1. Walgreens

CHAPTER1

Walgreens

Wyn

Three years later…

“Typical alphahole bullshit. Typical Remy, yanking your chain like this.”

I was in my car.

My friend Bea’s voice was sounding from the speakers.

And my heart just stopped beating.

This situation was obviously acute, so I made the first right turn I could, into a Walgreens parking lot.

I parked.

And I tried to get my heart beating again.

Though, this was hard since my mind was working triple-time.

“I mean, what in the fuck? You just cannot shake this jackoff loose,” Bea kept ranting.

I stared at my windshield, deep breathing.

“I mean,” she carried on, as I was just then realizing she was wont to do, “he walked out on you and three kids. He couldn’t let that be his Dick of the Century finale?”

“Sabre called this family meeting, Bea. Remy didn’t,” I told her something I’d already told her.

“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?”

Okay, now I wasn’t ticked.

I was mad.

I was also freaked at her second point.

And those, for me, were not a good mix.

“I can’t even begin to imagine why you’d remind me Remy was the one who divorced me,” I stated coolly.

“Because it’s like you forgot he ripped your heart out and crushed it under his boot, this after he’d kicked it around for ten years.”

“And as a friend you feel it’s your job to remind me of that?” I asked.

“Well, yeah,” she answered.

“I think we need to stop talking,” I told her.

“I disagree, since you’re driving over to his house because Sabre is growing up to be a chip off the old block.”

Oh no.

Hell no.

“Think about what you just said to me,” I whispered.

But I wasn’t done.

Boy, was I so not done.

“Now, I listened to you verbally abuse my husband for ten years,” I continued. “And I’m going to have to have a think about that. But do not mistake me and do not miss this message, Bea. Listen carefully. Never…ever…speak badly about my son, to me or anyone.”

With that, I hung up and I stared at my dash, fuming.

Bea rang right back.

I refused the call.

Okay.

Okay, okay, okay.

Heck, now my mind was working quadruple-time.

Put this aside, Wyn, I cut into my own raging thoughts to tell myself. Get it together. Get to Remy’s. You’re running late. You always run late. He hates that.

He did.

He’d tease me about it in the beginning. The first three, four, five, ten (okay, fifteen) years of our marriage.

Then, it annoyed him, and he let that show.

Not long later, around about the time he left, it pissed him off, and he let me know.

My response?

I took it as my tall, dark, gorgeous husband still being tall, dark and gorgeous, and I was the mom of three babies. I still carried baby weight even after they were nowhere near being babies. He was no longer doing the appreciative up-and-down that told me the extra fifteen minutes were so worth it, and he was going to show me just how much when we got home.

No, I was no longer his hot wife he couldn’t keep his hands off.

I was the fat mother of his kids he didn’t have any patience for.

I was also the starting-her-own-business woman who suddenly needed ten more hours in the day to continue to fold his laundry, get the grocery shopping done and look decent for his client dinners.

The interior of my Range Rover rang again, and as it was Bea, I didn’t accept the call.

But I made one to someone else in our posse, top spot bestie shared with my other top spot, Bernice.

The call was to Kara.

She picked up on ring three.

“Oh hell, a call before Sabre’s meeting,” she said as greeting. “Are you okay?”

That was Kara.

It would be Bernice too.

Are you okay?

Not, Typical Remy bullshit.

“Do you think I haven’t moved on from Remy?” I blurted.

“Uhhhhh,” she drew that out then asked, “Let me guess, Bea phoned.”

I blinked.

“She’s blowing up mine, by the way,” she said.

“I just told her off,” I shared.

Kara said nothing.

“She was ranting about Remy,” I continued.

“How am I not surprised?” she muttered.

“Right?” I stated. “Is she like, unhealthily committed to bitching about my ex-husband?”

“She is not a card-carrying member of the Remy Gastineau fan club, no.”

I forged ahead, even if it was tentatively, “And has she not been that for a very long time?”

Kara again was silent.

“She hates him,” I said softly. “Things fell apart with him and that’s bad enough for me. I don’t need her being really mean about it.”

“Bea is a woman who has no issues speaking her mind,” Kara noted.

“Yes, and that should be encouraged, but filters also should be in place. For instance, not bitching about my ex then rolling that into priming herself to begin bitching about my son who you think is acting like my ex.”

“She didn’t,” Kara breathed.

“She did,” I confirmed. “It wasn’t overt, but considering she can’t stand Remy, calling Sabre a chip off the old block, I got the gist.”

“Holy crap.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Sabre is a chip off the old block, so is Yves, but in very good ways because you and Remy didn’t work out, but…”

She hesitated.

It felt like my ears might start bleeding, I was listening so hard.

“When he wasn’t being up his own ass, Remy was a really good guy,” she finished carefully.

I stared at the building that sat in front of my car.

“I’m gonna call Bernice,” Kara said gently. “I think we need a Cock and Snacktails night.”

Bernice, in a previous incarnation, had been a flight attendant. And she’d been on a flight where one of her colleagues had screwed up the cabin announcement once they’d leveled off, not stating the attendants would be serving “snacks and cocktails,” but instead that they’d be serving “cock and snacktails.”

This was already hilarious.

