Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

He didn’t take her suggestion.

“How many were there? One? Two? Five?” he pushed.

“Remy.” That time his name was a warning.

He wasn’t sure ever in their lives together he’d heeded one of her warnings.

She also never heeded his.

And this time, it was no different.

“I know it’s on me. I’ll have to live until my dying day knowing I made it so you took another man…or men. But since you did, I don’t think it’s fair you make me pay for having another woman.”

“This isn’t about being fair, Remy, or making you pay. It isn’t about her either. It isn’t about…the others.”

Fuck.

Others.

Plural.

Fuck.

“It’s about me seeing to you,” she finished.

“Seeing to me?” he asked.

“When you hurt…like that…you want affection, not sex.”

What was she talking about?

“Sorry?”

“When you get hurt, when your feelings hurt, or you get sensitive or emotional…”

Jesus Christ.

“…you like to cuddle and get in your head playing piano with me close,” she concluded.

“This is one of the major reasons I did not want to tell you about my parents,” he growled.

“What?” she asked.

“I don’t want to cuddle, Wyn. I’d much rather be buried in you than buried in Debussy. You like me to play. You like to cuddle. I do it for you.”

“Do you…not like to play? Does it…remind you of your mom?”

“For fuck’s sake, Wyn!” he exploded, standing. “I’m not some wuss-ass bundle of fragility you have to coddle just because my mother was fucked up. Every piece of my life is not about her, every part of me is not about her.”

She uncurled her legs on the couch to sit straight, but she didn’t stand up.

And she said pacifyingly, “All right, honey.”

This, of course, made him angrier. “And don’t do it now, for fuck’s sake.”

“You use the F-word a lot when you won’t let your sons do it,” she remarked.

A diversion tactic.

He wasn’t diverted.

“That’s because you let me be just who I am and I have a foul mouth, and yeah, maybe that’s because my mother used to smack it when I got older and started to defy her. But that still doesn’t mean everything about me is about her.”

She looked stricken.

And it gutted him.

“She used to smack your—”

“Jesus Christ, let it go, Wyn!” he roared.

She closed her mouth.

“You do see me standing right here?” He slapped his hand on his chest to emphasize his question.

“Yes, Remy, I see you,” she said gently.

He had a bad taste in his mouth as he spat, “Don’t be docile and meek because you don’t think I can handle shit.”

She shut up again.

“I’m not exactly a hundred-pound weakling,” he pointed out.

“No, you’re not,” she agreed.

“I had a growth spurt at thirteen, started filling out at fifteen, but before then, all that shit stopped mainly because she pushed me into a wall when I was eleven, and I got ticked. So I pushed her back.”

Her eyes got round.

“She lost her shit, dissolved onto a chair, howling with crocodile tears, asking me what kind of son she raised and threatening to tell Dad I put my hands on her. My response was, ‘Please, Mom, tell him.’ She read that threat for what it was, shut shit down immediately, gave me a good look and realized that particular reign of terror was over.”

“That particular one?”

“You don’t go from taking all your perceived woes out on your child to being a functional parent. She found a different way to take her shit out on me, and I became her recalcitrant son. I didn’t listen. I had no respect for my mother. I wasn’t polite. I didn’t love her, or I didn’t love her enough. It was relentless. And that was almost worse. Sometimes, I wished she’d go back to hitting me, because it seemed I could never do anything right. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make her happy. I couldn’t settle her down. I couldn’t be what she needed me to be to make her normal, to make her love me.”

Wyn was now pale, her gaze wounded.

But she wanted this, said she needed it, and Remy was done with it. He wanted it over, he wanted them to move on from it, so he had to give it to her.

All of it.

Thus, Remy didn’t stop.

“After I got older, after it sunk in he wasn’t going to come to my rescue, and the end was in sight because I was in high school, I could drive and I had things out of the house I could do to escape her, friends I could be with who made me feel normal and made me realize I was, but she wasn’t, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy for her. I didn’t listen. I had no respect for her. And to her, I was not polite. I put up with her because she was my mother, but I didn’t like her all that much and I wasn’t shy about behaving like I didn’t.”

“But, do you like to play piano?”

For fuck’s sake.

“I love to play,” he replied. “I love that my kids play. I love that my sons are better than me. I love music. And I love that my wife thinks it hot that, even if I like all kinds of music, if given a choice, I don’t turn on rock, I listen to classical.”