10. Top of the List

CHAPTER10

Top of the List

Wyn

Tuesday evening, I was, of course, running late as I walked through the back kitchen, the dining area, past the hostess station and into the bar at Durant’s, to see Fiona Remington sitting in a half-circle booth at the back.

People were glancing her way, but they weren’t being overt or doing anything as crass as taking pictures, because it was Durant’s and no one there would be so gauche.

She was wearing a heavenly combination of Gucci and Givenchy.

I approved.

With a glance and a smile at her bodyguard, Davey (who was in the next booth), I hit the table and slid into the seat.

“You’re ridiculous,” she stated, reaching to what I knew was a mojito, since she’d mixed some for us at her house in Malibu and shared they were her signature.

I also knew she was referring to the fact that only I would be fifteen minutes late to sit down with possibly the most powerful creative force in Hollywood.

I grinned at her and replied, “Life has been crazy.”

She lifted a brow on an expressive face with big eyes and perfect black skin, all of this surrounded by a halo of soft curls, before she took a sip of her drink.

“My son came out as gay,” I declared. “He’s dating an Adidas model rugby player, who in another life was a gladiator who had no troubles ripping apart a lion but has the manners of a young man who got perfect scores in etiquette school.”

Fiona put her drink down.

I kept blabbing.

“Me and the rest of my friend posse are currently procrastinating in calling an intervention with a member of our crew who we’ve just realized has been verbally abusing our husbands for more than a decade. And in doing so, bringing a toxicity she’s been slowly poisoning a lot of things with that whole time.”

Fiona tipped her head to the side.

I continued yammering.

“And although he’s been eerily quiet for two days, my ex-husband threw down with me on Sunday about the fact that we’re still in love, and we need to work it out, even though he walked out on me, and we’ve been divorced for three years.”

“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.

I was in LA more than she was in Phoenix, so I’d been to her home a couple of times and we’d both shared. Fiona, not as much as me, and I got that. She was who she was, and to be sure she was protected, I’d have to be much deeper in her life, and she’d have to know me a lot better for her to share meaningfully.

But she knew about Remy.

“On Sunday he alluded to failing me about something…” I shook my head. “I don’t know, he didn’t fully explain it but…” God! “It obviously really bothered him.”

“You don’t know?”

“No. Because he didn’t fail me.”

“But he thinks he did.”

The waiter thankfully arrived with my drink, and he barely put it down before I picked it up.

“We’ll order in a second,” Fiona said quietly.

“Of course, Ms. Remington,” he murmured and moved away.

I sipped.

“So?” she asked me.

“Yes, oh yes.” I put my drink down. “He thinks he did.”

“Are you not curious?”

“If I’d allow myself to think about it, I wouldn’t be able to function, because that would be all I could do. Think about it.”

“You could ask him, Wyn,” she pointed out.

“I let him go on Wednesday.”

“Pardon?”

“I finally came to terms we were done. I did this last Wednesday.”

She stared at me a second.

And then she started laughing.

I wasn’t sure it was funny.

She was still chuckling when she again reached to her glass and murmured, “The shit we do to guard our hearts.”

“He left me, Fiona, and eventually moved a woman in with him.”

She sipped, but didn’t put her drink down when she replied, “He did. You were divorced when he did. She’s gone. That was then. This is now. You just let him go and you’re hanging on to that like it means something and missing what it really means. You’ve been divorced for years, and you just let him go, and he wants to work things out and what are you doing, Wyn? Holding back a man you love because…why…exactly?”

“He walked out,” I said shortly. “And divorced me. I wanted to talk about it then. I wanted to work it out then. He didn’t allow either.”

She swung her glass toward me. “So you didn’t get what you wanted, girl. Who cares? Again, that was then, and this is now.”

“So I snap to when Remy decides we’re worth fighting for?”

“Hell yes.”

My head jerked back in shock.

She lifted one long, elegant finger from her glass.

“Now, I said that, but what I did not say was that you should let him off the hook for doing something so entirely fucked up without engaging his damned wife in the process. I’m telling you to sit down and listen to what the man has to say. And then you can decide if it’s worth fighting for.”

Ugh!

“God, you suck. You’re just supposed to be beautiful and talented and demanding and vain. Not wise. It’s upsetting and annoying,” I groused, grabbing my drink and maybe spilling a little of it.

But that didn’t stop me from drinking it and then more of it because she was laughing.

I put my glass down and pinned her with my gaze. “Okay, what are you doing in Phoenix?”

I emphasized my words to share that we were no longer talking about me.

“I’m moving here.”

Another head jerk.

Then a big smile.

“Really?” I asked.

She nodded. “I’m just…done with LA. I need a break. Phoenix is close. No snow. No natural disasters. And maybe I can go to the grocery store without someone taking a photo of me.”

“Fiona, we don’t have famous people wandering about willy-nilly like LA, but as much as I’d love having you close, please don’t hang your hopes on that happening. You know Imogen Swan lives in Phoenix. There are pictures of her published all the time, and in some of them, she’s grocery shopping.”

“Well then, I just need a break. And I need to know if my real estate agent is giving me the proper advice. She’s recommending Paradise Valley or Cave Creek. And all I know is Scottsdale. And no shade on Scottsdale, but I’m not sure I’m a Scottsdale gal.”

“Cave Creek would be far more private, you’d be able to have some land, but it isn’t super close to the city. However, it isn’t too far from Kierland and that has great shops and restaurants, not to mention Cave Creek itself is a little touristy, but the good kind. It’s a fun place. Paradise Valley has some amazing homes, is in the city, perfectly positioned between Phoenix and Scottsdale, but it wouldn’t be private. And, although you might be able to score a decent sized lot, you wouldn’t have a ton of space.”

“Okay, then part two, I want your ex-husband to design a home for me.”

I sat still.

My smile was slow.

And my words were too.

“You little minx.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Please, Wyn, do not think I got where I am without using every damned card I have up my sleeve.”

“You do know that if Fiona Remington called his office and shared she wanted him to design a home for her, he would take you as a client.”

“I don’t know this because Dan Parkinson did and they told him they would love to work with him, but Mr. Gastineau has a two-year waiting list. And Wyn,” she indicated herself with her glass, “this woman is not waiting two years.”

“Remy’s people said that to Parkinson?”

She nodded.

“Well, he is in demand. But he’s trained some amazing juniors in his firm and—”

“I want Gastineau. So did Parky. They said they’d work with him, but they couldn’t move him up. Gastineau did Dobbie Heald’s place up in Wyoming. I’ve been there and it’s sublime. No one else will do.”

I remembered that design.

It was sublime.

“Well, obviously, I’ll leave here and call Remy and tell him I’m willing to sit down and discuss our future, but only if he delays every project he’s working on and puts you at the top of the list.”

“Oh honey, no. He can have a month or two to get sorted. I have to find the perfect plot of land and decide what I want to put on it. Then I want to be top of the list.”

I burst out laughing.

She pointed to my menu and said, “I’m starving, baby. Let’s eat.”

I picked up my menu, glanced at it, then back to her. “I’ll love it that you’re closer.”

“And I’ll be happy to have a friend in town.”

“Thank you for listening and not letting me pull shit, even on myself.”

“I will be honest and say I didn’t do it to get on the top of your ex’s list.”

I nodded.

“But it better buy me the top of your ex’s list,” she finished.

And again, I burst out laughing.