Chapter 28 #2
His smile had taken on a slightly strained edge. “All the same, this is our one evening to ourselves and I’m…I’m not being a very good companion.”
“Oliver”—I squeezed his fingers tightly—“you’re companioning fine. And Jaz will come round.”
“What if she doesn’t?” he asked. “She could be with us until she’s eighteen. That’s a long time to live with someone who resents you.”
“She doesn’t resent you.” I paused. “Okay, she probably does.”
“Reassuring. Thank you, Lucien.”
“No, I mean, like, only the really general sense that she probably resents everything because she’s fourteen and she’s been treated like shit.”
“And I’m trying to help her.”
“Yeah. And you can and you will. It’s just…” I tried to think of the most Oliver-friendly way to put it. “It’s just going to be a bit of a learning process.”
Oliver was gazing at me with some messy mix of hope and not-quite-getting-it. “You think she’ll eventually learn that I’m not her enemy?”
That wasn’t a million percent what I’d been going for.
But I didn’t think it was going to be helpful for either Oliver or Jaz—or, for that matter, our date night—if I tried to make Oliver think about things the same way I did.
Especially because the way I thought about things was usually crap and frequently wrong.
“I think,” I said slowly, “if we can find a way to show her…” I trailed away, out of ideas and out of options.
“That I”—Oliver had an eyebrow in its most sardonic position—“like the corgi, am misunderstood.”
“No, well. Not exactly. Well. She just needs to see…like…the good person that you are. That I, and everybody else who’s ever met you, know you are.”
“When you first met me, you thought I was a dick.”
“And now I’m completely in love with you,” I cried, triumphantly. “So you see, it works.”
He laughed again, one of his softer laughs, his I’m only now admitting how vulnerable I’ve been laugh. “Thank you, Lucien. You always know exactly the right thing to say.”
“No, I don’t. I say the wrong thing all the time.”
“And yet somehow it works for you. For me. For us.”
The waiter the dog had snapped at appeared briefly by our table, setting down my burger and Oliver’s chilli. He glanced up at her and gave a reflexive yet utterly sincere “Thank you, that looks lovely” before turning back to me.
Glad of the interruption, I looked down at my burger. “Okay, there’s a slim chance we need to get out more because this very ordinary pub burger is looking a-fucking-mazing right now.”
“I am glad to be doing something together,” Oliver agreed. “Although I suppose from a certain perspective, the fact that your burger is looking a-fucking-mazing suggests we should carry on exactly as we are. Clearly it means we appreciate things more.”
“But I hate appreciating things,” I play-complained. “Is this what being a grown-up is like? You never get any quality time with your partner and all your friends are constantly busy so suddenly a meal in a dog-friendly pub in Romford is the highlight of your month?”
Oliver gave me a strangely contented smile. “It seems so. Which is”—he paused for just a moment—“scary if you let it be, but from another perspective, perhaps rather wonderful?”
Fuck, I hoped he was right. “Fuck, I hope you’re right.”
And Oliver laughed again. Louder this time, loudly enough that it set off the misunderstood corgi. “Frankly, so do I.”
“Hang on,” I protested, “I just did the everything will be okay routine for you. It’s your turn to do it for me.”
“I’m afraid, my dear Lucien, that we are in uncharted territory for the both of us. But everything is going to be okay. It’s like you said about Jasmine—”
“Oh my God. You’re supposed to be helping, not using my words against me.”
“I’m using your words for you.”
“That’s even worse.”
“All I’m saying”—he set his fork down beside his bowl of chilli, took my hand up again, and kissed my fingers gently in that maybe-cheesy-but-not-cheesy-to-me way he had—“is that it, and by it, I mean everything—being alive, being a grown-up, life in general—is a learning experience.”
I tried to scowl through my schmoop. “This is the bit where I’m supposed to relish an opportunity for growth, isn’t it?”
“How about, for now, you work on relishing your cheeseburger?”
“But what do I do after I’ve relished the cheeseburger?”
“That’s a post-cheeseburger problem.”
I took a bite. “Okay, yeah. The live-in-the-cheeseburger-moment plan is really working for me.”
“You see?” Oliver was smiling his most reassuring smile. “Being a grown-up isn’t so bad.”
“Mrrfgh,” I contributed.
“Mruff,” Spud contributed.
“We’ll make more time for each other moving forward. And once things settle down, we’ll see our friends more often as well.”
“Will we, though?” I asked, looking up reluctantly from my burger. “Right now we can’t even organise a dinner party.”
Oliver gave an almost missable flinch. “It’s true things have been a little difficult. But that’s only because we have Jasmine, and Bridge has Autumn, and everybody has new responsibilities that we need to work around. Once we’re all together, it’ll be just like old times.”
“You really think?” I asked.
“I really think.”
And I believed him. Mainly because I really, really wanted to believe him.
But what I think I missed, looking back, was that he really, really wanted to believe him too.