Page 77 of Husband Material
Thankfully, we’d had some practice at this—the kissing, not the navigating a neoclassical bath in an earl’s country house—and after a teeny bit of fumbling and nose orientating, we settled into one of the few routines I saw the point of. The world melting away beneath the familiarity of Oliver’s mouth against mine. His taste and the heat of him, and the way he always kissed me so carefullyat first—like he wanted me to know I was precious—before he lost himself in urgency. And we got rough and messy and desperate for each other.
Even after two years. When surely it should have stopped feeling this way: all, you know, intense and stuff. Honestly, it still kind of scared me sometimes. And not just because the last time I’d let myself get this close to someone, I’d been really badly hurt, but because I’dneverlet myself get this close to someone. I wasn’t sure I’d ever known how.
Until I’d met Oliver. And falling in love with him had left me defenceless.
I took the opportunity to make a midkiss play for his trousers. And, again in my head, this had been seamless and sexy. Except in practice, a wet belt was a pisser to undo and wet buttons did not slide easily through eyeholes. I did, eventually, manage to wrangle him out, but I nearly drowned and lost anything that might have resembled dignity.
“Are you all right?” Oliver ask-laughed, as I spluttered back to the surface.
I spat out half the bath. “Fine. Lungs are overrated.”
He was still laughing as he kissed me again, and for a while, we made out likeLove Islandcontestants, only without the cameras and the sarcastic Scottish voice-over. The water buoyed us up in this slightly magical way and I was light as champagne bubbles, drifting with Oliver through the foam.
Lying back against the wall of the bath, I let him float in my arms for a while. “I can’t believe this is going to be us in a few months,” I told him.
“Isn’t it us right now?” he asked.
“No, I mean—getting married. Not in a cathedral, of course, and not putting all our guests up in a palace the night before but…yeah.”
He was quiet. Too quiet. “It does seem rather unreal, doesn’t it?”
Even this late at night, even naked and covered in soap, I could tell when he was tense. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, it’s just”—for a while he stopped there, leaving me to speculate about all the various justs it could be—“I think in an ideal world, my parents wouldn’t be making such a fuss.”
I shrugged. “Fuck ’em.”
“That’s all very well for you to say.” He half swivelled to look at me. “And I know you’rerighton some level, but it doesn’t really make things any easier.”
Yeah, that was the problem. And chances are it wouldalwaysbe the problem. “It’ll be okay,” I tried. “We’re having lunch with them next week, and IpromiseI’ll do my best to get back in their good graces.”
“Thank you, but…their good graces are not that easy to access.”
And that was the problem too. Actually, it was the same problem. “I know. But I’ll try. Although if it doesn’t work, Idoreserve the right to go back to thefuck ’emstrategy.”
“That seems a reasonable compromise.”
He relaxed back against me, and for a while it seemed like we could stay forever in that warm, magical space where all our troubles seemed as insubstantial as foam. Eventually, though, the water cooled and my toes got unattractively wrinkly. And so we climbed up the now-even-slipperier marble steps in search of towels. In some ways, I was sorry to see Oliver shed his still-on, still-transparent, still-clingy shirt but his body underneath, for all his insecurities, more than made up for it. I stroked lightly over his chest, making him shiver, before wrapping him up. Normally, Oliver was a vigorous and efficient dryer, rubbing himself down like he was sanding a bench, but tonight—or I suppose technically this morning—the time, or the bath, or the kissing had clearly gotto him because he seemed happy to snuggle dry as per my preferred practice.
Entoweled, we headed back to the bedroom, where what sounded worryingly like the dawn chorus was beginning to filter through the windows.
“What time is it?” asked Oliver, blinking.
I scooped my phone from the table and had a look. “You don’t want to know.”
“Is it try-to-sleep o’clock or pull-an-all-nighter o’clock?”
“It’s quarter to could-go-either-way.”
“Ah.” He pushed his damp hair back from his forehead. “I’ll admit the all-nighter has never been my go-to strategy.”
I wouldn’t say it had been a strategy for me so much as how things tended to work out. “The trick is to push through the one hour when you really, really want to go to bed.”
“Just out of curiosity”—a wave of fatigue washed over Oliver’s face—“is that hour now?”
It wasn’t right now for me, but I suspected it could come on any minute. “Kind of. We need to find a way to distract each other.”
He laughed. “I could run another bath.”
