“Thought you were burglars.”
“I suppose”—Oliver ran a hand distractedly through his hair —“this is the wrong time to talk about lethal force in defence of property.”
She shrugged. “Up to you. I was sort of thinking you’d want Bridge and me to leave.”
“You’re welcome to stay,” he said at once. I might have been projecting, but I thought exposure to his parents—well, parent now— always set him about three steps backwards on the can’t-say-no scale.
“That’s code for ‘please leave,’ isn’t it?” observed Priya, passing me the carving knife.
“Not at all,” Oliver lied.
“Well, I’m getting tired anyway,” declared Bridge slightly too loudly to sound even remotely sincere. “So I should be going home.
Good night, Luc.” She hugged me, just about managing to let me put the knife down first. “Good night, Oliver.” She hugged him, rather tighter and longer. “I was so sorry to hear about your father.”
He hugged her back in a way I was trying not to read as dead inside. “Thank you, Bridget.”
“If you need anything”—she gazed up at him earnestly—“or if Luc needs anything or you want to talk or not talk…”
“Thank you, Bridget,” he said again.
“You have to reach out to people,” she went on. “You can’t lock everything up inside forever, or you’ll end up like Luc.”
I’d been in the process of returning the knife to the kitchen, but now I swung back. “Oi. I’m doing great these days and it only took me, like, five years.”
“I’m not talking to you, Luc. I’m talking to Oliver.” Bridge gave him one last squeeze. “We’re here for you.”
Priya swung her kit bag over her shoulder. “She’s here for you. I don’t know you that well so I think it would be weird.”
“I appreciate it,” said Oliver, still incapacitated with politeness.
Eventually, Priya dragged Bridge out the door, leaving me alone with the distant, emotionally distraught boyfriend I wasn’t totally sure wanted to see me. And having spent a week wishing Oliver was here so I could do something, I found myself wishing I knew what that something actually was.
We stared at each other like every easy habit we’d built up over the last few years suddenly didn’t count.
“Sorry”—Oliver cast a weary glance around my flat—“I think I interrupted…something.”
I couldn’t work out if telling him I’d had an I Was Sad Without You party would be reassuring or guilt-trippy. “We were just hanging out. I mean…” I gazed at him helplessly. “Like, how are you?”
He was silent for a couple of months. “I’m tired. And I…and I…”
“Do you hate me?” I blurted out. “Did I ruin your relationship with your father? Did we leave everything in a bad place? Are we broken now? And I’m making it all about me?”
“Honestly, you are making it a little all about you.” I thought he was trying to smile, but I might have just been wanting him to really, really hard.
“Fuck. Shit. Sorry. Do I at least get self-awareness points for realising that?”
“That’s making it slightly more all about you.”
I cringed. “Sorry. I suck.”
For the first time in what felt like forever, he almost laughed. “You don’t suck, Lucien. I realise I’ve probably been…worrying recently.
And I shouldn’t have done that to you.”
Oh God, his dad was dead and he was being reassuring. I did not deserve this man in any way. “No, no. You’ve got to…let yourself…take your time and feel your feels or whatever. And this must be so fucked up.”
“Yes.” There was something in his voice—something more there than when he’d come in. “I suspect I’m still working out quite how fucked up it is.”
That had only half been what I meant. “And, well, having a massive fight before you went couldn’t have helped.”
“It wasn’t ideal.” He’d stopped smiling, but it didn’t seem like he was going to dump me on the spot, which was the closest thing to a win I felt I could reasonably expect.
“I hope,” I tried, “it wasn’t in your head too much. Like, I know we got kind of heated and it might have felt like I don’t…like I’m not…like I’m not on your side. But I am. And I’m totally here for you and stuff, even if we’re fighting. You do…you do know that, right?”