3. Come to Terms

CHAPTER3

Come to Terms

Wyn

“All we ask is for you to just be cool and let Yves say what he has to say and then think about it for a second before you say anything.”

This was Sabre’s opening.

And there weren’t a lot of words, but there was a lot there.

First, whatever this was about, it wasn’t about Sabre.

It was about Yves.

Second, whatever it was, Yves was so uncomfortable about it, he’d leaned on his big brother to instigate the meeting and then start the proceedings.

Third, Sabre was brash, brave, aggressive (the good kind, says his mother), a risk-taker, called them as he saw them, and rarely (okay, maybe not-so-rarely) he could be too honest for his own good.

Like his dad.

Manon devoured life. If there was an invitation, and she could physically or legally (I hoped) do it, she said yes. She was a wee bit of a Daddy’s Girl (okay, she was a lot of that). She was hyper-social, loyal, dependable, creative, highly-strung (just a little bit, says her mother) and hilarious.

Like her mom.

Yves was a mix of Remy and I both.

Except he only got the good parts.

Yves listened before he spoke. Yves walked into a kitchen someone was cooking in and asked what he could do. Yves noted a wineglass getting low and filled it. Yves did his homework without you begging him to do it. Yves kept his room clean.

In other words…

Yves was the perfect child.

Therefore, the fact this was about Yves significantly increased my anxiety.

And last, it was crystal clear our children had not missed both their parents had quick tempers.

This had me letting my clutch slide off my lap as I moved to the edge of my seat and mindlessly reached out, curling my fingers around the muscles above Remy’s knee.

It also had my mind racing through a memory.

That memory being a time, post-argument between Remy and me.

After we’d fucked it out.

“We need to be quieter,” I whispered to him, tangled in his long limbs and our soft sheets. “Kids don’t like to hear their parents fight.”

“We need to be ourselves,” Remy retorted. “We need them to understand they should express themselves and their emotions. We need them to learn that you wouldn’t fight if you didn’t care. We need them to go into their relationships knowing they shouldn’t back down from their point of view if they really believe in it. And we need them to understand that fighting, in the end, is healthy. And they’ll understand that, baby. Because they’ll see, even if we do it, we always come out of it stronger, but more importantly, together.”

We had always come out of it stronger and together.

Until we hadn’t.

And what had that taught our kids?

“Yves?”

Remy’s voice calling his son’s name called my focus to my baby boy.

To all my children.

Manon was holding Yves’s hand.

As I watched, Sabre was running his hand up Yves’s spine and then he gripped the back of Yves’s neck.

Okay.

What was going on?

My fingers tightened on Remy’s thigh, and nothing occurred to me but to feel the warmth of connection when his hand covered mine.

“Okay, I’ve thought a million times about how I was going to say this,” Yves started.

He swallowed.

My body tensed so deeply I thought every muscle would snap.

Remy’s fingers curled around mine.

“And the only thing I could come up with was just to say it straight out. So that’s what I’m going to do,” Yves went on.

He went silent.

The room went silent with him.

Remy and I sat on edge—literally on our perches, and figuratively in our emotions—waiting.

Yves’s eyes were on me, they flicked up to his dad, then they settled on me.

“I’m gay,” he declared.

I blinked.

Remy didn’t move.

Was that all?

And more importantly, was drama a genetic trait?

“I know that—” Yves started to go on.

He didn’t finish.

“What do you know?” Remy barked.

I jumped in surprise at his tone.

Yves’s gaze sliced up to his dad.

I looked up at Remy too, and saw he was far from bland.

His jaw was set, his cheekbones were flushed.

I knew that look.

He was furious.

Oh God.

“Remy,” I whispered.

“What do you know?” Remy repeated, aiming these angry words Yves’s way.

Wait a minute…

How was this happening?

Remy was not that man.

It was part of being a true man’s man. It was one of the myriad reasons I’d loved him as deeply as I’d loved him.

This kind of thing had never, not ever, been an issue with him.

I’d worked at Bergdorf when we met. I had every intention, twenty some years ago, of being what I eventually became. I’d gone from sales associate to personal shopper and had just started to cherry pick my own clients when Remy and I decided to start a family. We’d also decided I’d stay at home when they were little, but I’d go back to it when our last entered kindergarten.

