Page 130 of Husband Material
A little pause. “Pardon?” said Oliver.
Welp. There went the moral high ground. “Nothing.”
“Did you just say,” asked Oliver, “that you didn’t want to marry me either?”
“That’s not the point. The point is I love you so much I was willing to do it anyway.”
Twitching out his exquisitely chosen pocket square, Oliver dried his eyes. “Well, that’s very flattering. But clearly an abysmal idea.”
“Whereas breaking up on our wedding day is a fucking corker.”
I drew my knees up to my chest and hid my face against them. This was, like, the worst day of my life. Even worse than the day I passed a newsstand and realised my entire relationship with Miles was now a tell-all story in the tabloids. At least then there’d been a clear villain. Now I was being left at the altar by a genuinely wonderful guy for reasons that were—
Actually…
“Hey,” I said. “Hang on. Whydon’tyou want to marry me?”
He gave me a challenging look. “Why don’tyouwant to marryme?”
“Oh, no you don’t.” I wagged a finger at him. “I’m amess. I’mobviouslygoing to have second thoughts about anything that looks even a little bit like commitment. You, though, you fuckingloveresponsibility. What’s wrong with me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.” He vanished briefly behind his pocket square, emerging again slightly tearstained. “Well, there’s quite a lot wrong with you. There’s quite a lot wrong with everybody. But my life is infinitely better with you in it.”
“And yet.” I tried not to sound bitter. I failed hard.
“It’s marriage, Lucien.” He paused for a long moment. “I know you think I’m very…conventional. You’ve told me so repeatedly.”
“No,” I protested. “We discussed this, and we agreed you were a Moomin jigsaw.”
“Then consider this part of my Moomin jigsawness.”
At that moment, the nice humanist lady we’d got to do ournondenominational, queer-friendly ceremony stuck her head through the door. “Ten minutes, guys.”
Oliver and I stared at each other blankly.
“Great,” I told her, giving the least convincing thumbs-up in the history of primates.
Her gaze travelled over the scattering of wastepaper and the two men who were blatantly still crying. “Everything all right?”
“Absolutely.” My voice came out like a public service announcement from the thirties. “What could possibly be un-all-right?”
“Okay.” The nice humanist lady began a somewhat hasty retreat. “I’m just next door if you need anything.”
“Bugger,” said Oliver quietly.
I peeled myself off the floor and a made a futile attempt to, in every sense of the word, groom myself. “Well. I guess we’d better head on out there and tell everybody we know that our relationship is a great big joke.”
“Lucien.” Oliver caught my wrist with unexpected urgency. “Can we… Can I say something first?”
His fingers on my skin were torturously familiar. “I mean…do you have to?”
“Yes.”
Part of me wanted to tell him no. That he had no right to ask this of me. But he kind of did. I shrugged. “I guess you’ve got ten minutes.”
He looked briefly flustered, like he’d just taken over the case and the court had denied him recess. “About marriage and the…the Moomin jigsaw.”
“Clock’s ticking, Oliver.”
