32. Adulting

CHAPTER32

Adulting

PART TWO

Remy

“No, if you don’t mind, let’s talk here,” Remy said as Myrna, who he’d just granted entry, started to walk to the family room.

Her step faltered. She looked at him where he stood, arm extended, indicating the living room, a room she didn’t know was closer to Bill so Remy’s friend could hear what was going on from behind the opened door you couldn’t see from that space.

Noting her expression, he felt the same as he did when she immediately picked up his call after he’d connected with her to set this meeting. The same as when she’d immediately agreed to meet. The same as when he opened the door.

He felt uneasy at the hope in her gaze.

She moved down the steps to the living room and headed toward the couch.

“Would you like a drink?” he asked.

“I’m not sure, do I need one?” she asked in return.

“I don’t know about you, but I do.”

Her lips quirked, and he had the unsteadying sensation that she was calm and contented.

She thought she was getting what she wanted, what that was, Remy didn’t know. He was simply concerned because whatever it was, it was likely she wasn’t going to get it, and he’d learned the hard way that Myrna not getting what she wanted didn’t go well for him and his family.

“Wine? Vodka tonic?” he offered, not going to her usual, a margarita, because he wasn’t going to put that kind of time into making it.

“Wine,” she answered.

“I’ll be back,” he murmured.

There was a white opened in the fridge. Wyn had opened it the previous evening while he grilled chicken. Over dinner, they’d gotten involved in a discussion about household chores, this devolved into an argument, and they’d ended up fucking.

It had been superb.

In the end, he took her point about being too traditional about the gender divide in everyday life. But since neither of them did most of those things anymore (Wyn was now also using his laundry service), it was moot. Though, he promised to try to be more aware, and if he wasn’t, receptive if she brought it up.

Since they’d fucked and talked themselves out, they’d then gone to sleep.

And didn’t finish the bottle.

Remy poured wine into two glasses and returned.

Myrna was on the couch, right in the middle, like his mother had sat in hers the last time he saw her.

After giving her the glass, Remy moved across the space to sit on the piano bench.

He took a sip, waited for her to do the same, then he started it.

“I wanted to apologize.”

She studied him closely, her eyes carefully shuttered.

“For what?” she queried cautiously, but curiously.

“For letting you move in. For leading you on. It wasn’t my intention, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It’s clear it did. I can understand how you felt there was more between us, because I was not communicating effectively with you. I can understand how you felt we had a future, because I hadn’t made my feelings clear to you. I was checked out, I allowed things to go on too long, and considering your feelings for me, which I knew you had, that was unkind.”

Now she was staring at him, shock unhidden.

“I don’t like that you tracked down Sabre and lied to him about what happened between us. I don’t like that you broke into Wyn’s house and did whatever you tried to do. But I’m not telling you these things solely to get you to stop pulling shit on me and my family. Quite a bit has happened since we split, I’ve taken a hard look at what I’ve done, so I’m saying all of this because you deserve to hear it.”

For a second, she sat there, frozen.

After that second was over, she lost it.

Completely.

Her crying was so bad, Remy had to get up and take the glass from her or it would have been on the floor.

He set it aside with his and approached her, but he didn’t sit by her, he didn’t touch her, he crouched in front of her.

He let her cry for a while, but when, instead of getting better, it got worse, and he saw Bill edge into the room, Remy knew he needed to address it.

He shook his head at Bill, who disappeared, then he turned to his ex.

“Myrna, what’s going on?” he asked.

She was bent to her thighs, face in both hands, but at his words, she jerked back to sitting on the couch.

“I-I-I pulled that fucked-up shit with S-S-Sah be-because I was so p-p-pissed at you,” she hitched out.

He’d figured that part out himself.

“Okay,” Remy murmured.

She took in a breath that broke about five times.

Christ, he wasn’t fond of her or her recent behavior, to say the least.

But he felt that.

