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He drags his hands over his face and looks to me for backup. All I do is shake my head and grin.

Sorry, love. You’re on your own with this.

“Good,” Julia replies with her nose in the air. “Then this won’t bother you.”

Score one for Julia.

The sink is overflowing with bottles, and there’s a small stack of lids to the side. Then she reaches into the wine fridge and starts dumping those as well. We watch in awe as she jabs each bottle with the corkscrew and anchors them against her belly to get enough torsion to drag the cork out.

Then those get placed into the sink too. It looks like a bouquet of bottles, sticking out in every direction and stacked two high in places.

When she finally faces us head-on, her hands on her hips and her expression filled with righteous determination, it takes everything I have not to kiss her.

“Where were we?”

She pushes her way between us and marches back out onto the patio.

Okay then.

We settle back down in the exact positions we were in before, but somehow; all of the previous tensions are gone.

I break the silence this time.

"What’s changed, Rem?”

His lips turn up in the corners, but I wouldn’t classify it as a smile.

“I think I can be who you want me to be.”

That’s…No. I lean forward over my knees.

“We don't want you to be anything but yourself, love. We fell in love with you, not some simile of whom we thought you could be. Hell, the very next appointment I had with Doc Miller after that first night you slipped into our bed, the Doc told me she’s suspected I’d been in love with you since we were in college. Since before we met Jules.”

That seems to take him off guard. He double-takes, staring at me with wide eyes before falling back into himself.

“But what I am is—"

“Perfect, Remi,” I interrupt. “What you are is perfect to us. Jagged pieces and all.”

He swallows thickly, and Julia begins to run her fingers over his head. A touchstone to bring them both the calm they need. His hand slips into her sweater again, and he gathers her firmer in his lap.

“I ah—even if I'd lost you, I realized I couldn't be who they wanted me to be. I no longer want to try. I did it for you, but I did it for me too.”

“We didn't want you XmasHe’s already shaking his head.

“You're the only family that matters. I think—I think it would have always ended this way. Me, separate from them. Eventually. I don't want the type of life they have planned for me. I don't want the company. I don't want to live my life by a predetermined set of expectations. I want to be happy.

“Now, whom I love and how I live my life is nobody's business but my own. I just needed the push to make me strong enough to initiate the break.”

Remi kisses the top of Julia’s head.

“What was the push?” she whispers.

“Well, first, we have dinner plans with Adam and Michèle next Wednesday.”

I wrack my brain for who in the hell he’s talking about and come up blank.

“Sounds great,” I agree. “Who’s that?”