This I’d done.

Remy worked in the design world. He was at a big firm at first and then struck out on his own. He’d had lots of clients and part of his job was to be in the right places at the right times to find more.

We were active. Social. Had a wide range of friends.

We still did, and for the most part (outside Kara, Bernice, and obviously Bea, as well as Remy’s childhood friends back home, Beau and Jason), we’d managed not to make them pick sides in the divorce.

We had people from every walk of life in our spheres.

This was never an issue for him.

Nothing was ever an issue for him.

If it was, it would have been an issue with me.

We’d also never discussed it, but we didn’t because of just that. It was never an issue, which was one of the reasons, for me, why it was so attractive about Remy.

He didn’t have to play cool.

It was just who he was, and he expected others to be the same.

And that was it.

Yves didn’t answer his father’s question, but I could see my son’s throat ripple with another swallow.

It was Manon who was staring daggers at her father, and Sabre’s face was getting red with anger.

“How about you, Sah?” Remy asked his eldest. “You into guys?”

“No, Dad,” Sabre spat. “Don’t be a—”

“You’re into girls?” Remy cut him off.

I started pumping his hand.

He ignored it as Sabre answered, “Yeah, but what does it—?”

“So, when’s the family meeting for you to announce that?” Remy demanded.

I stopped pumping his hand and started thinking.

Fast.

“Manon, what are you into?” Remy asked as I did that.

“Dad, you’ve made your point,” she said softly.

“Have I?” Remy returned. “Have I made my fucking point?”

Okay.

Oh God.

Oh hell.

“Remy,” I whispered urgently.

He let my hand go, stood, leaned forward and roared at his youngest, “You know your mother is all good, but you staged this fucking show because you thoughtI”—he pounded on his chest— “wouldn’t be?”

Yves stood too. “Dad—”

“Are you fucking joking about that shit?” Remy asked.

Sabre also stood and shouted, “Dad, this isn’t about you!”

Remy turned to him. “It isn’t? Seems to me it is. You knew, Manon knew, your mother doesn’t give a shit and you knew that too. So this isn’t about me?”

I hated, especially when I thought he was out of line or acting irrationally, when he asserted things, and he was right.

Remy’s attention shot back to Yves.

“Is that the kind of man you think I am?” He shook his head sharply. “No. Strike that. Is that the kind of father I am to you? And if it is, how is it that? Tell me. How? When did I ever, Yves, ever give you the impression my love would come with conditions?”

I felt that slice me wide open.

Because there it was.

And the vein of open, oozing hurt threading through his words underlined it.

Remy’s mother was vain and cossetted, a social butterfly born in the wrong era, though there was no era that would make it all right for your narcissism to trump motherhood.

Her love of her only son had conditions, boy did it ever. When she wasn’t treating him as an accessory, he was tested by her from the moment he could cogitate. And when he failed, which was often (in Colette’s estimation), her punishment was masterful in its cruelty.

Remy’s father ignored this entirely, but his love came with conditions too.

Remy was going to be the man Guillaume wanted him to be, that being a man just like Guillaume, and he put a great deal of effort into it. This happened when Guillaume was around, which wasn’t that often, considering he was off making scads of money or attending one of the mistresses he hid from Colette, but not from his son.

So it was a steady shift with Remy’s dad between iron control, which was a form of mental abuse, and casual neglect, which was not at odds with what Remy got from his mother, also iron control in the form of emotional abuse, mingled with casual neglect.

Although some words had been shared with our kids about Remy’s history while they were growing up, once they started maturing, not much had to be said. Guillaume and Colette didn’t hide from their grandchildren how they were with their son, and in Colette’s case, she treated them all exactly as she did her own child.

Truth be told, that was the same with me. Remy didn’t talk about his parents much to the point of actively avoiding the discussion. There were words shared, but they were the bare minimum.

However, they were enough, because I didn’t miss it either and I felt there was no need for him to have to go through it again by dredging it all out for me. Not if he didn’t want to.

And although Guillaume treated me (and eventually Manon) like he treated his wife, with urbane adoration, Colette abhorred me and put very little effort into hiding that.

So, the three of our children had been told of their father’s less-than-loving upbringing, they’d witnessed it and they’d been given a taste of it.

