Chapter Sixty-Three
One year later
I hand Ollie a glass of champagne as we host our first party in the garden of our new home. The weather is still bright and warm. It’s the end of summer and represents just the beginning for us. We’ve been together for a year and every day feels like making up for lost time.
‘Not so fast,’ Ollie says as I start to move away to chat to our guests.
He pulls me back towards him, placing his champagne on the edge of the barbecue, where he’s trying not to burn an array of food.
He steals a kiss from me while I slide my arms around his waist and settle in for a moment against him.
He leans over, barbecue tongs in hand, and turns the burgers while I stay in situ, holding him.
Earlier this summer I sold my London flat and bought a three-bed semi-detached cottage in a little village not too far from Ollie’s dad.
Ollie decided not long after we got together that he loved his brief stint of working in a GP’s surgery, hankering after it so much that we’ve had a complete relocation, thanks to his new job.
He’s so much happier now, less tired, loves getting to know his patients.
He loved where he grew up and, when choosing the cottage, we found ourselves discussing where the good playgroups and schools were.
His excitement is palpable that one day we might have a family together, here.
The day we moved in, Ollie proposed, producing a ring he’d bought weeks earlier and was nervously keeping hidden for the right moment.
‘You know me,’ he’d said. ‘I don’t like to rush anything.’
I knew years ago that he was the one. I know it more with every passing day and our lives have fallen into an easy rhythm – me instructing Pilates classes in local gyms and studios, making new friends with clients and instructors and coming home at the end of the day in time to be with the man I love, just at the moment he walks through the door from work.
Liv wanders over. ‘Have you got any more of those vegetable kebabs for Sam?’
‘No, but I can make up some more,’ I say, unhooking my arms from Ollie’s waist. ‘Is Sam really still vegetarian?’
‘I give it another week,’ Liv replies knowingly. ‘When he went vegan before Thanksgiving he lasted forty-eight hours.’
‘Do Toby and Ben still want these burgers?’ Ollie asks, looking across to the garden furniture where their new Staffordshire bull-terrier puppy is chewing the side of a rattan chair leg. ‘Erm,’ he nudges me, ‘can you …?’
‘Yep, I’m on it,’ I say, grabbing a sausage from the ‘ready’ pile and putting it on a plate. I get on my hands and knees and give the little dog a stroke. She turns her attention from the rattan and eyes the sausage.
‘Oh, she’s very fussy,’ Toby says.
‘She loves rattan, though,’ I point out.
‘Oh, shit – sorry,’ Ben says, looking down at the chair. ‘Give her the sausage. Sorry,’ he says, attempting to tuck the stray bits of rattan back into the weave.
‘Don’t worry about it. Ollie’s dad gave it to us because they’ve bought a new set.’
‘How are your parents?’ Toby asks.
‘Don’t say it like that,’ Ollie calls over, not for the first time. He points the tongs at Toby in warning and tries to hide a grimace.
I emphasise the words, ‘My mum and Ollie’s dad are currently in Paris.’
‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ Toby replies, paying no attention. ‘Quicker just to say “your parents”, though, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ I say forcefully. ‘It isn’t quicker to call them that at all.’
Toby grins devilishly. ‘I think I’ll go and grab those burgers, if they’re ready. And wind Ollie up a bit more about your parents and their holiday in Venice.’
‘They’re in Paris.’
‘I don’t care, darling.’ Toby laughs fiendishly and goes off to amuse himself.
‘Sorry about him,’ Ben says. ‘It is weird, though.’
‘I know,’ I sigh. ‘I know.’
‘Do you think Daniel’s going to propose?’ Ben asks. ‘Is that why they’re in Paris.’
‘We’re trying not to think about it,’ I confess, which makes Ben smile. Although we do want Mum and Ollie’s dad to be happy, and they both currently are. But the next step is probably a proposal, which means …’
‘Then in addition to being together, you and Ollie will be stepbrother and stepsister,’ Toby calls back. ‘Won’t that be nice?’
‘Is that even legal?’ Sam asks Liv quietly.
‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘It is. It’s just … a bit strange.’
‘I’m not a violent person,’ Ollie says to Toby, ‘but I might hit you.’
Toby cackles with delight. ‘Oh, this is too good. I do hope Daniel proposes. I hope it’s today, while we’re here. Please let it be today.’
‘I might hit you too,’ I tell him with a warning look.
‘No more wine for Toby, I think,’ Ben says, discreetly moving the bottle out of sight.
I give him a loving look. Determinedly still sober, he’s such a different Ben from the man I first met, the man I fell in love with and then out of love with, the man who helped me discover who I was.
While Ollie helped me discover what I wanted from my life, what I deserved.
My world has changed since then in so many different ways.
The highs turned to lows; the lows turned to highs.
More than ten years ago an eighteen-year-old Ollie crashed into me on the stairs of our halls of residence. Shy, quiet, tongue-tied, unable to speak too much to me – or anyone; mishearing my name and calling me his version of it for ever.
And then, a decade later, my first proper boyfriend is one of my greatest friends.
And Ollie became my fiancé. I think back to that very first day and the years that followed and wonder how it took me so long to see what Ollie felt that day: that we should have been together.
It was him all along. It just took us a while to get here.
And because it did, we have family who are friends, and friends who are family.
And we wouldn’t have it any other way.