Page 45 of Husband Material
“What should”—why was I asking this, what was wrong with me—“another chap talk about with another chap in the bath?”
“Rugger.”
“Noted.”
Alex gave me one of his vague, amiable looks. “In any case, do save the date, won’t you? I mean, when I send you the date. I’d tell you but can’t remember it off the top of my top.”
“Shall do,” I said. “Thanks.”
And then Alex drifted away, leaving me with a nebulous sense of unsettlement. Obviously I was happy for him—at least as happy as I could be for a man who, when you thought about it, embodiedliterally everything that was wrong with the British class system—but I was also… I don’t know.
This was a lot of…yeah?
It was kind of like I was at a station and everyone else was getting on trains or like I was at a restaurant and everybody else was on their main course, while I was staring at the departure board…or menu…or…
Fuck.
This made no sense. I was happier than I had ever been in my life. So why did I feel like I was failing?
"WE STILL DON’T HAVE TOdo this,” said Oliver as we got off the Tube in Shoreditch, on our way to do this.
Thisbeing attending the wedding of the man who’d ruined my life. Well, ruined a bit of my life. A bit of my life that had seemed quite important at the time.
I took his hand decisively and definitely not desperately. “We do. I mean, I do. I mean, it’s a closure thing. Look, I think I need to, okay?”
And Oliver, being Oliver, just said, “Of course.”
The problem was, I wasn’t actually surewhyI needed to. I was calling it closure because that seemed a healthy and usefully vague label I could point other people at. And maybe itwasclosure. Maybe after tonight the little box in my head that hadMileswritten on it would finally be closed, and I’d never have to think about him—or what we’d been to each other or what he’d done to me—ever again.
Besides, if it wasn’t closure…what did that mean? What was I trying to prove? Or, if I wasn’t trying to prove anything, what was I looking for? Or, if I wasn’t looking for anything, what the fuck was I doing here?
Fuck.
It turned out that Miles, true to form, had chosen to getmarried in an abandoned railway tunnel lined with artisanal graffiti. It would have been a cool and daring choice except this particular abandoned railway tunnel lined with artisanal graffiti was a fully licenced venue, with its own bar. Right now, the exposed brickwork was splashed with rainbow-coloured lights because it was going to be one ofthosegay weddings.
“We still don’t have to do this,” said Oliver. And this time I was pretty sure it wasn’t for my benefit.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “At least twelve people I know have already seen me. And while I think no-showing at your ex’s wedding is fine, about-facing it isn’t.”
Mercifully, Miles and JoJo were far too trendy to do assigned seating—much as I’d enjoyed having a confused usher come up to me at the James Royce-Royces’ wedding and ask me “groom or groom”—which meant Oliver and I got to skulk at the back like we hadn’t done our homework. I kept hold of Oliver’s hand, partially because it was nice and partially just to apologise.
He leaned in slightly. “I bet you fifty pounds they have a drag queen officiating.”
Okay, this was going to be way more fun if I’d accidentally brought mean Oliver with me. “I am absolutely not taking that bet,” I whispered back.
Then I paused. I’d put off it for as long as I could, but I had eventually cracked and web stalked the guy my ex was marrying. And that led me down a hell of a rabbit hole because he was a fucking YouTuber, with a subscriber count in the millions. He had several channels dedicated to various areas of his life, including a new one just for wedding prep, but his main source of “influence” revolved around videos of him looking fabulous and claiming you could look similarly fabulous if you followed his tips and bought the products his sponsors paid him to recommend. Point was, there was no way he was going to be upstaged by anyone on his big day.
“Actually,” I said, “you’re on.”
And my instincts proved dead right, although to be fair, Oliver’s did too. Kind of. To a sudden round of applause, the minister entered and took his place on a stage that had been meticulously designed to look hastily improvised. Of course, I sayminister. What I meant was “tiny drag king in full leather daddy getup wearing a T-shirt that, from the back of the room, I could just about make out readGender Is Over.”
“Shit,” I whispered to Oliver, “that’s Roger More.”
“He’s looking good for a dead man in his nineties.”
I gave him a look. “Not Roger Moore, as in the fourth best Bond actor—Roger More. As insexually penetrate with greater frequency. He used to be one of our best mates back in the day.”
Oliver looked like he was about to ask a follow-up question when Roger began his typically bombastic introduction.
