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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.
