Husband Material (London Calling #2)(123)

But if I don’t, then I’ve destroyed the only good relationship I’ve ever had and probably ever will have.”

“You must have wanted to get married, though?” Bridge had that hopeful-but-disoriented tone she always got when she butted up against ideas that didn’t quite fit her view of the world. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have asked him at all. This is just cold feet.”

“My feet aren’t the problem,” I told her. “The rest of me is. And I guess at the time I wasn’t thinking about the future. I just knew I wanted to be with Oliver and I wanted to show him that and I didn’t know how.”

Bridge was staring at me in a way I never wanted my best friend to stare at me. “What do you mean, you didn’t know how?” she asked. “You could have said, ‘I love you and want to be with you.’

Or…” Inspiration struck her. “Blow jobs. Men like blow jobs.”

“Sorry, are you saying my options were propose marriage or suck him off?”

“No,” said Bridge firmly. “The first thing I said you should do was tell him how you felt. And I think the fact that you blanked that option might mean something.”

“Oh God.” I grabbed at my hair. “I…I’m just not very good at expressing myself emotionally. It was right after Miles’s wedding and I was in a weird place and it’s really hard when you’ve been with someone a long time and it’s working really well but you’ve got no, like, way of showing or proving or—” I broke off. “And, anyway, he said yes. What kind of arsehole says yes to a proposal from a famously self-destructive person a couple of days after his ex-boyfriend’s wedding?”

“I don’t know,” said Bridge. “I suppose someone who loves you and supports you and wants to be with you no matter what.”

I gave another groan. The only thing that was stopping me from crying more was that I’d been sick enough that I was out of fluids. “I know. What a bastard.”

She was giving me strong stop-messing-about face. “This is serious, Luc. You’re talking about potentially blowing up a wonderful relationship with a wonderful man. Are you sure you don’t want to get married and aren’t just being, y’know, you?”

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. “I’m…I think I’m sure, Bridge.

Like, we had this really nice evening at Quo Vadis—”

“Oh, your first-date restaurant,” cried Bridge, clasping her hands.

“That’s so romantic.”

“Yes.” I found I was gripping the rail far too tightly, either for emphasis or security. “That was the problem. It was romantic. It was…” Well, actually it had been fraught at the beginning. But then it had been kind of perfect. “It was great. It was the best evening we’d had for ages. And I kept wishing we could just go back to that.

Except that’s not how relationships work.”

There was an expression of deep sorrow in Bridge’s eyes, like I was falling into a sad cloud. It was the expression she’d always go to when she was trying not to let me know how badly I’d let her down.

“No, Luc. It’s not.”

“I’ve fucked everything all the way up, haven’t I?”

Bridge was uncharacteristically silent.

“Bridge?” I asked.

“I’m thinking.”

“And?”

“I think,” she said slowly, “you might have fucked everything all the way up.”

If there was ever a time you didn’t want someone to agree with you, this had been it. “What do I do?”

She was silent again. And then, “I suppose you’ve got three options.”

“Okay?”

“Get married anyway?” she suggested.

My stomach sloshed in time with the waters below. And my hands got insta-sweaty. “Not wild about that. Next?”

“Leave Oliver at the altar.”

“Also not great.” My stomach continued to slosh and my hands continued to sweat. “Three had better be a doozy.”

“Um…hope really hard that the last few months have all been a dream.”

“I’m hoping,” I said. “Is it working?”

“I don’t know.” Bridge’s eyes got wide and confused. “I don’t feel like I’m in someone else’s dream. But how would I tell?”

“Is there a fourth option?” I asked desperately.

“I could try to think of one,” offered Bridge, ever supportive. “But since the dream plan was the best I could come up with, it might take a while and be worse.”

Oh God. I’d had something wonderful, and I’d ruined it like I always I did. “What if I just ran away?”

“That’s still leaving Oliver at the altar, only without having the guts to do it to his face.”

“Cool,” I said. “Let’s do that one.”

Bridge subjected me to her sternest stare. “I know you don’t mean that, Luc.”

“You’re right, you’re right.” I paused. “What if I fake my death?”

“Four months after his father’s funeral? Oliver might take that quite badly too.”

I turned my back to the river and sat on the ground, head tucked against my knees. “Fuck, the hope-it-was-all-a-dream plan is looking really shiny right now.”