31. Adulting

CHAPTER31

Adulting

PART ONE

Wyn

“I can’t help but think this is a bad idea.” Noel’s voice came from the speakers in my car.

“Simultaneous meets, and we’re both done,” I replied. “We can reconvene when we’re finished, and it’ll be behind us. No fretting about the next one coming.”

It was the weekend following our return from New Orleans.

I was on my way to Bea’s house to have a conversation.

Bill was at Remy’s house because Myrna was heading over there to have a conversation with Remy.

She didn’t know Bill was going to be there, but I demanded that Remy not meet with her alone. He saw the wisdom of this and not only didn’t put up a fight, he thanked me for the idea.

Bill was going to hang in the guest suite, give them room.

But he’d be close, which made me feel better.

“No, that’s the good part,” Noel said. “What I mean is, talking to Bea by yourself.”

“In the end, it’s between her and me,” I reminded him.

“That’s debatable,” he replied.

“She’s the worst with Remy. Kara gave up on her long ago and really doesn’t care whether their friendship continues or not. She’s already decided to ghost her. And Bernice agrees that she has her own private things to say. Further, it isn’t cool, ganging up on her.”

“Do you think she’s considered for one second if her behavior is cool?” Noel asked, then went on before I could speak. “I’ll answer that since the answer is obvious. No.”

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“Correct,” Noel agreed, surprising me. Then he explained, “But there are people who don’t deserve the right thing because they haven’t earned it.”

“You still have to do the right thing, honey,” I said quietly.

“Ugh,” he groaned, which was his form of capitulation.

I changed the subject. “Let’s talk about the wedding for a second.”

“Right, let’s, because I’m way more annoyed about that. Remy has given me carte blanche.”

“Noel—” I began.

“No. You’re nickel and diming things. You can’t be wearing an Oscar de la Renta wedding dress and serving Costco champagne, for God’s sake.”

I hadn’t suggested Costco.

However, what I’d suggested wasn’t far off.

“I—”

“Wyn, this poor girl syndrome thing has to stop.”

I blinked at the road.

Noel kept speaking.

“I’m not going to be stupid about things. You guys are rich but you’re not billionaires. We’re not talking ridiculous. But Remy said you couldn’t have the wedding you wanted the first go ’round, so he wants you to have what you want this time. And that’s not only what you’re getting, it’s also what you’re letting him give to you.”

Letting him give to you.

Letting Remy give it to me.

“I’m doing it again,” I blurted.

“Tell me about it,” he retorted.

“No, I mean pouring the wine back into the bottle.”

“Sorry?”

“I have poor girl syndrome,” I told him.

“Uh, I hate to be common, as you know, but there’s no other response that fits as well as this one. No duh?” he asked. “We’ve only had this conversation fifty thousand times.”

That was an exaggeration.

But that didn’t make his statement untrue.

“It upsets Remy,” I shared.

Noel finally cottoned on to how important this bent to the conversation was.

“He needs to feel like he’s taking care of me,” I went on.

“That’s what you do for the people you love,” Noel said carefully.

“It’s more with him. I need to do better at not pouring the wine back in the bottle.”

“First, gross. Never pour wine back into the bottle. But Wyn, what upsets him is not only that he wants to feel like he’s taking care of you. It’s that, since you haven’t let that go, since you haven’t settled into the life you two built together, a life that’s impressive and by no means one where you have to horde wine or anything, it probably feels like he’s failed at taking care of you all along.”

Oh my God.

Yes.

This.

This was precisely what triggered my husband three years ago.

Noel was still talking.

“However, most importantly, although this is about him, it’s also about you. We all can’t blow every penny we earn, but you don’t do that. Neither of you do. Not even close. But you splurge on a five-thousand-dollar bag without blinking, and don’t use Ziplocs.”

“That’s about the environment,” I fibbed.

It was, but it wasn’t.

“Whatever. You know what I mean. Seriously, pouring wine back into the bottle?”