Therefore, when I took in my kids and all three of them looked like they’d been slapped, I knew they were belatedly realizing their mistake.

Because there was one thing Remy Jacques Gastineau had never fallen down on in his life.

Being the loving, supportive, attentive, kind, funny, protective parent he’d never had.

I stood too, touched the back of his hand and whispered, “Honey.”

He looked down at me and I drew in a sharp breath at the pain in his eyes.

“Dad,” Yves called.

Remy’s head jerked that way, and he growled, “Get over here.”

Without hesitation, Yves moved toward his father, and when he was in reach, Remy’s arm shot out, he cupped the back of his son’s head and yanked him the rest of the way.

Their bodies collided. I swallowed a sob. Manon let one loose. Sabre grunted. Yves wrapped his arms around his dad and Remy kept his hand on Yves’s head, pushing it into his neck as he curled his other arm tight around his son’s upper back.

“I will love you always, Yves. Always,” I heard him say.

“’Kay,” Yves pushed out, that syllable thick, and now he was clutching at his father’s shirt, the material bunched in his fists.

A tear slid down my face.

“Get this, son, there is never anything you can do and definitely never anyone you could be that would make me love you any less,” Remy stressed.

“I’m sorry I thought—” Yves began, voice still hoarse.

Remy cut him off. “No, Yves, I’m sorry I lost it like that. That wasn’t cool.”

“I get it,” Yves said.

“I know you do. It still wasn’t cool.”

He was kinda right, he was kinda wrong, and I was far from just kinda crying.

“Love you, Dad.”

“I’d step in front of a bullet for you, Yves.”

Yves’s back hitched powerfully.

Remy held on.

Okay, no, I was sobbing.

I then found myself caught at the waist by my daughter, who immediately pushed us into the two-man huddle that equally immediately accommodated to fit us in, and within moments, Sabre shoved in on the other side.

We were all holding together tightly, our heads touching and our arms around each other like we were in a scrum. Yves’s breath was loud and coming fast and difficult. Manon was whimpering. I was holding my baby boy’s gaze and trying to smile at him through my emotion. Remy was holding us all together with his long arms.

It was Sabre who broke the moment.

“We are such huge-ass dorks.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Manon shot back.

“We are dorks,” Yves agreed and tore his gaze from mine to look at his father. “Dad, I’m so sorry.”

“Not another word, kid,” Remy returned.

Yves shut up.

“It has to be said, Dad, we totally blew this,” Manon pushed it.

“Baby girl,” Remy replied.

It was gentle and sweet.

It was also a command to stop talking.

She did as her father not-quite told her.

“Okay, so what do you need from this, honey?” I asked Yves. “Should we go out and buy champagne or something?”

“Do I get a party because I’m hetero?” Sabre asked.

“Sure,” I answered.

“Me too?” Manon queried.

“Of course,” I said.

“Can I ask for a Nordy’s gift certificate instead?” she inquired.

I smiled at her.

Then I said, “No.”

She rolled her eyes.

We started to edge back, because we were close, touchy and affectionate, but we weren’t weird, and that was when the next strange thing came from Remy.

He stopped us from completely disengaging by clamping down hard on my hip and keeping me tucked to his side.

The kids did move back, not far.

But I couldn’t move away, at all.

And the way this was, I was stuck with my arm also around him.

Like we were holding each other.

Uh…

“We have one more thing to talk about before I hit the wine fridge to grab a bottle,” he stated.

All our kids looked to their dad.

I tested his hold on me.

It tightened.

I stopped testing.

“Myrna is moving out.”

I went completely still at his announcement.

“Oh my God,” Manon breathed, and then she let slip a quiet, “Yay.”

Yves emitted a noncommittal, thus hiding his real reaction (he didn’t say much about her, but my sense was that he wasn’t big on Myrna either), “Erm.”

Sabre demanded, “Are you serious?”

I examined my oldest and something hit me that I hadn’t noticed, or it was something he’d never let show.

He had a crush on his dad’s girlfriend.

Ulk.

“I am serious,” Remy confirmed. “She was supposed to be out today…before this meeting. I’m uncertain why that didn’t happen. She will be out by the end of the week.”

I had no idea why I had to be there, and attached to Remy, while he shared this information that was none of my business with our kids.

