Page 49 of Husband Material
In an effort to be a good boyfriend, I asked Oliver once more if he wanted to go, and he told me he was fine, and not dog-in-a-burning-room fine. And I still wasn’t quite ready to draw a line under the evening—still hadn’t quite got whatever nebulous thing I was hoping to get and couldn’t describe but was increasingly sure I’d know when I saw it. So we stayed, and for a while we bounced around half-forgotten acquaintances, repeating the ritual of how-are-you-what-have-you-been-doing all over again. Over the next couple of hours I caught up with at least half a dozen people I hadn’t seen in the best part of a decade and found that they were almost all either city bankers or performing artists, with precious little middle ground. Most of them were also married. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about any of that.
We were on our second or third circuit when I almost collided with Roger. Or Heather, I suppose, given she wasn’t performing. And since she’d taken off the moustache, I was fairly confident we were back in a she/her pronoun space.
“Fuck, Luc,” she said. “I-I did not expect to see you here.”
I’d been hearing that a lot, in tones ranging from pleasantly surprised to unpleasantly surprised. Heather, though, sounded genuinely shaken. We’d been close back in the day. But she’d been one of Miles’s best friends, and she’d really vocally sided with him at the time. Which, for some reason, hadn’t gone down well with me.
I gave a limp shrug. “Yeah but…bygones, I guess?”
Her eyes narrowed. I’d forgotten quite how good her bullshit detector was. “I don’t buy that for a second. What Miles did to you was fucked up, and you have every right not to forgive him.”
“You forgave him pretty quick,” I pointed out. Beside me, Oliver was sliding very quietly into I-am-not-a-part-of-this-conversation space.
She stuffed her hands very firmly into the pockets of her leather jacket, somehow projecting an attitude of apologetic defiance. “Istuck byhim because I was more his friend than yours and we’re all entitled to our mistakes. Even massive mistakes that hurt people. But I’d have completely got it if you never wanted to see him again. Or me, for that matter.”
One day, I was going to have someone fuck me over and then not play the you’ve-got-every-right-to-be-angry card to guilt me out of being angry. “I’m sure that would have made things much easier for you.”
“Is that why you’re here, then?” The look on her face was still 80/20 between suspicion and regret. “Are you just Banquo’s ghosting at us?”
And that stung a little. Because I wasn’t quite ready to admit that what went down between me and Miles had affected other people as well. People that, once upon a time, I’d cared about and who’d cared about me. “Honestly,” I said, “I’m not great at self-awareness but I think it started as a sincere attempt to be over it.”
Oliver was maintaining his tactful silence, but he laid a hand softly on my shoulder.
“And are you?” asked Heather.
I had no way to answer that yet. “Can I get back to you after the wedding?”
“For what it’s worth,” she told me, “I’m sorry things went down the way they did.”
I sighed. “Not your fault.”
“No, but it was still a mess and I could have handled it better. Just at the time…I-I don’t know. I felt like Miles was getting a lot of shit and—”
“Wait a minute. I’d had my sex life splashed all over the News of Whatever. How wasMilesgetting shit?”
She shot me a withering look. “Oh, come on. You know what Priya is like. You know what Bridget is like. You know what James Royce is like. They might have had good reasons, but they were fucking vicious. Not just to Miles but to everybody who didn’t directly take your side as loudly and vocally as they did. So yeah, I stood up for him, and I said a bunch of things that I shouldn’t have, and”—she took a deep breath—“I’m sorry.”
I’d never looked at it like that before. Not that I’d ever had any obligation to because I was still very much the shaftee in this situation. But while Miles had wound up with custody of most of our associates and acquaintances—the Jonathans of the world—Ihadtaken most of our real, close friends with me. As alone as I’d felt, as little as I’d appreciated them for it, I’d always had all the people that mattered in my corner.
Fuck, was I going to have to be nuanced about this? Being nuanced about things sucked. “I-I guess I see how that was tough. And—and probably a lot of us could have behaved better.”
“Thanks.” Unexpectedly, she hugged me. “This must be really strange for you.”
I said, “And how,” but I hugged her back in a way that I hoped communicated something more along the lines ofThis is weird and complex but ultimately I think positive, and I’m glad we got a chance to reconnect even though it was in less-than-ideal circumstances, and I wish our past had involved less bullshit, even though neither of us was directly responsible for the bullshit in question.
When we’d parted with the usual promises to definitely stay in touch for real this time, no lie, for serious, Oliver slipped his arm around me. “I hope I wasn’t too unhelpful,” he whispered as we wandered off. “That seemed quite intense, and I was concerned I’d be intruding.”
“Yeah, it was kind of. Intense and…” I gave a nonspecific hand wave. “Blah.”
“Ah, yes,” Oliver agreed. “The blah will get you every time.”
“I guess…” Apparently my mouth had more words to release. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about howbigthe whole Miles thing was. How many people it affected who weren’t, y’know, me. I was too busy getting wasted and feeling hard done by.”
“I understand getting wasted and feeling hard done by are what your early twenties are all about.”
I gave him a sceptical look. “I suppose you spent yours studying for the bar and, I don’t know, developing a deep sense of altruism.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Lucien.” His lips twitched. “I’vealwayshad a deep sense of altruism.”
