Chapter 7
“Lucien.”
My first thought was that Oliver’s morning breath was really, really bad. My second thought was that his voice sounded weirdly far away. My third, fourth, and fifth thoughts were that my arm was numb, my neck was killing me, and I was sure I had carpet marks on my face.
“You do realise,” Oliver was saying, “that attempting to preserve our sex life by keeping the dog out of our bedroom will be somewhat undermined if you move into the dog pen?”
“Mrrffhhh,” I groaned.
“Ruff,” said Spud, nuzzling closer.
I rolled over and squinted up at Oliver. He was already showered and dressed for work, which meant shiny shoes and a three-piece suit, while I was in my pants, on the floor, with—I was slowly coming to realise—one of our hidden dog treats stuck to my arse.
“Well.” Oliver actually put his hands on his hips. I wouldn’t say he was looking at me disdainfully, but I’d definitely seen more dainful expressions on him. “At least you weren’t in hospital this time.”
“Ruff,” said Spud.
“And you”—Oliver gazed sternly down at our dog—“shouldn’t encourage him.”
He turned crisply around and disappeared into the hallway. I wobbled to my feet and followed, Spud trailing close behind me.
I found Oliver in the kitchen eating bircher with the ferocious concentration of a man who wanted to pretend nothing was wrong.
“I’m really sorry,” I said.
“Mruff,” agreed Spud.
“It’s fine,” Oliver replied to both of us. It blatantly wasn’t.
With a picking-a-scab instinct, I circled right back to: “He was really sad. And I couldn’t sleep.”
“You made your bed, Lucien. And to your credit, you also lay in it.”
I tried my most disarming smile. “You’ve been working on that one since you woke up, haven’t you?”
He half smiled back, but it was pretty fucking grudging.
“I’m genuinely not angry with you,” he admitted at last. “And I know you’re somewhat afraid of responsibility.
But you can actually do this. We can actually do this.
But we have to do it right, or we’d be better off giving the dog up entirely. ”
“Hey.” Crouching down, I put my hands over Spud’s ears. Which confused him, but he was willing to go with it. “Don’t say that in front of him.”
“He’s a dog. He’s not going to understand.”
“He might pick something up from…from…your tone of voice. Or the vibes. The vibes might be bad.”
In what felt like a pointed challenge to my vibe-related dog concerns, Oliver put his spoon and empty mason jar into the dishwasher and opened the cupboard that I had definitely remembered was the one we were keeping the dog food in.
The second he opened the pouch of nutritionally balanced puppy food, Spud bounced out from between my hands and scampered over to Oliver, tail dodoinging like one of those springy doorstops you get in old people’s houses.
“He doesn’t seem traumatised,” said Oliver with a smugness I felt was at best ten percent warranted.
There’d been no way I was winning this conversation last night. And there was no way I was winning it this morning. And the fact I’d started thinking in terms of winning and losing was probably a bad sign. Not, like, in a relationship-ending sense. But in an argument-ending sense.
Leaving Spud with Oliver, I creaked upstairs in the hope a hot shower would make my body feel more like a body and less like a coat hanger.
It didn’t particularly.
I was just sitting in my towel, hoping to drip-dry because normal towelling motions had become a Doctor, Doctor joke about how it hurt when I did this, when Oliver knocked on the door.
“Come in,” I said.
To his credit, he didn’t comment on the fact I was sitting morosely on the toilet lid, looking damp and uncomfortable. “I’ve fed Spud and taken him outside.”
“Did you make a note of it in the Log Log?”
“I did,” replied Oliver, without blinking. “As should you, the next time he goes.”
“I will.”
“Will you?”
Damn, he knew me too well. “At this moment in time, I fully intend to.”
Stepping into the still-misty bathroom, Oliver dropped a kiss on my forehead. “I’m not expecting miracles. I’ll see you this evening.”
Frankly, Oliver’s willingness not to expect miracles was probably a large part of the reason we were still together.
As was the fact that he was an excellent judge of when I was sitting on a toilet wrapped in a towel in a way that was actually a problem or in a way that meant it was fine for him to go to work.
This was a fine-for-him-to-go-to-work towel-wrapped toilet sit.
So when Oliver left to do exactly that, I didn’t collapse into a pile of goo on the floor.
Well, I mostly didn’t collapse into a pile of goo on the floor.
I was still pretty knackered on account of my dog-related moral crisis, meaning I was up way earlier than I would normally be.
I left my towel on the bathroom floor, then went back to put it neatly on the towel rack, and then dove into the soft, faintly me-and-Oliver-and-fabric-conditioner-scented cloud of duvets and pillows.