But although I wouldn’t mind a glass of champagne to toast my youngest having the courage to share his truth and us moving on from that as close as ever (as such, with their mom and dad split up), I was acutely uncomfortable in my current situation because I was entirely comfortable and familiar with it.

Manon was too, as well as more, which she was giving me indication of as I stood in the curve of her father’s arm. She did this with a rapid up and down of my position and repeat before bugging her eyes out at me.

I clenched my teeth.

“You’re dumping her?” Sabre asked.

“Myrna and I are moving on with our lives not together,” Remy answered at the same time didn’t.

“What the fuck?” Sabre’s voice was rising.

Remy’s patience instantly slipped.

“Do we speak like that in front of women?” he growled.

That was another part of my ex that I’d loved, and it sucked not because he had it, but because the reason he did was that both his mother and father drilled it into him.

He was a thoroughly modern man.

But there were things that were old-fashioned about him.

One of them being that he was and never lost being a traditional Southern gentleman.

This was communicated as well in his voice, which was the part that wasn’t the same as Yves’s (alas). Remy had a faint, upper-crust, New Orleans accent that was tinged with the melodic purr of French.

This was because Guillaume and Colette lived mostly in New Orleans, but they owned an apartment in Paris and a villa in Toulouse, and outside other occasions they went to France, without fail they spent every Christmas in Paris and every summer in Toulouse and that had rubbed off on their boy.

There were, of course, caveats to this particular rule, as Remy had recently demonstrated when he blew his stack. And Remy let loose however when he was around me.

But this rule for his boys wasn’t just about that.

It was couched in an overarching rule about respect for women.

That respect was both practical (when they were younger, he’d given them The Talk which included him telling them he’d provide them with condoms whenever they needed them, taking them to get HPV vaccinations and explaining to them that they got clear consent before even kissing a girl, and if he ever heard word they’d taken advantage of a woman who was in no state, he’d lose his mind). As well as traditional (you opened doors, picked up the tab, gave the girl the seat with the best view and pulled it out for them, made certain their food and beverage were served before yours and didn’t use foul language in their presence).

So, yes.

It sucked, but I had to admit, outside his fantastic looks and the fact he existed at all, Guillaume and Colette gave Remy something beautiful.

“I’m telling you not simply because you’ll wonder where Myrna’s gone when she’s no longer here,” Remy continued. “But also so you can have whatever words you want to have with her should you want to keep in touch. I know you two care about each other, Sabre, so do what you feel is right.”

Manon said nothing.

Yves was studying his trainers.

Myrna was probably not going to get any texts from those two asking to meet up for coffee.

Sabre was glowering at his father. “So she’s just in your life one second, then she’s out the next?”

“It wasn’t like that, and no offense, son, but it really isn’t your business what it was like,” Remy replied.

“Seems like that,” Sabre fired back. “You two have always been good. You never fought once. Not that I heard.”

“Think about that,” Remy returned.

Sabre shut up.

My eyes got big as I pressed my lips together.

Remy gave my waist a squeeze and I knew what that meant so, out of sheer habit, I did what it meant.

I tipped my head back to look at him.

“What do you think? Dom?” he asked casually after what kind of champagne he should uncork.

Okay.

What the hell was going on here?

“Mom, don’t you have a kickoff tonight?” Manon put in.

“Oh shit, Mom, I didn’t remember. Shit, I’m so sorry,” Yves said.

“It’s okay, honey,” I replied to Yves. “You know you’re always more important than anything.”

Remy grunted.

I turned to look at him, my brows coming together.

“You disagree?” I asked.

“I didn’t say a word,” he answered.

“Not an intelligible one, but you very much spoke,” I retorted, and yes, there was some heat in it.

That was when he grinned at me.

I stared at him grinning, but I felt that grin somewhere very specific.

Okay!

WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON HERE?

“Is there something you two have to tell us?” Sabre asked, finally letting his parents’ position sink in.

“No.” I pulled forcefully out of Remy’s hold. “There absolutely is not. Now, are we having champagne or what?”

“I don’t actually need you guys to toast the fact that I’m gay,” Yves remarked.

“We aren’t toasting that. We’re toasting courage and truth, having the former and standing for the latter,” I informed him.

