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Reed looked to me. “She’s a man-hater, Wyn. This was why Jordy left. She never ceased trying to emasculate him. Honest to Christ, I have no idea how he put up with it for so long. I don’t even know how they got together in the first place.”
I hadn’t thought about it until right then, but before she set her sights on Cor, and Remy, and yes, even saying things about Reed, she made comments about Jordy that weren’t…right.
Not from a wife.
But it was her, it had always been her. And if I carried that further, when Jordy was gone and she moved it to the other men in her circle, we were used to it and used to not processing it in any real way, so we didn’t.
“And even as a man who feels he’s pretty damned manly,” Reed carried on, “I’ll allow that there’s every possibility Remy’s dick is way bigger than mine.” He turned to his wife. “Figuratively speaking, sweetheart.”
“Of course, I will state with witnesses how satisfied I am with my husband’s package,” Kara, hand on heart, announced.
“Oh my God, I am so glad a seat opened at this table,” Noel breathed.
Bernice giggled.
I wanted to find this amusing.
I did not find this amusing.
“And?” I pushed, aiming this at Reed.
“And, if you women weren’t around, she went for his jugular. She was a virtuoso with it. Always saying shit that was meant to make him bleed, but she had plausible deniability and it struck at his manhood. Like, ‘Oh Remy, you’re too sensitive, of course I didn’t mean that.’ I mean, no man wants to prove to some bitchy woman he’s sensitive by being, well…sensitive to her bullshit. It was masterful.”
“Like what would she say?” I asked. Even though I didn’t want to know, for some reason, I really needed to know.
“That’s part of the genius of it,” Reed said. “I honestly cannot remember a bitchy thing she said, but I do remember a lot of times Remy looking like he wanted to strangle her and thinking after she said something, ‘Fucking ouch.’” He reached for an olive, popped it in his mouth, chewed, swallowed and finished, “But it wasn’t just Remy. She did it to all us men. It was just she kept the real zingers for him.”
I stared down at my martini not knowing what to make of this, but knowing it made me feel exceptionally uneasy.
“I still think we should find out what’s behind this,” Bernice said, but there wasn’t a lot of oomph to it. “I’m not real hip on having someone in my life who I care about, who I just give up on.”
“You’re such a buzz kill, always having a conscience and shit like that,” Kara complained.
Bernice smiled at her.
I took a sip of my martini.
“Have you gotten to the part where Remy isn’t over her yet?” Reed asked.
Noel was also sipping at his martini, and he almost did a spit take.
Bernice made a “peep” sound.
Kara smacked Reed’s arm and snapped, “Reed! What the hell!”
My chest caved in on itself.
“What?” Reed asked. “Should I take that as a no, you haven’t?”
“Don’t you men have some kind of code or something?” Kara asked.
“Not when one of my male friends, which Remy still is…. You got Wyn, I got Remy, but I’m taking Wyn back, as you can see.” Reed threw his arm up his front to indicate his current location. “I’ll finish what I started by saying, not when one of my male friends has his head up his ass, which Remy does.”
“You girlies so should have introduced testosterone years ago,” Noel noted. “I’d say, around three of them.”
“Remy just broke up with his live-in girlfriend,” I choked out.
“That woman was not a keeper,” Reed declared.
“Oh my God,” Kara said slowly to the ceiling. Then to her husband, “You are not getting sex until the end of time.”
“What?” Reed asked.
“Did you just refer to a woman as a ‘keeper?’” Kara asked back.
“Please do not sit there with your hens telling the rooster that you do not refer to men in the same way I just did to that woman Remy was seeing,” Reed returned.
“Now did you just refer to us as hens and yourself as a rooster?” Kara demanded.
Reed grinned at her then reached for a bacon-wrapped date stuffed with bleu cheese.
He ate it.
“Chiming in here,” Noel said. “Men, like I’m sure is the same with women,” he spoke that last quickly and in Kara’s direction, “do not find every reason under the sun to go invade an ex’s space to fight with her,” again to Kara and swiftly, “or him.”
“You and Remy do spend a lot of time together,” Bernice commented carefully.
“Flipside, if a woman, or man, isn’t into it, they do not allow the other person to invade their space and engage in said fight,” Noel concluded.