It got better when Bernice started serving, and she asked some little old lady what she wanted, and the lady pointed in the air to indicate the announcement and ordered, “What she said.”

Since that flight, and Bernice relating this story, any night where we got together and had cocktails and munchies, we called Cock and Snacktails night.

But outside of the night we had them two days after Remy left me, the night after Remy served me with papers, the night after Bernice’s husband confessed to cheating on her (not whole hog, he’d just kissed another woman, but, trust me, that was almost a worse betrayal than taking it to the limit), I felt right now I needed Cock and Snacktails more than ever.

“I let him come over and we bicker about stupid shit, Kara,” I admitted softly, even though she knew this. “Manon going over her monthly budget and how much of that goes to Starbucks, and how my then twenty-year-old son really wasn’t old enough to do a cross country drive with his buds, though he was. It’s like we make up shit to bicker about.”

All Kara said was, “Cock and Snacktails,” which set my gut to twisting.

Because I knew she didn’t want to get into it then, since there was a lot to get into because she agreed with me.

“I’m holding on to him,” I said in horror. “He’s moved on. Has the bachelor pad he’s always wanted. The petite, beautiful, free-spirited, younger woman. And I’m holding on to him, giving Manon extra money, defending her right to copiously caffeinate, forbidding Sabre to have something he really wants, and my son is mature, smart, it is something he should have without me making it a headache and a huge discussion with his dad.”

“Cock,” Kara said slowly, “and Snacktails, sister.”

I looked down to my dash again and saw the time.

I was supposed to be at Remy’s house in five minutes and I was, in the current traffic, a good fifteen, twenty minutes away.

Even noting this, I could not get past the epiphany that was assaulting my head.

“I told him when he walked out on me, he couldn’t come back, and he was good with that,” I shared. “But even if those words came out, I never let him go.”

“Wyn, honey, go see what’s up with Sabre. And then it’s kickoff night, yeah?”

Of course, she remembered.

Bea didn’t.

Kara did.

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“Be with your staff, open that champagne, toast the latest box of fabulousness your twenty thousand subscribers are going to love that you curated for them as the preeminent stylist of Hollywood, Bollywood, and everything in between. In the meantime, I’ll get with Bernice, and we’ll set a time to have girl time. Is there any night you can’t do it? Or should I call Noel?”

Noel was my assistant.

Noel had decided he wanted to live the life of Devil Wears Prada without (I hoped) the devil part. Therefore, Noel had a self-imposed duty of being on twenty-four, seven.

And I could be dramatic. But I once picked up my own dry cleaning on a Saturday because I was in the same strip mall, and he’d lost his mind in a way we did not want a repeat.

Truth?

It was no skin off my nose my PA felt picking up my dry cleaning was his sacred duty.

So I let him.

In other words, I answered the only way I could, considering the last time I put something in my own schedule was two weeks into Noel’s employment (and we didn’t want a repeat of that either).

“You better call Noel.”

Kara started laughing.

I felt my lips tip up, because I adored her, and Noel and his foibles meant he made it his mission to take care of me.

But I had, at most, twenty minutes to come to terms with something earth-shattering.

I had, at most, twenty minutes to finally let go of the love of my life.

“I gotta go, I’m going to be late to the meeting,” I said to Kara.

She read my tone, which wasn’t exactly beaten, but it wasn’t far from it.

“I’ll tell Noel it’s emergency planning, okay?” she asked.

“Okay. Thanks for listening.”

“Anytime and every time. Love you, babe.”

“Love you back, babe.”

We hung up and the instant I saw her call fade from the screen on my dash, I saw something else.

And heard something.

“Hang on a second, baby.”

I turned and looked at the big, amazing-looking guy sitting on the barstool. The guy who had been smiling at me as I walked to and by him.

“You did not just walk by me.”

I had.

Even as he’d smiled at me, I’d walked right by Remy, never thinking once that gorgeous man was smiling at me that way because he wanted me to stop.

But he didn’t let me walk away from him without giving him my number.

He was so confident, so sure of himself, I’d never met a man like him.

From the second he spoke to me, I was drunk on his attention.

We’d had our first date the very next night.

I’d slept with him on our third date, which was three nights later, a Friday, and I hadn’t left all weekend.

Over the next two years I’d moved in with him, got engaged to him and married him.

After that, I’d given him babies.

After that, we’d raised them.

In the beginning, it was heaven.

In every way, we were perfect.

Perfect together.

But eventually, we did not drift apart. We broke apart.

And then he shattered us.

Ever since, I’d been sitting among the pieces trying to figure out how to start the process of gluing us back together.

While Remy had bought his mid-century pad, kitted it out with a personal style only an award-winning architect could pull off, and gone on with his life, falling in love with and introducing our family to another woman.

And I had to come to grips with that. Right now.

So it was going to make me later, but I checked the clock.

And I did what I did when I had to do something that didn’t fit into my life, my schedule, the load I carried.

I gave myself five full minutes to feel it.

This meant I sobbed in the parking lot for two minutes.

I struggled with pulling my shit together for two minutes.

I dried my tears and did my best to fix my face for a minute.

Then I pulled out of the parking lot and left Walgreens—and the love of my life—behind.