“The m-m-minute he stalked away from m-me, God, he was so upset, so m-mad at m-me, I got in my c-car, drove home and thought,”—another broken breath and then a wail—“what the fuck is wrong with me?”

Remy didn’t answer because that was also his question.

“I mean, I was acting like a crazy person!” she shouted, then shot out of the couch so fast, Remy had to lean back to miss her and almost landed on his ass.

Instead, he straightened and retreated. Not so far she’d feel snubbed, but Bill recommended he keep distance between them, and Remy was definitely listening to Bill.

She swiped at her cheeks and faced him.

“Okay, so…listen. You’re gonna be mad, but just listen, okay?” she asked.

Remy braced but nodded.

“So, I was, like…you know…”

He didn’t know but she didn’t go on.

Then she exploded, “Fuck!”

He was growing concerned about her behavior. Myrna unstable, he’d learned, was not a good thing.

“Myrna, just tell me,” he urged patiently. “What’s gone down between us can’t possibly get worse, unless you let it, so just say it. You’re here for us to work this out. This is a safe place for you, I promise.”

“I went part-time,” she blurted.

His head jerked in confusion. “What?”

“Okay, this makes me sound bad, and I was in la-la land because I was crazy about you, though really, that’s just excuse, but I’m blathering. It isn’t debatable. You’ve got money.”

Remy didn’t speak.

She, lamentably, kept going.

“You weren’t asking me to pay rent. You weren’t asking me to contribute to the bills. I thought…”—she lifted her shoulders, dropped them—“I thought we were solid. I went part-time. I mean, work’s a drag. Play is so much better. I took a pottery class. Did a lot of hiking and mountain biking. Hung at Lola’s, drank coffee and read. I mean, I just, well…I kinda used it as a break.”

“You didn’t use it,” he stated flatly. “You used me.”

She sucked her lips between her teeth.

“You were supposed to be saving to get your own place,” he reminded her.

She let her lips go and replied, “When you didn’t, you know, push that or even really mention it again after I moved in…” When he opened his mouth, she quickly said, “At least not after the first few months, I thought…I mean, I figured…”

She trailed off.

So Remy finished for her.

“You decided to read our relationship how you needed to read it, and then you took advantage of it.”

Softly she said, “I didn’t do it to be mean or a mooch, I really was crazy about you, Remy.”

Remy didn’t trust himself to speak.

“The thing is, I knew before you knew. You know…about Wyn.”

He spoke then.

“That I still loved her?”

Looking miserable, Myrna nodded.

“You kept going over to her house. Any excuse, you were over there. You’d come home, all amped up.” Her lips tipped at the ends in a melancholy way. “I knew you, baby. I knew every inch of you. Every tone of your voice. Every smell you gave off. That amped up you were, it wasn’t about being pissed, though you were telling yourself that. You needed to get laid. But,”—she drew in a huge breath—“even so, you never touched me after. Not when you got home, not for days. You missed her, you were like…pining for her, and I wouldn’t do.”

Fucking hell.

I wouldn’t do.

Christ, he was an ass.

He sunk back down on the piano bench, muttering, “Jesus, Myrna.”

“So, I panicked,” she said. “I panicked because I loved you, and you loved her. I don’t even know what the fuck was wrong with me. I tried to get pregnant when I knew you didn’t want it. I guess being crazy about you made me crazy. Because I was acting crazy. And I panicked again when you got so mad about it and told me I had to leave. But that wasn’t just because I was losing you. I got even crazier because we were over, and I didn’t want that, and because I didn’t have the money to go.”

She sucked in a breath, and when Remy remained silent, she carried on.

“I asked to go back to full-time, but they gave that position to someone else, and they couldn’t swing it for me. I needed to find a new job or another one to add to what I had, not to mention a deposit and first month’s rent. But you didn’t give me enough time.”

“It wasn’t my responsibility, considering you didn’t tell me your employment had changed. If we were living together as you thought we were, as partners, this was something I was entitled to know. But regardless how we were living together, considering the fact I was footing the bill, I simply was entitled to know. Can you explain why you didn’t do that?” Remy requested.