And…seriously.

That was gross.

“My parents worked very hard when I was growing up, and we still didn’t have much.”

“Okay, so you worked very hard as the next generation, and you have a lot more. Do you hold guilt about that?” Noel inquired.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Is this bigger?” he asked, oddly eagerly. “Do I need to call a Cock and Snacktails?”

Eagerness explained.

The seal had been broken for Noel on that in a big way. I’d been home for four days, and he’d wanted to call three Cock and Snacktails, mostly about me talking to Bea by myself, but once it was because I postponed my mani-pedi (by a day), and he felt I needed a lecture from all my bestest friends on self-care.

He did this, by the way, while giving me a lecture about self-care.

“I think I need to be open about this with my husband, explore it with him, and ask him to work on it with me.”

“I suppose that’s a better idea,” Noel mumbled.

“This means you have carte blanche, honey, within Remy’s budget, that is,” I pointed out in order to improve his mood.

“Oh my God, it does!” he replied. “I gotta go. I have calls to make. Byeeeee.”

And then he was gone, and I was smiling at my windshield.

The smile didn’t last long, primarily because, a few minutes later, I was pulling into Bea’s driveway.

She made me stand at her door probably a full two minutes before she answered the doorbell, and for once, I was on time.

“Wyn,” she greeted coolly, stepping out of the way.

“Hi, Bea,” I greeted much more warmly, hoping to set a tone, or at least push back on hers so she’d fall into mine, and then both of us could find a way to get beyond where we were and learn to be better at what we were.

Friends.

I stepped inside.

She led me to the living room, turned and stated, “I’d offer you something to drink, but I’m not sure how this is going to go, and if you’re here to be abusive to me, it isn’t going to last long enough for it to be worth the effort.”

Not a great start.

“I’m not going to be abusive, Bea, of course not.”

“You haven’t been very cool with me lately, Wyn, so you can understand my concern.”

I had agreed to meet at her house to make her feel safe. Not on neutral ground, on her turf.

I gave her that.

And for years, she verbally tore apart my husband to my face, as well as his, and anyone else who would listen, and I’d let her.

Now, it was time to come to terms, and she was gaslighting me.

But I wasn’t going to bite.

So I didn’t.

“We have things we need to talk through,” I told her.

“You’re getting back with Remy,” she surmised.

“No, I’m not. We’re back. We’re remarrying during the Christmas holiday. We just returned from New Orleans as a family because his mother is dying.”

I stopped speaking because she rolled her eyes and shook her head at the same time, crossing her arms on her chest, and it came to me in that moment that we were both still standing.

She hadn’t offered me a seat.

I’d been in that house more times than I could count, and she hadn’t asked me to sit down.

Nor did she have a word to say about Colette’s situation.

Now, she might not be Remy’s biggest fan, but she didn’t know Colette was like she was, and both Colette and Remy were human beings, so learning the mother of someone you knew was dying merited something.

However, it didn’t get it.

Instead, she told the ceiling, “It’s utterly ludicrous what women will put up with from a man so they’ll feel some worth when they’re already worthy.”

“It isn’t about feeling worth, it’s about love. I love him, Bea.”

She looked to me, not hiding the sneer in her lip.

I ignored that and forged ahead before she could say something else that was annoying.

“I also can’t have you trash-talking him. Not to me, or to Remy, or to anybody.”

Her eyes got big. “Trash-talking him?”

“Please don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” I said quietly.

Her face twisted. “God, he’s got you wrapped around his dick again, doesn’t he?”

I said nothing, just stared at my friend, feeling the bitterness emanating from her and hitting me like a thousand little spikes, leaving a thousand little wounds.

“You do know this is pathetic, don’t you?” she demanded.

“No,” I said, still quietly, this time my voice clogged with hurt. I saw Bea register that hurt, a flicker of something warmer and kinder in her gaze, but I kept going. “I know it isn’t anything of the sort. I also know that I can’t stand here any longer, and it guts me, utterly rips me to shreds to say that I think it’s healthier for the both of us if we go on with our lives without each other in them.”

