Husband Material (London Calling #2)(42)

Considering the kind of person he’d been when he was with me, that was a pretty low bar.

“You’ve given me so much: your generous spirit, your dauntless heart. You’ve filled my days with joy and my nights with a frankly astonishing collection of fancy lube.”

Pause for laughter. Eye roll.

Miles continued gazing at his husband-to-be with intense devotion. “I love you, JoJo. I always will.”

I stole a look at Oliver. It was his blankest face. And that was oddly reassuring.

“Miles.” JoJo gazed back. “You’re my rock. You’re the best, kindest man I’ve ever known. Except, of course, for my amazing Patreons—I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”

Another pause for laughter. Although I liked to think he wasn’t joking. Miles deserved to marry a man with sponsored vows.

“I was lost when we met,” JoJo went on, “but you found me. I’d forgotten how to believe in myself, but you remembered how to believe in me.”

Mean Oliver leaned over and whispered as softly as he could, “Have I developed spontaneous aphasia or are they just saying words at random?”

“You should object,” I told him.

“You know it doesn’t work like that.” He paused. “Especially because this is a wedding.”

“I was lonely,” JoJo went on. And on. “And now I’m not. Because I’ve got you, and I know you’ll always be there for me, and you’ve made me happier than anyone ever has.”

Oh God. He was crying and not in an artful gets-me-clicks way.

He actually meant every word of this, and as usual, I was being a prick.

He dabbed at his eyes, smearing his rainbows a little, but looking so offensively radiant it didn’t matter. “I love you, Miles. And I always will.”

Pause for awwws.

For about ninety seconds I felt real bile rising up in my stomach because people were awwwing for my arsehole ex and his jailbait boyfriend. Sorry, jailbait spouse. I’d sort of convinced myself that the wedding would prove to me that Miles was nothing but a tired hipster chasing a YouTube trophy husband and the ceremony would just be a self-congratulatory wankfest to cover their sham of a marriage.

Except, in the end, the ceremony had been a self-congratulatory wankfest that had been…really sweet and meaningful. And rather than being doomed forever, it was clear that Miles and JoJo kind of had something.

And I was, once again, the one left behind with nothing.

Wait. No, I wasn’t. I hadn’t been that for years, even though I’d believed I was for quite a long time. It had been a pisser of a journey, but I was slowly working out that I was more than the shitty things that had happened to me. And one of the best things that had happened to me was sitting right there, helping me mock the vows at my ex-boyfriend’s wedding.

Which—and maybe I was an overcompensating person or just a rubbish person—was some #relationshipgoals shit right there.

I gave Oliver’s hand a little squeeze. I could do this. I could totally do this. I was fine.

Well. Fine-ish.

Fineoid.

Definitely heading in a fineular direction.

Maybe.





ONCE THE CEREMONY WAS OVER and the new couple had finished kissing—which took longer than it had to—the celebration jumped straight to no-fucks-given dancing. Food was provided via a buffet along the sides of the room, and speeches were made intermittently by microphone from the main stage. In a lot of ways, had the context been very different, it would have been a great evening. I’d loved Bridge’s wedding because I loved Bridge, but sitting around while elderly relatives made corny jokes over a meal that, while exquisite, you’d never have ordered in a restaurant, wasn’t exactly the way most people I knew would choose to spend a Saturday. A gigantic party in a train tunnel with live music and speeches largely made by professional cabaret artists, on the other hand, was.

Or rather, it had been. Now I spent my Saturdays doing boyfriendly things like hoovering the living room and going to art galleries and/or IKEA, occasionally fielding calls from the James Royce-Royces because Baby J had done something so unbearably adorable that they had to tell everyone immediately. And it wasn’t that I missed my party days—at least not the way they’d ended with me drinking, dancing, and fellating my way into oblivion. But it had been good for a while, and looking back, it didn’t feel so much like something I’d grown beyond as something that had been taken from me.

So I looked around the room with this weird mix of nostalgia and… Actually, maybe it was just nostalgia, but in the serious pain-for-something-lost sense. And then I looked at Oliver. And his reaction was very much not nostalgia. It was the opposite of nostalgia. Like fuck-this-shit-algia or something. I think he’d have been more comfortable at a bullfight.

“Are you hating this?” I asked.

He had to raise his voice to be heard over the music. “By what metric?”

“Um? Any metric?”

“I believe I can honestly say,” he shouted in that nightclub nobody-can-hear-this-because-nobody-can-hear-anything way, “that I cannot imagine a scenario in which I would enjoy watching two people I don’t know get married in a disused train tunnel full of repetitive electronica and flashing lights more than I currently am.”

I tried to be cool with that. Or even to be flattered by it—after all, it would have been a bit weird if my boyfriend had been super happy at the wedding of my arsehole ex. But the truth was, the arsehole ex wasn’t the only issue. This issue was that Oliver was…well.