Part of me wanted to tell him no. That he had no right to ask this of me. But he kind of did. I shrugged. “I guess you’ve got ten minutes.”
He looked briefly flustered, like he’d just taken over the case and the court had denied him recess. “About marriage and the…the Moomin jigsaw.”
“Clock’s ticking, Oliver.”
“I know I don’t like rainbows,” he said in an incredible rush, “but that doesn’t mean I feel represented by the trappings of heterosexuality either. And I know that, technically speaking, marriage is not an inherently straight institution. The thing is, it feels that way to me. It always has. And I’m not sure how to make it…not.
And I don’t think I want to.”
This would have been a lot to take in, even if we weren’t on an eight-minute countdown. “You loved Alex and Miffy’s wedding. You were in your element.”
“Yes, because I wasn’t supposed to feel part of it. I was supposed to watch it happen to other people. I enjoy going to the theatre. It doesn’t mean I feel an intense desire to be an actor.”
I glanced at the door. Then back at Oliver. “Is this going somewhere? Or do you want my last memory of my relationship to be a lecture on the social thingy paradigm of marriage.”
“That’s what I’m trying to say.” Oliver’s grip on my wrist tightened so abruptly he nearly pulled me into his lap. “I don’t want this to be your last memory of our relationship. I still want to be with you. I want to be with you desperately. I want to be with you more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I just don’t want it to be within a framework of…
of…the social thingy paradigm of marriage.”
This was so typical of Oliver. Not only did he want to dump me at the altar and still go out with me, he wanted me to reassess my entire worldview at the same time. “But…but we were about to get married. We can’t go from being married back to dating. That’s…
that’s not how it works.”
“Which is why,” declared Oliver, “marriage will always feel straight to me. Because it presumes that a relationship is only valid if it follows a pattern that for most of our lives we were totally excluded from.”
Did we have time for this? Was five minutes and counting before we were meant to be getting married the ideal window to debate the role of same-sex marriage within the wider context of queer self-expression? “Okay. Except now we can be included. So shouldn’t we be, y’know, trying to be?”
Oliver shrugged. “For some people, absolutely. But for me, it feels like a framework I didn’t create and can’t control that I’m expected to impose on my own life.”
“And that’s why we can’t get married?” I asked. Because, oddly enough, I didn’t find this very comforting. “You love me and you want to be with me. You just don’t want to do it in the way nearly all our friends have done?”
He stood, drawing me close with the lightest tug on my wrist. I don’t know why I went—given I still strongly suspected I was angry at him—but I did. “Is that so unthinkable?”
“I–I don’t know.” I was tired enough and emotional enough that my brain was beginning to turn into an eel sandwich. “And I only have three minutes to work it out.”
I’d been staring at the numbers on my phone, but then Oliver gently turned my face to his. “Lucien,” he said softly. “You know you are the truest thing I have ever dared choose for myself. And we are the only thing I’ve ever had that I haven’t let other people define for me.”
And, suddenly, for the longest-shortest second of my life I didn’t feel tired anymore. Or confused or scared. Because Oliver loved me.
Oliver really loved me. And in this way that was just ours.
“And”—my voice was a little shaky—“that’s why you’re leaving me at the altar? Because you want to be with me so much?”
“It’s unconventional, I confess.” His eyes glimmered with something that might have been laughter or might have been a few stray tears. “But then you’ve never been a conventional person. And I’m…perhaps not as conventional as I thought I was.”
“You’re a mess,” I told him.
“Oh, a complete one. But I’m your mess, Lucien. And always will be. If…” He hesitated, his stern mouth softening in that way that felt very particularly mine. “If you still want me.”