Husband Material (London Calling #2)(83)

Oliver was putting all the yellow index cards in a separate pile. “I don’t think I will. I have spent my entire life trying to live up to their expectations. It’s time for them to try to live up to mine.”

“And what if they…don’t?”

“Then”—his mouth tightened—“I suppose I shall have to deal with it.”

I wanted to say something reassuring, but it was hard to know how. In my experience, hoping someone who’d been letting you down for years would suddenly stop letting you down was a recipe for really bad feels. And the best thing you could do was not invite them to your wedding and not a give a fuck.

Or maybe I was projecting.

Besides, Oliver was a congenital fuck giver.

“At least,” I said with a smile, “this puts the rainbow balloon arch back on the table.”

I’d meant it as a joke, but Oliver seemed genuinely thrown. “In what way?”

“Well, we don’t need to worry so much about what your parents will like.”

Aaaand now he’d gone from thrown to frozen. “Firstly, I think it’s very probable my parents are coming. Secondly, my tastes aren’t anything to do with what I think my parents will like.”

I should have pedalled way the fuck back. But I was still sort of committed to the idea that I was cheering him up. “Not even a teeny tiny bit?” I made teeny-tiny fingers to show I was being at least slightly flippant.

“No.”

“Okay.” I went back to shuffling index cards, but that only lasted about four seconds.

“And I resent the implication,” Oliver continued.

Fuck, he was back sounding like his dad again. The Blackwoods were massive resenters of implications. “What implication?” I asked, only slightly disingenuously.

“That I’m some kind of poster child for false consciousness.”

In my defence, he was the one who’d gone there. And now that he had, it seemed fair to at least talk about it. “I mean”—I drew in an uneasy breath—“if you feel like you might be, then doesn’t that suggest that it might be worth thinking about?”

“You’re not my therapist, Lucien.”

“No, but I’m your, like, your fiancé. This stuff matters to me.”

I knew he was angry because he’d put the index cards down.

And also because the only thing he said was “Why?” in a tone of actual challenge.

“What do you mean, why?”

“I mean why? ” Yeah, definitely pissed off. And not in a sexy stern way, but in a you’ve-touched-a-nerve-you-shouldn’t-have-touched way. “Why is it so important to you that my distaste for brightly coloured tat be part of some pathology or personal flaw instead of a feature of my personality?”

“Oliver, queer iconography is not tat.”

“It is when it’s printed on merch and sold for four ninety-five on Etsy.”

I dug my fingers into my temples. “Oh my God, how is this not trying to please your parents? Sorry, Oliver. Yes, I do actually like things you can buy on Etsy. I do actually like crap that has rainbows randomly painted on it. I even think the MLM flag looks kind of okay, and I’m thinking of buying one to hang in my window because I love you and I am proud that I love you.”

There was a right time and a wrong time to tell somebody you loved them. As a weapon in an argument might, just might, have been a wrong time.

“You make it sound,” Oliver said in his most have-to-stay-calm voice, “as though who I am and who I love only count if I want to put them on a banner or a T-shirt. A banner or a T-shirt that I don’t even get to design myself and must, instead, let the ‘community’ design for me.”

“Oh, you did not just air-quotes community.”

Oliver was on his feet. Why was he on his feet? “We’ve discussed this, Lucien. I don’t choose my friends based on who they want to fuck. My community is people I know and care about.”

“You know me. You care about me.”

The expression on Oliver’s face as he looked down at me wasn’t quite disappointment and it wasn’t quite betrayal. How had we even got here from a joke about a balloon arch? “I do. Which is why I accepted your proposal. But what I don’t want is either to get married surrounded by garish Pride merch or to be made to feel that unless I get married surrounded by garish Pride merch, I’m somehow a lesser member of this community you’re so proud of.”

“And I don’t want to be made to feel like you don’t think my community— our community—matters.”

He was staring at me like he barely recognised me. “Are you certain you want to marry me, Lucien? Because sometimes it—”

Before he could say anything else, his phone rang. It had been sitting beside him on the floor so he could use one of his many organising-things apps for the wedding planning, and that meant we could both see that it was his parents calling.

“I should probably take this,” he said. “It might be about the wedding.”

“The wedding you just accused me of not wanting.”

Sweeping up his phone, Oliver stepped outside into the corridor.

I tried not to feel let down that he was still so under his parents’

thumbs that he’d taken a call from them in the middle of a fight about how under his parents’ thumbs he still was. But I didn’t quite manage it.