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“Paula, I’m your ex-husband, not your bestie,” I tried to remind her, but she was having none of it.
“She looks young,” she said, completely ignoring me. “How old is she?”
Half of me wished to just deny her everything and refuse to answer, but another part of me was itching to tell someone. I’d kept it mum for so long, and I had none of my old buddies to shoot the shit with anymore, so it looked like my ex was going to be my sounding board for my new girlfriend.
Awesome.
“Twenty-three,” I admitted.
Paula whistled.
“Though, I’m not surprised.” She snorted out a laugh. “Age never really meant much to you anyway. Remember when I thought that you were cheating on me with your teacher in England?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Ugh. Professor Burton,” I drawled out. “She was like, eight hundred years old! I don’t know how you could have thought that.”
“She was seventy-five,” Paula said defensively. “And you talked about that woman non-stop! You stayed after classes and met with her so often. How could I not think something was going on? Plus, that was when you stopped wanting to sleep with me every three seconds.”
I let out a long breath, plopping into my chaise because I realized it was going to be a long morning until she was satisfied.
“Unfortunate timing,” was all I added.
She huffed.
We’d been through the whole thing over and over again. And as painful as it was, she knew why we’d broken up and divorced. Hell, they had been very loud, devastating conversations, but we’d managed relative peace between us since, for the sake of the kids. Well, besides when she decided to get all up in my business, like today.
“Mhmm,” she hummed, but waved her hand around to excuse the turn our conversation had taken. “So, tell me about her.”
“Do you realize how weird that is to ask?” I questioned, eyeing my cognac just a few feet away on the little bar cart.
But damn it, I had kids to take care of and the amount of alcohol I needed to get through our conversation would leave me unfit. Better to just not start.
“Jamie doesn’t know what a cassette is,” she said, blinking rapidly like she couldn’t comprehend the words spewing from her mouth. “And he thinks VHS’s are some sort of virtual reality.”
I barked out a laugh, fondly recalling my childhood of movies and music from film instead of hard disks.
Paula turned and eyed the bar cart too, but didn’t refrain. She went over to it and poured a shot of cognac for each of us in the tumblers there.
I took it gratefully when she offered it.
“And I got a Cabbage Patch doll for Caden on his birthday, and Jamie looked at it like he’d never seen anything like it! Can you believe it? My dad got into a fistfight trying to get me one when I was a kid, and now kids don’t even know what they are!”
I grinned.
“One time, I made bananas foster and went to get us a couple spoons to eat it,” I told her between slow sips. “I did the whole Tick thing and held it up, shouting ‘SPOON!’ She had no fucking clue. I felt like a massive idiot.”
Paula cackled.
“We had it good,” she said with a sigh. “But I tell you, sometimes the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. I can hardly keep up with Jamie in bed. Whew!”
I crinkled my nose.
“Not the kind of conversation I want to have about your new boy toy,” I told her.
She flashed a wicked smile.
“Boy toy, huh? Is that all your girl is? A toy?”
