Page 53 of Husband Material
Oh. Okay.“So why are you here?”
“Just to say…” JoJo stared down at his immaculately manicured nails. “Just to say that…I suppose…I suppose I get it?”
Was I offended by that? I thought I was at least a little bit offended by that. Because this guy was twelve and trying to tell me he knew what it was like to get betrayed and abandoned by the fucker he’d just married. Although, now I thought about it, JoJo wasn’t that much older than I’d been when I’d dated Miles. Of course, Miles was now substantially older than he’d been when he’d dated me, which was why I felt justified taking the piss. The thing was, though, I hadn’tfeltyoung at the time. I’d felt pretty grown-up. And here was JoJo, looking at me with the confidence of a young man who didn’t quite realise how young he seemed to other people.
See,thiswas the problem with trying to be a better human being to impress your boyfriend. You ended up having to be a better human to everybody.
“Get what, exactly?” I asked warily.
He kept giving me his earnest early-twenties face. “I’ve been on the internet since I was sixteen. I know you got the wholeold-media paparazzi treatment, and I’m sure that was crappy in a slightly different way, but I’ve had a million strangers telling me what they think of me every day since before I did my GCSEs.”
Okay, that did sound awful. Although old Luc would have pointed out that the person who was financially compensated for JoJo’s constant harassment was JoJo, not the person who dumped him.
“So,” JoJo went on, “I do understand that what Miles did to you was fucking terrible. That’s why I wanted you to come to the wedding.”
When Miles had told me that he’d invited me to the wedding for JoJo’s sake, I’d assumed he was just rightfully ashamed of how selfish it sounded otherwise. “Wait. Youactuallywanted me to come to the wedding?”
“Yeah…” I’d heard more sheepishyeahs, but only from actual sheep. “I think I just wanted to see… I don’t know. That you were okay, I guess?”
“So you could tell yourself you weren’t marrying the King of the Arseholes?” It was probably an unfair comment, but I was trying to ration my enlightenment.
He squirmed in a way that didn’t quite fit with the YouTube starlet persona. “So I could tell myself I’d be okay too.”
Ah. That was…that was more complicated than I was ready for. “You mean, if he did the same to you?”
It had been kind of the elephant in the room, and now I’d… I dunno. Had I shot the elephant? Had I said,Hey, is that an elephant?Was the elephant now rampaging around stomping on things? I didn’t think it was a stompy atmosphere. Perhaps we were just staring at an elephant and going,Yup, that’s an elephant all right.
There was a very, very long silence. At the end of the very, very long silence, JoJo said, “Maybe?”
And there went my last hope of resenting him. Because—and this wasn’t a self-esteem issue—JoJo had to be worth more than fifty grand, even accounting for inflation. And in his world everything would happen at the speed of Twitter, instead of the speed of the tabloids.
“And I-I don’t think hewill,” he continued. “Obviously I wouldn’t have married him if I thought he would.”
At this point, I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince me or himself. “I figured.”
JoJo picked at one of his perfect nails, leaving a little chip in it. “And we’ve talked about it—we’ve talked about itso much—and Miles reallyissorry, even if he’s bad at showing it.”
“Or saying it,” Old Luc pointed out.
Which JoJo completely blanked, either out of politeness, indifference, or the strain of being genuinely upset in the office of a relative stranger. “It almost broke us up when I found out. I wasn’t sure I could trust somebody who could do something like that.”
“Probably too late to say this,” I told him, “on account of that wedding we were both at, but probably youshouldn’ttrust somebody who can do something like that?”
JoJo gave a shrug. “Probably not. But Miles was the first person I’d ever met who really felt like he was interested in me for me, not for who I was.”
I sincerely tried to take that at face value and not assume that even if Miles wasn’t interested in JoJo’s YouTube celebrity, he definitely was interested in being married to a hot young twink.
“And the thing is,” JoJo was saying, “if I’d walked away from that, I know I’d have regretted it. So”—he flicked away a flake of glittery nail polish and met my eyes again—“I took a chance.”
What did he want, a medal? Congratulations: You Gave an Arsehole a Second Chance. “Better you than me.”
“Better me than you,” agreed JoJo quietly. “And he… I… It’sbeen a long time. I never expected you to forgive him. I don’t think he did either, really. I think he just got caught up in the moment.”
That was Miles. Of course, the last time he’d got caught up in the moment, it had been the moment when he was selling…Oh, for fuck’s sake, let it go. It’s not about you anymore.“Good because I-I don’t. I know I said I was sorry about your wedding, but I stand by everything I told him.”
“And that’s fine.” JoJo smiled at me. And it was weirdly comforting to be reassured by a man with no sense of irony. “You weren’t there for him. You were there for me. And you showed me that even if the worst happens, it’ll be…I’ll be fine.” He paused. And then added in a slightly vulnerable way, “You seem really happy, Luc.”
“Iamreally happy,” I replied, slightly too aggressively. “And look…” Was I going to let myself say this? Okay, apparently I was. “As much as I hate to admit it, I honestly don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. Like you said, it’s been a long time and Miles is a different person now.”
