Husband Material (London Calling #2)(43)

Okay, this was difficult. Because the reason I’d needed to date someone like him to begin with was that I’d needed to distance myself from the parts of queer culture that looked bad to a certain kind of rich straight person. And while I’d come to realise that Oliver was more than a respectable job and a wholesome jumper, it still weirded me out that he found so little value in what I’d always instinctively thought was our community.

“You don’t feel, like, connected to any of this?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

He winced. “I wish I did and I’m sure I should. But no.”

“It can be fun, though,” I tried. “I mean, isn’t it great to be in a place where you know nobody’s judging you for who you are?”

There was whatever passed for silence in a room full of wedding noise. I got that sinking sensation that I hadn’t had for a while, where I knew I’d said the wrong thing but I wasn’t sure how.

“Lucien”—Oliver had a pained, sincere look about him, and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut—“I love that you feel accepted by this world, and I’d never want to take that away from anyone. But I’ve never felt any of”—he made a slightly helpless gesture—“this is for me.”

“It could be for you.” That probably wasn’t right. “I mean, it is for you.” That probably wasn’t right either.

He leaned a little closer to my ear so that he could stop having to yell complex things about his relationship to identity politics over wedding music. “I understand that you’re trying to make me feel included, but I’m afraid you’re doing the opposite.”

Fuck. How was I doing the opposite? “I didn’t mean to,” I whisper-yelled. “I just mean—you know—you’ve got a right to be part of this.”

“That’s not the reassurance you think it is.”

Shit, this was turning into Drag Race all over again. “Can’t you let it be?” I tried. It was the wrong thing to try.

“Lucien.” He was using my name a lot, which was never a good sign. “I absolutely don’t want to denigrate anybody’s values. But places like this are… Well, I’m sure for people who like to express themselves in this kind of way that they’re very empowering. But for me…” Now he ran a hand through his hair. Also not the best of signs. “It’s like this whole event is telling me I’m doing my identity wrong if I’m not draping myself in rainbows at every opportunity.

Ironically, it makes me feel judged.”

It was nothing he hadn’t said before. It was just extra weird for him to be saying it at my ex-boyfriend’s wedding while we were surrounded by my ex-friends. Because there was a part of me that still belonged here and hated that he didn’t. “I think that’s just in your head.”

He gave a cool blink. “I’m aware. But I’m also aware that I’ve told you on more than one occasion that I don’t feel especially represented by this kind of thing, and you’ve consistently failed to believe me. So I sometimes think it might not be quite as much in my head as all that.”

Fuck, were we having a fight? Was this a fight? Had I tried to show off my amazing barrister boyfriend to my arsehole ex and wound up having an embarrassing fight in the middle of said ex’s fabulous queer wedding? “Oh my God, Oliver,” I hugged him in the hope of de-escalating. “I didn’t mean to make you feel… Shit, I’m a crappy boyfriend and you’re so great for doing this for me and you don’t have to like anything you don’t want to like and we can go if you—”

“Luc? Luc O’Donnell?” I turned to see a man with an obscenely expensive suit and no sense of timing making his way around the edge of the dance floor towards us.

It took me a moment to recognise him. “Jonathan?”

We didn’t hug. Even at university Jonathan had never been the hugging type. Honestly, we hadn’t massively got on. On account of him being driven by a passionate desire for success and me being driven by a passionate desire for naps. He was one of those people who had sort of aged laterally, in that he looked almost exactly the same as when he was twenty. He’d somehow picked up a single grey streak in his hair, which gave him a bit of a werewolf vibe—only not in a sexy way—but otherwise he was the same lanky, grumpy git I vaguely remembered.

He stared at me for a long moment. “I have to say, you are the last person I expected to see here.”

“Same. You don’t even like Miles.”

“Since when is I don’t like you an excuse to get out of a wedding?” His mouth, which was a sneery kind of mouth, got sneerier. “I mean, you felt obliged to show up and Miles literally sold you out to the Daily Express. What chance did I have?”

The thing about Jonathan was that he’d occupied a strange position in our friendship group. Someone told me once that the reason Christmas cracker jokes are so bad is that they’re designed to be shared with the whole family and it’s way easier to get everyone to agree that a joke is awful than to get them to agree it’s funny. Jonathan was a human Christmas-cracker joke. We all hated him, and we were pretty sure he hated us, but somehow that brought us together. Unfortunately, without that context he was just a mildly unpleasant man. Then again, so was I.