Chapter 9 #2
“Lucien”—Oliver was rubbing his brow in that dealing with me way he sometimes had—“if this doesn’t work…”
“Then at least I won’t have spent a fortnight sleeping on the floor?”
“So you’re saying either we do what you want or you move permanently into the study.” Oliver had upgraded from brow-rubbing to glaring.
“You said we had to do it your way or send Spud back to the pound.”
“This isn’t Lady and the Tramp. It’s a perfectly reasonable dog’s home. And, anyway, it’s not my way; it’s the way.”
I wasn’t quite in a glaring-back space, but I definitely hit incredulity hard. “Oh my God, can you hear yourself?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I literally found a dog expert from one of the dog expert books you got who says there is, in fact, more than one way to do this, just like there’s more than one way to do lots of things, and you won’t even try because…
because…” I threw the ball with such frustrated distraction that it hit the doorframe and bounced back into the study, much to Spud’s confusion.
“Because you think things are only good if they…if they suck. And…and…” I didn’t like being angry with Oliver.
I wasn’t used to being angry with Oliver. “I’m going for a nap.”
And then I left the room with grace and dignity. Without, at any point, accidentally stepping on any of Spud’s squeaky toys.
* * *
Angry naps are both the best and the worst kind of nap.
Like probably, from a mature, grown-up, has-a-dog perspective, they’re not the best way to process your emotions.
But also having feelings is exhausting. And I had spent two nights in a row on the floor.
I sausage-rolled myself in the duvet, drifted into resentful unconsciousness, and stayed there until Oliver woke me a respectful angry nap length later.
“Lucien,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“And?” I replied, only slightly pettily.
“And you may have a point.”
“May?”
“I’ve had a look at the”—he did the puppy giving paw gesture—“book, and it’s possible I succumbed to a certain amount of confirmation bias.”
I blinked at him from within the safety of my duvet wrap. “So we can try the thing?”
“We can try the thing.”
“I really will move the pen.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “You don’t have to. It’ll be easier with both of us.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” he agreed.
I had that difficult end-of-an-argument feeling that wasn’t quite catharsis, because there hadn’t been enough of a blowup, and wasn’t quite triumph, even though I’d technically got my own way.
It was a sort of low-key not-as-nice-as-it-should-have-been sense of resolution where you were glad it was over but far too aware that it had happened.
It didn’t help that Oliver still had a slightly tragic look in his eyes.
“Lucien,” he said after a while. “Did you…did you mean it?”
“About the dog?”
“About my thinking things are, and I quote, ‘only good if they suck.’”
“No,” I said and then immediately undid that by adding, “well, not exactly. It’s just…
” There was no easy way to sum this up. Because people were messy and life was messy and you couldn’t actually explain what a person was like in a sentence or a sound bite.
“Like, most of the time you’re unbelievably kind and compassionate and everything, but sometimes you…
I don’t know, sort of forget?” Privately, I was pretty sure those sometimes were when he was dealing with things he knew his father would have had Very Strong Opinions about and didn’t trust his own expertise enough to overrule him.
But that was an argument-starting observation, not an argument-ending one.
On account of being a far better, far less defensive person than me, Oliver seemed to be genuinely thinking about what I’d said. “I like to think compassion isn’t the sort of thing one just forgets about.”
I tried to shrug, but my shoulders were too tightly wrapped in duvet.
On the one hand, really nice of him to self-reflect.
On the other hand, really annoying of him to…
self-reflect. “Not forget forget. You just get so caught up in wanting to do the right thing that you sometimes lose sight of who it’s meant to be right for. ”
He kept on self-reflecting, like a git.
“Come on,” I said, half pleadingly. “You know you don’t have to be perfect all the time.”
That earned a small smile. “I do, in fact, accept that—though it’s taken a lot of therapy to get there.”
“And me,” I added. “I’ve been helpful.”
“Of course you have. But, as you pointed out yourself several years ago, it isn’t the job of a romantic relationship to fix my mental health issues.”
“Yeah, but”—at this point, I couldn’t tell if I was being play-insecure or real-insecure—“let’s not sell me short here.”
Slowly, Oliver unwrapped me from my sausage roll.
It wasn’t a particularly dignified process because I’d put myself in a bad-mood bundle, which meant I was lying on both edges of the duvet.
Eventually, though, I was de-cocooned, and Oliver settled over me with that blend of tenderness and purpose that always reduced me to mush.
Sexy mush. Doable mush. “I would never,” he whispered.
“Don’t tell her, but I like you more than my therapist.”
It had been, like, days. And as much as I’d missed sleeping comfortably, it was far from the only thing I’d missed. “Oh…oh good.”
“For a start, you don’t charge me by the hour.”
“Maybe if I did you’d listen to me more.”
Okay, so there were times to be pissy. Many times, at least if you were me.
But one of those times was absolutely not just as you and your boyfriend were navigating the transition from argument to makeup sex.
Thankfully, Oliver was either more mature or hornier than I was.
“I deserved that,” he admitted. “And I promise I’ll do better in future.
In fact”—his voice slipped into something more comfortable—“I might start now.”
“I’m not sure I like where this is going.”
He nuzzled against the side of my neck. “That’s a lie, isn’t it?”