“So you’re picking Remy over me,” she scoffed.

Dear God.

What was wrong with her?

“He is my husband, Bea,” I pointed out.

“He left you. He broke you when he left.”

“I was devastated, but I wasn’t broken. We both know that. Please don’t dramatize what happened to me. Not you. Me. I felt it. I lived through it. Not you. But I went to work. I continued to build my business. I took care of my home, my children, myself. I was hurt, torn up. I loved him. I missed him. I was painfully confused. I didn’t get why he left. It preyed on my mind relentlessly. But I was not broken. Further, Remy and I discussed it. There were reasons he left.”

“Yeah? What reasons?”

“I would hope you understand, considering how this conversation is going, why I feel that isn’t any of your business. What’s important is that they were significant, I know them now, I understand them, and we’ve worked through them.”

“You know what pains me, Wyn?” she asked.

I’d come there wanting to understand what pained her.

I no longer felt that way.

I didn’t get the chance to tell her not only didn’t I know, I didn’t want to know.

She told me.

“That I’ve spent so much time on you, and in the end, you’re one of those women who’ll do anything to keep a man in her life. All the show with your big business and your Hollywood clients, and when it all boils down, you’re just the little woman.”

I let the “little woman” thing go because that was pure bullshit and not worthy of comment.

“You’ve spent so much time on me?” I whispered.

“We’ve known each other years,” she retorted.

“We have. But I’d like to understand. Have I been a project? Or has this been a friendship?”

“You know what I mean,” she huffed.

“No, I don’t. I wouldn’t ask if I did.”

“You need a man,” she snapped.

“I don’t need him, Bea. I want him. I love him. There is no weakness to a woman who wants a partner to share her life with.”

“Men like that are dinosaurs.”

I shouldn’t ask.

I asked.

“Men like what?”

“Toxic men,” she declared. “The kind who spread their legs far apart in an airplane seat because they need so much room for what they consider are their big balls, and they don’t give that first fuck that they’re invading your space. Space you are entitled to. Men like that.”

Remy didn’t do the man spread, at least not when he was sharing space on a couch or in a restaurant booth or on a plane, or, truthfully, anywhere.

But I wasn’t going to share that.

I also wasn’t going to defend my husband. I wasn’t going to put energy into doing something that didn’t need to be done, and something she wasn’t entitled to have.

She’d known me for years. She’d also known Remy.

She knew this already.

However she wanted to view him was hers. The fact it wasn’t the truth was something I now understood, I could talk to her until I was blue in the face, and it wouldn’t change.

She’d made up her mind. For some reason, I right then realized I’d never get the chance to understand, it was ugly, twisted, wrong and harmful, but she’d done it and she was sticking to it.

To stick by her decision, hurting Remy was okay with her.

Worse, hurting me was too.

I’d reached out to her. I’d gotten into my car and come to her. I was standing in her living room. I was giving her my time. Everything I’d done was making it clear she meant something to me, and I wanted to do what I could to salvage a friendship with a person I cared about.

And she was cold to start, manipulative in the beginning and vicious from there.

Noel, damn the man, was his usual right.

She hadn’t earned me standing right there.

But I did it and now it was time to leave.

“Thank you for all the kind things you’ve done for me and my kids, and all the lovely memories we’ve shared,” I said, and gave her a sad smile, watching the animosity waver on her face as distress flashed in her eyes.

But I didn’t hesitate.

I turned to leave.

I was out the door, foot on her welcome mat, pulling the door closed behind me, when it was tugged from my hold.

I looked back, hope blooming in my chest.

“You’re going to regret it, going back to him,” she warned.

The hope died.

“Try to be happy, Bea. I want that for you,” I replied.

And then, without looking back, my heart feeling like a rock in my chest, I walked to my car, got in, started it up…

And I drove away.