Page 5 of Husband Material
“You know, I can’t remember. But hedeservesto have a tiny prick. And if you could tell all your friends he has a tiny prick, that would be fantastic, thanks.”
That made Oliver laugh. “For you, Lucien, anything.”
So I kind of had to kiss him.
And then I kind of had to kiss him again. Y’know, just in case.
And then it felt…it felt okay. Because the rest of the world didn’t matter. I mean it did because I had, like, friends and a job and things I actually cared about. ButMilesdidn’t matter, and JoJocertainlydidn’t matter. “I think…” I said. “I think I can go back now.”
So we got up, I put my vulva hat back on my head, and I let Oliver Blackwood—my amazing barrister boyfriend—escort me back to my best friend’s non-gender-specific bird party. And I knew, deep in my heart, that everything was going to be fine.
After all, it wasn’t like I was ever going to see Miles again.
"OKAY," I TOLD ALEX TWADDLE.I was seriously running low on jokes, but the ritual was so much part of my life now that I wasn’t about to give up on it. “Let’s try this one. There’s a man who works on a bus selling tickets, and he loves his job, but one day he loses his temper with a passenger and throws them off the bus and they fall under a car and die.”
“I say”—Alex looked outraged—“that’s not on at all. Especially not for a bus conductor.”
“No,” I agreed, “it’s very poor behaviour and, spoiler, you should remember that because it might be relevant later.”
“Good to know.” For a moment, Alex looked contemplative. “I say, that might help with your jokes in general. Give a chap a bit of a pointer on what a chap’s supposed to be paying attention to.”
“Duly noted. Anyway, he gets sent to court for throwing this passenger under a car.”
Alex nodded. “For being a bad conductor, you mean?”
The Alex-joke-foreboding was beginning to rise up. “Yes, I suppose so. Although I think they’d probably just have called it murder. Anyway, the judge sentences him to the electric chair.”
“I say, how ironic.”
Abandon joke. Abandon joke now.“Ironic in what way?”
“Well, you know, chap’s a bad conductor, gets sentenced tothe electric chair. I say, it’d be rather droll if he wassucha bad conductor that the chair didn’t work, wouldn’t it? Be sort of like a play on words.”
“Yes.” I was trapped. Trapped in an absurdist prison of meta-humour with a posh nitwit who was secretly a genius that delighted in tormenting me. “Yes, thatwouldbe droll. So anyway, they send him to the…umm…to the electric chair and it…um…it doesn’t work.”
Alex grinned. “Ah, because he’s a bad conductor, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Actually, old boy, wasn’t quite as droll as I’d anticipated. Not in practice.”
There should have been some kind of joke-related emergency service you could call to rescue you in situations like this. “Sorry.”
“Not your fault. Although in retrospect I think knowing the twist in advance made it less comical.”
“You don’t say?”
Alex nodded. “Yes, you see the essence of humour is surprise. So if you want to get better at this joke-telling lark, you might want to keep your cards a little closer to your chest.”
“Thanks. I’ll bear that in mind.” Okay, this was it, I was nearly—
“Tell you what, I’ll show you how it’s done.”
There was no possible way this could end well.
“I say, Rhys.” Alex stuck his head into the social media office. “Do you have a second?”
Rhys Jones Bowen emerged walking backwards and talking into his phone, which he was holding at a high selfie angle. “Hello, Internet,” he was saying, “this is Rhys Jones Bowen from See Arr Ay Pee Pee, the dung beetle charity. I’ve just finished up my morning coffee, and now Alex from the front office has called me through because he wants something, so I’m just going to see what that is and—”