“Well, obviously. But you listen to me just fine in bed.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t like hearing you.”
I made an embarrassing whinging noise that was half into-it-ness and half self-consciousness. “You know I’m bad at the sex words and the ‘Do me here’ and ‘Put that there’ and ‘Oh yeah baby.’ And also, don’t we have a dog we’re responsible for?”
“You should know two things,” said Oliver, very seriously. “The first is that I shall under no circumstances ever ask you to say, ‘Oh yeah baby.’ And the second is Spud’s last bowel movement was eighteen minutes ago.”
I stared up at him. “Why do I need to know that? Like, the second that. When you threaten me with dirty talk, which I may or may not be into”—I was into it—“that’s not the kind of dirty I’m looking for.”
Oliver blushed slightly. “I just meant, he’s asleep, so we won’t be interrupted.”
“Then you could have told me the sleeping bit, and left out the canine scat subplot.”
“I didn’t want you to be concerned about his needs while we were”—Responsible Dog Owner Oliver left the room, to be replaced by Much More Interesting Oliver—“while I’m demonstrating my listening skills.”
I gave a kind of squawk. “How selfless do you think I am?”
“More than you pretend to be,” said Oliver, catching my wrists and pressing them firmly into the pillow.
“Well then, how easy to ignore were you planning to make this?”
“I was intending to make it very difficult.”
“I don’t know”—I reared up slightly and nipped at his chin—“I’m pretty easily distracted.”
Oliver pushed me back down. Effortlessly because I wasn’t exactly trying to resist. “I think I’ll manage to hold your attention.”
And he did.
He really, really did.
* * *
I’ll be honest, moving the pen was a bit of a faff.
But Oliver, either still glowing with post-bang satisfaction or just being his normal, annoyingly nice self, didn’t say a fucking word.
Spud, though, found the whole process at least a little disorientating.
After all, we’d spent the last few days teaching him that this was a super-special safe space just for him, and now we were tearing it apart to put it somewhere completely different.
But by the time we’d got absolutely everything—all his special blankets and all his favourite toys—upstairs and hidden some extra-special treats, his natural puppyish curiosity at being allowed into a new part of the house took over and he was happily snuffling around, exploring and looking for noms.
“Now, this isn’t going to be forever.” Oliver was sitting on the edge of the bed in his pyjamas, calmly explaining the situation to an attentive but oblivious Spud. “And you’re still not allowed on the bed.”
Spud wagged his tail. “Ruff.”
“Good boy.”
“Ruff,” agreed Spud.
I face-planted onto the other side of the bed. The angry nap had been all well and good, but something something sleep quality something something REM.
“Now off to bed with you,” Oliver concluded. “Your bed, that is.”
“I’m in bed,” I protested, sleepily. “I couldn’t be more in bed.”
“There you go. Who’s a good boy?”
“Me, I’m a very good boy. I helped move the dog pen and everything.”
There was a gentle creak from the bedsprings as Oliver settled beside me. “While I’m enjoying the experience of being in a comedy skit circa 1978, you are aware I’m talking to Spud?”
“Yes,” I said in the pillow. “I had definitely realised that. I was just making a funny joke and am not at all exhausted.”
“I’m flattered.”
“Not from the sex.” My protests were, if anything, getting sleepier. “Okay, a bit from the sex. But, also, like life. Stuff. Arghhh.”
I was dimly aware I was moving but not quite conscious enough to work out why until Oliver had rolled me gently off the pillow and into his arms. “I know that the CRAPP situation is, well, a crap situation.”
I gave a bleary laugh. “Yes. Very situation. Much crap. Wow.”
“But whatever happens, we’ll get through it together.”
Through my increasing fatigue, I mustered a feeble “Yay” and prepared to pass out. Except something was nagging at me. A left-the-oven-on sort of feeling. Or, at least, what I assumed would be a left-the-oven-on sort of feeling if I used the oven with anything approaching regularity.
“I did switch the oven off, didn’t I?” I asked.
“From the state of the roasted vegetables”—Oliver’s breath gusted across my cheek—“I’m not sure you turned it on.”
“No, no, there was smoke and everything.”
“Ah, so they were smoked vegetables.”
“Yes,” I mumbled. “It was a subtle Mediterranean flavour you didn’t appreciate.”
“Either way, everything was fine when I went to turn the lights off.”
“Okay, good.” The nagging feeling continued. “And was the front door shut?”
“Lucien, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know. Something’s…different.”
“This might be a bit of a wild guess,” said Oliver. “But is what’s different that you’re not on the floor in the study?”
Only partially with it as I was, that did make sense.
“That’ll be it.” The thoughts stumbled through my brain like drunk students trying to get home at three in the morning.
Then another thought stumbled straight through my brain, down my brain stem, and out my mouth. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we?”
Oliver ran his fingertips gently across my back. “Yes, yes we are.”
“All of it. Like the dog and, like…everything.”
“Yes.”
That’s nice, said my increasingly addled brain. That’s extremely nice. “Is Spud all right?”
Oliver kissed the back of my neck. “He’s fast asleep.”
“Oh,” I said.
“As should you be.”
And then, before I really knew what was happening, I was.