Husband Material (London Calling #2)(15)

“How did it wind up like this, Luc?” she asked as we watched the credits roll on While You Were Sleeping. “I thought we’d finally cracked it. You know, life. I mean, we were both with great guys—”

“Instead of both trying to get with the same great guy,” I added.

“Exactly. And now here we are again eating Strawberry Cheesecake H?agen-Dazs and watching old Sandra Bullock movies like nothing has changed.”

There was a strange back-in-halls feeling to the evening. And that made me uncomfortable on a number of levels. “You mean nothing has changed because you’re having a relationship crisis and I’m with somebody who seems great but is inevitably going to fuck me over?” Because that was how it went back in the day.

“No, I mean… Shit, sorry, Luc. I really do believe you and Oliver are endgame.”

“I believed you and Tom were endgame too. Then again, I dated him first and my taste in men is legendarily awful so maybe he is just a cheating, necklace-buying scumbucket you’re better off without.”

Bridge balled up the foil from the Toblerone and threw it at me.

“Hey, you’re supposed to be making me feel better.”

Fuck, I was, wasn’t I? And I’d been doing a passable job of it up until then too. “Sorry. I let self-hating Luc take over for a moment there. I’m back now.”

“It’s all right. I’m just… I’d got used to not feeling this way, and now I’m having to feel this way again and I’m not enjoying it.”

I put down the Ben & Jerry’s and turned to give Bridget my best sincere look. “Okay, since we’re having a back-to-our-youth moment”—I put my hand over my heart—“as your token gay friend, it is my duty to say that you are a fierce, sickening, incredible woman and that when you find a man who deserves you, he’ll make you feel like a princess every day of your life in a way that somehow manages to avoid reinforcing problematic gender stereotypes. And if it turns out that Tom isn’t that guy, then that’s his loss, not yours. And you should have the wedding anyway just to celebrate how awesome you are.”

Bridget leaned across the sofa and hugged me. Since she hadn’t put down her ice cream, it was a mixed experience that I was pretty sure got H?agen-Dazs in my hair, but it was good to know I’d done friending right. “Thanks, Luc,” she said. And then, in a slightly smaller voice added, “Would you be okay to stay, if I can’t get in touch with Tom?”

“Of course. Oliver’ll understand.” He wouldn’t like understanding, but he’d understand.

Swivelling around, she lay down with her head on my lap. “I’m honestly sure you two are going to make it.”

“Even though I have terrible taste in men?”

“Because you have terrible taste in men. You spent so long refusing to go out with Oliver that he’s bound to be right for you.”

I wasn’t totally sure that tracked, but it was a comforting thought.

“Fine,” I conceded, “but in that case you have to accept that my letting Tom get away proves he’s a good guy too.” I paused. “Unless he isn’t, of course.”

Bridge managed half a laugh. “We’ll see. I don’t want to think about it anymore tonight.”

So we didn’t. We queued up Muriel’s Wedding into 27 Dresses and let ourselves stop thinking about anything at all.

In the break between movies, I slipped into the hall to ring Oliver and tell him the situation.

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I don’t think I’m going to make it home tonight. Things are looking bad so I should probably stay with Bridge.”

Once more, I could hear Oliver breathing in that I-will-be-calm way that I hated. “Of course. I… That is, if you think it’s… Are you sure you’re helping?”

“What do you mean, am I sure I’m helping?” This wasn’t the tack I’d expected him to take.

“Just that, well, sometimes it’s best to let people stand on their own two feet.”

I got that I’d let him down. And I got that he was trying to be reasonable. But this was becoming the kind of reasonable that was worse than angry. “She thinks her fiancé might be cheating on her.

This isn’t an own-feet situation.”

“And you’re going to drop everything and run to her every time she and Tom are in trouble?”

“Yes. Because she’s my best friend and she’s always supported me and I’ll always support her.”

“There’s supporting”—Oliver’s tone was getting more restrained and less warm by the moment—“and there’s being codependent.”

“It’s not codependent to be there for your friends.”

“I just meant—”

“You just meant that you’re cross with me for bailing on you, which is fine. But you’re taking it out on Bridge, which is not. And also you’re doing it in a way that makes you sound weirdly like your dad.”

“I do not sound like my father. He’s never used the word ‘codependent’ in his life. He’d think it was psychobabble nonsense.”

This was beginning to feel nastily like a hole, and I should have stopped digging. “You know what I mean. All that ‘Let people stand on their own feet, stop mollycoddling’ stuff is pure David Blackwood.”