“You are so extra, Mom,” Yves teased.

“Excuse me,” I began. “But when you have children, and you watch them stick by each other as you three did today, navigating what should have been certain, but what society and media and every coming-out movie, and let us please be done with them and just have gays being gays or whatever, the LBGTQ experience has many faceted and nuanced experiences than just the coming out bit, as David Rose on Schitt’s Creek so brilliantly portrayed.” I realized I was digressing into sermonizing and pulled it together. “But you felt like they were uncertain waters, so you navigated them close to each other’s sides, then you can talk to me about extra.”

Manon leaned toward her younger brother and stage-whispered, “And again with more extra.”

I looked to the ceiling and huffed out a breath.

“Go to your kickoff, Mom,” Yves urged. “We’ll have a celebration about courage and truth when Noel has the chance to have it catered.”

“Catered,” Sabre said. “How did they not know you were gay?”

“Dude,” Yves shot back. “It’s you who loses it over Lucie’s crab cakes. I’m doing you a solid.”

“He just loses it over Lucie,” Manon decreed.

“She’s too old for him,” Yves said.

“Who says a man has to date a younger woman?” Manon asked.

“Right, who says?” Sabre put in.

Please, God, let that be about Lucie, who did make amazing crab cakes, and not about Myrna, who was far too old for my son.

Though, Lucie, at a guess, was in her mid-to-late-twenties so she was not.

Hmm.

“You talk to Noel, I’ll provide the booze. Family celebration at the old house,” Remy decreed. “Sunday, after league.” He looked down at me. “Six o’clock.”

By the by, “the old house” referred to my house.

I…

Uh.

What?

Absolutely not!

“Works for me.” Yves.

“Me too, I don’t have a class Monday until the afternoon. I can leave Monday morning and make it, no sweat.” Manon.

“If it’s crab cakes, I’ll get up early to drive down Monday and make class. So I’m in too.” Sabre.

Remy smiled at me.

I narrowed my eyes on it in order not to land my fist in it.

Then I shook it off and took the short trek to the armchair to retrieve my clutch.

Once I’d done that, I turned to my children and demanded, “Hugs.”

They came to me one by one, and I took my time over them, especially with Yves.

“Love you forever and ever,” I whispered in his ear.

“Love you too, Mom,” he grunted in mine.

We broke apart, I cupped his face a second, he shook his head and smirked at me—so like his father’s—then I dropped my hand, turned to his dad and dipped my chin.

“Remy,” I said as farewell, intent to exit tout de suite.

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

For fuck’s sake.

Since our divorce, the man had not once walked me to my car.

In order not to make a deal of it, I nodded, smiled at each of my kids in turn, then preceded Remy through his house, out his door, down his walk and to my car.

I’d rounded the hood and was in the process of opening the door when it shut because Remy’s hand was on it.

I turned to him.

“What are you—?”

“Why were you crying earlier, Wyn?”

Ugh.

We were back here.

“I have kickoff to get to,” I reminded him. “And as usual, I’m late.”

“Won’t ask again,” he warned.

“Remy,” I snapped.

“Answer me this, are you okay?”

No, I was not.

Because not an hour ago, I’d let him go.

Now, he was being strange and maneuvering a family celebration at my house that he was attending.

And all the other.

Including the fact he was breaking up with his girlfriend.

I did not want to be the broken-hearted ex and the rebound.

I mean, blech.

“I told you, I’m fine.”

There came the smirk, and it did what it rarely failed to do.

It wet my panties.

“You have always been a shit liar,” he said.

Right.

Enough.

“I had it out with Bea before I showed,” I shared, his face went hard, and suffice it to say, Bea wasn’t his biggest fan, he wasn’t hers either and I knew he only put up with her because she was my friend. “I think I’m coming to terms with a few things about her and it’s no excuse to be late to something as important as what just happened, but that was why I was late.”

“Good you’re coming to terms with some things about that woman, so maybe you’ll come to terms with the fact that she played a role in breaking us up.”

I stared at him.

“And yeah, babe, it’d be super fucking good you finally came to terms with that,” he concluded, no longer warm, concerned and slightly flirtatious, he was annoyed.

Also, he was done.

He communicated that last by leaving me at my car and walking away.