“Because I knew it would mean you’d make us end,” she admitted. “I knew that would shake your shit, you’d reflect on that request, and know we weren’t there, and then we’d be over. Obviously, I wasn’t letting myself understand what was behind the shit I was pulling then, but upon reflection, I understand it now. I didn’t want to face it, so I just rode the wave I was on, even knowing on some level I was headed for a wipeout.”

She gave it a moment to allow that to sink in before she tried to joke.

“I can share with some authority that sitting in a jail cell for two days while you beg your really ticked-off mom to bail you out is a pretty hefty wipeout. And as you know, she liked you. So when I confessed to how jacked I’d been behaving, she wasn’t doing cartwheels of joy at the adjusted child she’d raised.”

She was being honest, and amusing, but all of this was eerily familiar.

Myrna was a thirty-nine-year-old woman who thought work was a drag, lied or held back important truths to get what she wanted, and threw tantrums and acted out when she didn’t get it.

In other words, this all seemed too easy, so he wasn’t ready to buy it.

“What did you come into this house thinking was going to happen?” he asked.

Now she appeared guilty, but she said nothing.

“It can’t get worse, Myrna,” he pointed out.

It probably could, but for fuck’s sake. She’d tried to trap him with a child, stalked his son, broke into his home and used him for his money.

So she’d have to get creative to top all of that.

“I thought you’d make a deal with me. If I left you alone, you’d drop the charges.”

Remy sighed.

She went to the couch, but she didn’t sit in it like she owned the place this time. She rested her ass on the arm like she was ready to spring up again if he so demanded.

“You don’t have to drop the charges. I have no priors. The lawyer Mom got me said if I plead guilty, he can swing a deal so I’ll do community service and probably get a year’s probation. It sucks, but I’ll have a record. That said, it is what it is. I did it. If you can be a big enough person to say what you said to start all of this off, I can face the consequences of being a huge moron.”

“Are you going to leave my family alone?” he asked.

She lifted a hand his way.

“You need to know, the last part, it wasn’t about Wyn. After I did that thing to Sah I realized how fucked up I’d been behaving and refocused my energies.”

She dropped her hand and made a self-deprecating face when she took in his skeptical expression.

“I needed money,” she shared. “You know me and Mom don’t get along all that great. Dad’s a dick. I’m not going there. I’m living with her, it’s not working for either of us, so I have to get out. I got another job, decent money, but now I’m hanging on by a thread, because they aren’t real thrilled I worked for them for a few days then I had to call off because I’d been arrested for breaking and entering and attempted burglary.”

She stopped speaking and bit her lip when she noticed that Remy wasn’t responding to any of her attempts at humor, but she didn’t give up.

She let go of her lip and forged on.

“I just knew Wyn had stuff. Expensive stuff. And I needed money. That part wasn’t about hurting you or her. Honest to God. It was because I had to find some fast cash and I figured she’d be insured so what would it hurt?”

When he didn’t say anything, she spoke again.

“Just so you know, sitting in that cell, I realized I was still in the dying throes of crazy, and you and Wyn wouldn’t think the same way.”

“We didn’t. Neither did Sabre, Manon or Yves,” he asserted.

She flinched.

She never got along with Manon, but she really liked Sabre, and tried her best with Yves.

He needed to wind this up.

“I wasn’t being honest with myself, and you were caught up in that,” he said.

Her face got soft. “Remy, did you miss me telling you about my near-fatal brush with being a moron?”

With her expression and her words, he was remembering what attracted him to her in the first place.

She could be sweet as well as funny.

“I knew you weren’t into me,” she admitted on a whisper.

“That doesn’t absolve me.” He did not whisper. “The idea of me getting back from Wyn’s and you knowing where my head was at, it doesn’t feel good I put you through that.”

“But you didn’t know where your head was at. I don’t know why you two broke up, you never shared that with me, and that in itself…I mean, seriously, baby, you didn’t ever give me anything important.”

