Husband Material (London Calling #2)(117)

Okay. Phew. That was all very reassuring.

What was less reassuring was that he kept speaking. “It’s just…

you looked happy.”

“I…what?”

While I was working on a more substantial reply, the waiter showed with a very large jug of water. “Are you ready to order?” he asked.

Which sent me into a different kind of panic because I hadn’t looked at the menu, and I couldn’t ever hear “are you ready to order”

without wanting to stick “and if not, why not” on the end.

Oliver, of course, had his neuroses in different places. “A few more minutes, thank you.”

Clearly, I needed to loop us back to the you-looked-happy thing.

But I wasn’t sure I wanted to because it could only really mean two things. Either it meant that my boyfriend-soon-to-be-husband straight up resented my happiness, which sucked, or it meant he thought I couldn’t be happy with him, which sucked worse. So instead I fluttered my lashes at him in a blatant attempt at distraction and segued into: “Do you want to order for me?”

He twitched an eyebrow. “If you like, although it will include the eel sandwich again, and don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re deflecting.”

“How about,” I suggested, “I deflect for now and when I’ve been fortified with an eel sandwich we can, you know, have a serious conversation sort of thing.”

“Very well.” Oliver disappeared behind his menu with an eagerness that I hoped was about his love of the food, not his desire to avoid talking.

I peeped over the top, trying to get him to look at me. “I’m happy to eat vegan with you.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“No, but I can.”

“Do you want to?” he asked in a way that I thought had layers.

This was so typical of At-The-Moment Oliver. I’d deflected, he’d accepted the deflect and was now getting around it anyway. “That’s not a fair question. You don’t want to either, but you do it because you think it’s right. And I think you’re usually right about what’s right… I just have crappy follow-through.”

“You know I don’t like imposing my values on other people.”

Fuck, this was still a metaphor, wasn’t it? I was too hungover for metaphors. “It’s not about imposing your values. But we’ve been together for a long time and people change each other and that’s normal. And, unless the people are arseholes, good.” I gulped down my third glass of water. “I’m never going to be a vegan the way you’re a vegan. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to feel I’m missing out if we go to a nice restaurant and I sometimes choose to have the salad.”

He seemed, at least, to be thinking about it. And when he asked, “And are you in a salad mood tonight?” I was ninety percent certain he was talking about the food.

“How about”—oh, I was so fucking grown-up—“I compromise. I’d like the eel to start for old time’s sake. And I’ll join you for a vegan main.”

Oliver’s lips twitched. “So, I’ll order for you, but you’ll tell me what to order?”

I grinned at him, getting my own metaphor on. “Kind of the best of both worlds, don’t you think?”

This seemed to be going better. It was definitely going better. I’d managed to avoid throwing up in the bread basket, Oliver had nearly smiled, and here we were in our first-date restaurant, not having any awkward conversations about anything.

At least until I popped the last piece of eel sandwich into my mouth.

“Lucien.” It was like someone had flicked a switch and put Oliver in serious mode again. “I do need to talk about last night.”

“I told you nothing happened.”

“And I told you that wasn’t the problem.”

The biley panic was rising again. “Oliver, there shouldn’t be a problem. It was one night, I went a bit wild, I overslept, I showed up here with a headache, and I’m sorry.”

“But are you sure you…” Oliver began. Then stopped again. “It doesn’t have to be one night if you…if you don’t want it to.”

I reached for my water glass. “Honestly, I’m not sure I could take another one.”

“No, but…but you’ve made it quite clear that you…that you value that way of expressing yourself?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “A balloon arch is just a balloon arch. It doesn’t mean anything except that I like rainbow balloon arches and you don’t.”

“I don’t think that’s actually true, and I don’t think you do either.

And it concerns me that we’ve had such difficulty designing a wedding that we feel represents us both equally.”

This was supposed to be an evening for us. Our special evening.

Our last special evening. And all we’d done was talk about my dad and wedding shit. “Oliver, I’m sick of the fucking wedding.”

I’d said that way too loudly and way too emphatically.

“And you don’t feel,” asked Oliver calmly, “that’s a rather telling statement to be making a week before you’re getting married?”

“It’s not about the marriage. It’s about the”—I waved my hands about—“the everything else. I just want to be with you like we used to before everything was about place settings and table confetti and never knowing which one of us is being the arsehole.”