Husband Material (London Calling #2)(48)

“I wasn’t—” But there was no point protesting. I’d only dig myself into a deeper hole.

“Actually”—JoJo finally managed to get a word in—“I was here to talk to Luc. About something a bit personal.”

Alex gave me an apologetic look. “Ah, as it turns out, he hasn’t changed his mind at all. Well played, old boy.”

“This was never a game.” I made my best welcome-to-CRAPP

gesture at JoJo and led him through to the relative privacy of my office.

To be honest, I wasn’t thrilled to be leading him through to the relative privacy of my office, but having already made a scene at his wedding, I didn’t want to compound it by making a scene at my place of work.

Sitting down at my desk, I tried to psych myself up to apologise.

Which was going to be difficult because, in a lot of ways, I wasn’t fucking sorry. I’d done more than my fair share of reconciliation bullshit by showing up in the first place. Expecting me to be “yes, we’re bros now” was a bridge too far. And not like a little tiny bridge over a brook on a nice walk in the countryside. Like a giant, fucking steel-suspension bridge over a river of fuck right off.

Come on, Luc. Be the bigger man.

“I’m sorry if I spoiled your big day,” I tried. I know all the internet rules say you’re not supposed to begin an apology with I’m sorry if, but it was what he was getting.

JoJo laughed. It seemed like a sincere laugh, which was more than I’d expected. “Sweetheart, I was marrying the man I love in a big party filled with all my friends plus a bunch of other people who aren’t my friends but were still telling me how amazing I was. One slightly mean conversation wasn’t going to ruin that.”

Oh. Okay. “So why are you here?”

“Just to say…” JoJo stared down at his immaculately manicured nails. “Just to say that…I suppose…I suppose I get it?”

Was I offended by that? I thought I was at least a little bit offended by that. Because this guy was twelve and trying to tell me he knew what it was like to get betrayed and abandoned by the fucker he’d just married. Although, now I thought about it, JoJo wasn’t that much older than I’d been when I’d dated Miles. Of course, Miles was now substantially older than he’d been when he’d dated me, which was why I felt justified taking the piss. The thing was, though, I hadn’t felt young at the time. I’d felt pretty grown-up.

And here was JoJo, looking at me with the confidence of a young man who didn’t quite realise how young he seemed to other people.

See, this was the problem with trying to be a better human being to impress your boyfriend. You ended up having to be a better human to everybody.

“Get what, exactly?” I asked warily.

He kept giving me his earnest early-twenties face. “I’ve been on the internet since I was sixteen. I know you got the whole old-media paparazzi treatment, and I’m sure that was crappy in a slightly different way, but I’ve had a million strangers telling me what they think of me every day since before I did my GCSEs.”

Okay, that did sound awful. Although old Luc would have pointed out that the person who was financially compensated for JoJo’s constant harassment was JoJo, not the person who dumped him.

“So,” JoJo went on, “I do understand that what Miles did to you was fucking terrible. That’s why I wanted you to come to the wedding.”

When Miles had told me that he’d invited me to the wedding for JoJo’s sake, I’d assumed he was just rightfully ashamed of how selfish it sounded otherwise. “Wait. You actually wanted me to come to the wedding?”

“Yeah…” I’d heard more sheepish yeahs, but only from actual sheep. “I think I just wanted to see… I don’t know. That you were okay, I guess?”

“So you could tell yourself you weren’t marrying the King of the Arseholes?” It was probably an unfair comment, but I was trying to ration my enlightenment.

He squirmed in a way that didn’t quite fit with the YouTube starlet persona. “So I could tell myself I’d be okay too.”

Ah. That was…that was more complicated than I was ready for.

“You mean, if he did the same to you?”

It had been kind of the elephant in the room, and now I’d… I dunno. Had I shot the elephant? Had I said, Hey, is that an elephant? Was the elephant now rampaging around stomping on things? I didn’t think it was a stompy atmosphere. Perhaps we were just staring at an elephant and going, Yup, that’s an elephant all right.

There was a very, very long silence. At the end of the very, very long silence, JoJo said, “Maybe?”

And there went my last hope of resenting him. Because—and this wasn’t a self-esteem issue—JoJo had to be worth more than fifty grand, even accounting for inflation. And in his world everything would happen at the speed of Twitter, instead of the speed of the tabloids.

“And I-I don’t think he will,” he continued. “Obviously I wouldn’t have married him if I thought he would.”

At this point, I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince me or himself. “I figured.”

JoJo picked at one of his perfect nails, leaving a little chip in it.

“And we’ve talked about it—we’ve talked about it so much—and Miles really is sorry, even if he’s bad at showing it.”