Husband Material (London Calling #2)(92)
“Soooo…” As ways to begin a conversation went, a long so was up there with Hi, have you considered changing your broadband provider? “Do you want to…talk? Or not talk? Or go for a walk? Or stay in bed? Or have me go away? Or—”
“At the moment, I think I’d mostly like you to stop listing things.”
I took a deep breath. “Sorry. How are you?”
“Not so great. My dad died.”
Okay, so that was either a good sign because he had the strength to be sarcastic. Or a bad sign because that’s the answer I would have given and I was a dick. “Stop channelling me, and be serious. You don’t have to confide in me, but this was a big deal and I’m worried about you.”
“I’m sorry to worry you, Lucien. And I will be… I’ll be…
Everything will be fine.”
“I know that,” I told him. “But it’s obviously not fine right now. And I know you don’t like feeling…” I tried to express very gently through mime that you aren’t living up to the unrealistic expectations foisted on you by your parents, one of whom is now dead. “But I love you even when you’re…” I’d run out of gentle mimes. “Crap.”
He laughed. “Wonderful pep talk, Lucien. Have you considered volunteering as a bereavement counsellor?”
“I just mean it’s safe to be crap with me. Like I let myself be crap with you literally all the time.”
“You know that’s not true.” He fixed me with a gaze that seemed to be saying about twelve different things at once. “Some of that French toast was really quite edible. Besides, I’m not with you for your cooking or your ability to wash up, I’m with you because you make me feel better than anyone ever has. And I often wish I could be more like you.”
“Well”—flustered by his sincerity, I poked him in the duvet lump where I thought his knee was—“I don’t want you to be anyone except yourself. And…” Finally my brain and heart and neuroses caught up with each other. “If that means you need to deal with this on your own, then I get it and I’ll be here.”
With very Oliverian fastidiousness, he set the plate neatly on the bedside table. “The truth is, I don’t think I’m dealing with it very well.”
“I’m not sure it’s the kind of thing you can deal with well? I think people just feel what they feel and stumble through it?”
“Yes but”—his eyes darkened to a miserable slate—“I think what I’m mostly feeling is angry.”
“That seems pretty normal?” I offered.
“I’m sure it is. It is not, however, a helpful state to be in when one’s arranging a funeral and trying to be there for one’s mother.”
“Where’s Christopher? Can’t he help?”
“Christopher,” said Oliver, with an edge of frustration, “is in Afghanistan. He’ll be back for the funeral but not before. And I’m trying very hard not to resent him, but at the moment this feels very typical.”
I hoiked my feet onto the bed and crossed my legs. “Tell you what. How about we draw a circle around this room and say that in here you can be as bitter, resentful, and straight-up mean as you like. It won’t hurt anyone, and no one will find out, and I won’t think any less of you because I couldn’t—and also because I’m a horrible person anyway.”
Oliver didn’t say anything for so long I thought even the mystical power of the circle of venting couldn’t overcome his fundamental need to give people the benefit of the doubt. Then he sucked in a breath like he was surfacing in the hundred-meter butterfly. “I realise what Christopher does is very important and helps a lot of people, but it’s incredibly fucking convenient that it means he’s never around whenever anything needs doing. And I’d say if I didn’t know better, I’d think he’d chosen his career specifically to keep a thousand miles between him and his family as much and as often as possible. But I can’t say that because I don’t know better because it’s fucking true.
He’s done this his whole life—from holidays with his friends when he was sixteen to his gap year to studying in Edinburgh to his year abroad to Médecins Sans Fucking Frontières. If they gave a medal to the most selfish altruistic person in the world, Christopher would win it and then not show up at the ceremony.”
I think it was air more than complaints that Oliver had run out of.
The Christopher Sucks speech had actually left him a little flushed.
And I did feel sort of bad for Christopher because, while everything Oliver had said was probably accurate, given the Blackwoods, I’d have signed up with MSF as well. And from what Mia had told me the one time we’d met, they got their own flavour of shit from Oliver’s parents.
“Oh God.” Oliver pressed his forehead to his knees. “I’m a terrible person.”
I moved closer and put a hand on his back. “Okay, I should have made the rules of the Hate Room clearer. Nobody is allowed to judge you here, including you.”
Oliver’s shoulders heaved, and he made a sound like he wanted to cry but couldn’t. “It’s just too much. He’s spent his whole life running away and I’ve spent my whole life dealing with the things he’s running away from, and it’s never been good enough, and it’ll never be good enough, and now it can’t ever be good enough because our father is dead.”