My eyes closed blissfully. My back began to unkink itself.
All my cares and worries began to float off like balloons at a child’s birthday. My dog began barking downstairs.
Shit. I had a dog.
I peeled myself back out of bed and lurched onto the landing. Spud was sitting at the foot of the stairs, behind the dog-proof gate we’d—Oliver’d—installed, and staring up at me in a way that made me really understand where the phrase puppy dog eyes came from.
“I’m here,” I said.
Spud’s tail thumped the floor behind him.
“I just need to—” I suddenly realised I was completely naked in front of Spud. And I suppose, technically, Spud was completely naked in front of me as well, but it still felt weird. “I’m going to put some clothes on,” I explained. “Don’t worry and don’t poo anywhere.”
“Ruff,” promised Spud.
And, you know what? I took him at his word.
* * *
As far as I could tell, our house had so far remained a dog-shit-free zone.
Unfortunately, between playing with Spud, getting breakfast, and being a lazy arse, I’d managed to stay in the pants-and-T-shirt stage of getting ready until about two minutes before my meeting.
Panicked, I ran upstairs and realised that literally every single one of my shirts was in the wash.
Or more precisely in a wet knot inside the washing machine, where they’d been sitting ever since I’d promised I’d unload it two days ago.
I was in no way too proud to just pull a worn one out of the laundry, but sadly the whole reason that it had been my job to unload the washing machine was that it had been Oliver’s job to load it.
Which meant that job had been done in a timely fashion, and the laundry basket was now sitting accusingly empty.
Fortunately—well, fortunately-ish—I was also not too proud to steal clothes from my more organised, more sensibly dressed boyfriend.
So I raided Oliver’s closet for one of his impeccably chosen, immaculately ironed shirts that he always remembered to put away properly.
It was a tasteful pink herringbone, too tight in the chest and too short in the arms for me, but fuck it. Any shirt in a storm.
I threw a jacket over it to cover the arms part of the problem and genuinely spent a good two to three seconds debating whether I needed to put trousers on before deciding…
nah. I didn’t have the excuse of the pandemic anymore, but being able to go to meetings in your underwear was a universally recognised working-from-home perk.
By five minutes past nine, I was at my desk, with my computer booted up, my camera on, and my ring light in place, with Spud frolicking around behind me, very confident in his not-being-abandoned-ness.
I wasn’t even the last person to show up.
That was Rhys Jones Bowen. It was always Rhys Jones Bowen.
“Okay, Alex,” I said, figuring I’d fill the time while we were waiting. “Try this one. Doctor, Doctor—”
My screen suddenly filled up with Dr. Fairclough’s face. “Yes?”
“Um, no. I’m doing a Doctor, Doctor joke for Alex.”
“If you need to see a doctor,” said Alex, “I know an excellent one in Harley Street.”
I squinted at him. He seemed to be sitting in an actual throne in front of a vast marble fireplace. This, on its own, wasn’t unusual because that was what working from home looked like for Alex. But he was also wearing a green velvet frock coat and a cravat. “Why are you dressed like Mr. Darcy?”
“Oh.” Alex looked down at himself in mild surprise. “Forgot about the clobber. Fearfully funny story. Turns out they’re shooting one of those costume thingies in the second ballroom, and I’m helping out by being extra.”
There was nothing about that I couldn’t believe. “Doctor, Doctor,” I repeated.
“Yes?” said Dr. Fairclough.
“Still a joke,” I explained.
Alex got that concerned look he often got at about this stage of the joke-telling process. “Luc, I know I’m sometimes a bit of a duffer comedy-wise, but I don’t think just saying the word doctor over and over again qualifies as a joke.”
“Doctor, Doctor,” I tried for a third time, “I’ve broken—”
“Are you sure”—this was Barbara Clench, who was currently on holiday somewhere sunny and was now filling my screen with a brightly coloured mocktail and a disapproving expression—“that humour is an effective use of work time?”
Alex, at least, defended me on this one. “Oh, don’t be a sourpuss. Finish your joke, Luc.”
“Doctor, Doctor,” I said.
“Yes?” said Dr. Fairclough.
“I’ve broken my arm in three places,” I continued.
She gave an irritated blink. “I’m not a medical doctor, O’Donnell, I’m an entomologist.”
“Gosh,” exclaimed Alex. “It’s bally sporting of you to be at a meeting with a broken arm. Did it happen recently?”
“No,” I said, “because it’s a joke.”
“Stiff upper lip’s all well and good, old man, but you need to be careful with this kind of thing. I had a friend who broke his arm, and he died.”
“Did he get an infection?” asked Dr. Fairclough.