She let it sink in, how deep she’d dived into what they had, or more importantly what they did not, and then she continued.

“All I knew was, you were suffering for it. I fell in love with the wrong dude. I knew it. I didn’t do anything about it. You liked me and wanted to spend time with me. You knew you couldn’t give me anything more, even knowing I wanted it, and you didn’t do anything about it. We both fucked up. We both admitted it. And now…”

She pulled in another breath, this one so big, her chest moved out, her shoulders went up, and he could see relief on her face when she let it out, before she concluded.

“And now we can both move on.”

“I appreciate that, Myrna. But you need to move on understanding it’s Wyn’s decision about dropping the charges.”

She shook her head. “I’m not asking you for that. I’m just saying, what’s done is done between us. You don’t have to worry about anything else from me. No matter what she decides. I’m done acting like an idiot over a guy. It’s over.”

It’s over.

Could he believe it?

“I want to trust that,” he said quietly.

“You can trust it,” she said firmly.

Both of them sat in silence, staring at each other.

Myrna broke it.

“I fucked any chance of being buds with Sabre, haven’t I?”

Oh yes, she’d categorically done that.

He nodded and gave it to her honestly. “Yes.”

She shook her head morosely, looked at her lap and said, “God. Total moron.”

Yes, she had been.

But she wasn’t.

However, he wasn’t going to convince her of that. Like he wasn’t going to get into how she was in fact a thirty-nine-year-old woman who needed to keep a job, look after her finances, stop bumming off people, including her mother, and get her shit tight.

But he wasn’t that person to her and never would be.

She raised her head, caught his gaze and said, “I’m sorry too. I appreciate you being the bigger person, laying things out like you did. But what I did was sheer lunacy. I can tell you, I knew it at the time I was doing it, I just couldn’t seem to stop myself. But now, I see it, and honest to God, Remy, I’m really, really sorry about it. All of it.”

It was then, finally, Remy felt for her.

“Demons,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“Demons,” he repeated. “My dad told me we all have demons in us that push us to do things that hurt the ones we love most. I did it to Wyn. You did it to me. I know now how mine were born. And maybe…hopefully, knowing that means I can control them. I think, Myrna, maybe giving some time to figuring out how yours were born will help you get to that point too.”

“Short journey straight to my dad being a narcissistic, asshole dick to me and my mom and my brother our whole lives,” she declared.

He smiled.

“There you go. Maybe work on that?” he suggested.

She stood, but went to her wineglass, picked it up and took a healthy gulp.

She then put it back down and looked at him.

“There aren’t many like you, baby,” she told him.

“You’ll find the one who can’t live without you.”

“Maybe.” Another shrug. “Maybe not. I just gotta get to the place where I understand I’m good as I am. Because I really am. Good, I mean. I can take care of myself. I know how to use a drill. I know how to use a tire gauge. I’ll be fine.”

That might be the most mature thing he’d ever heard her say.

“You will,” Remy agreed.

“Still, we had some fun, yeah?”

He gave her that.

“Yes, we did.”

Then he made certain to maintain the boundaries they were establishing.

“And then we didn’t.”

“Right,” she whispered, absolutely reading his message.

She picked up the wineglass again and threw back another big dose.

She set it down and returned her attention to him.

“Happy?” she asked.

He nodded.

“I’m glad,” she replied, her look and tone sharing she was being genuine, before she pulled in one last visible breath and said, “See you on the flipside…or as will probably be better for us both…not.”

She winked, it was supposed to be jaunty, but it failed.

She was sad and perhaps a little lost, and likely more than a little afraid.

But she didn’t give him any of that straight out, she held it back.

He still felt for her.

But he didn’t do anything about it.

Turning once to wave at him on the way, she left, and the door clicking closed behind her was one of the best sounds he’d ever heard in his life.

That might not be nice.

But one thing it absolutely was.

It was honest.