was also extreme. Taking that further, if you didn’t put a stop to it, well…” She hesitated and then finished in the way I knew she had to, but I didn’t want to hear, “Yeah. It isn’t his place to throw down with one of your friends. But, girl, it sure is yours.”

“Shit,” I whispered.

“When you were together, did he complain about her?”

She’s a piece of work.

She’s harmless, Remy. She’s just got an edge.

Yeah, like a razor has an edge.

That had been one of several conversations we’d had about Bea.

What he said was never overt, like, she’s a bitch, she treats me like shit, Wyn, ditch her. But then again, unless one of his friends was inappropriate in ways that Remy absolutely needed to know, I would not hold my tongue that they annoyed me, but I wouldn’t say, they’ve gotta go.

“Yes,” I admitted to Fiona. “I just blew it off because it was Bea. She could just be…mean. And I thought mostly she was dealing not in good ways with the fact her husband had left her. But I’m seeing now that she should have done that without taking it out on other people. At least not for ten years and counting.”

“Still, not a lot to hang walking out on your wife and family on,” she pointed out.

I was her stylist. I was also her friend. If we were in the same space and it was possible, we got together.