Miles had circled around and was standing very close to me now. And he’d put a hand on the small of my back in a way that was one part friendly, one part possessive. “Crazy times, right, Luc? And we’ve got so much catching up to do. Do you want to join us for a drink?”
Even if I hadn’t needed to get back to Bridge’s party, that would have ranked pretty low on my things-I-want-to-do list, somewhere between getting my eyebrows burned off with a chef’s blowtorch and spending a weekend in a bath full of dead squid. “I’d love to,” I said, “but I’m actually really busy right now. Bridge is getting married and she’s made me her maid of honour and my boyfriend is going to show up any minute—” The moment I mentioned Oliver, I realised how pathetic I sounded. I might as well have come straight out and added, But you wouldn’t know him because he goes to a different school.
“Oh, you’re still friends with Bridge?” said Miles. “Cool. I know you two always had that—y’know—that nineties gay-best-friend thing going on.”
Was he serious? Was he fucking serious? “I’m not sure I’d put it quite…”
“And on the subject of weddings”—JoJo was beaming like a cartoon sun—“can I tell him?”
Miles kissed his boyfriend on the top of his tiny head. “I think you’re going to have to now.”
“We’re getting married!”
I looked down at JoJo’s outstretched hand, and sure enough, there was a sparkling band of diamonds, chosen with way more taste than I would ever have had and, honestly, way more taste than I would have expected Miles to have. Maybe he’d bought it with the money he got for selling me out. “Oh,” I said, and then, realising that he was probably expecting a slightly bigger reaction, I added, “Congratulations.”
For a second nobody said anything, but the awkwardness of the moment very much spoke for itself. Because how was I supposed to react to this? Here was Miles, smiling that shoe-salesman smile at me, flaunting his adorable fiancé like he was one of those puppies you keep in a designer handbag and acting like he hadn’t completely fucking betrayed me.
“Anyway,” I continued, “I should. I might. Yeah.”
I was just disentangling myself when the music changed, and “Tartarus” came on.
“Tartarus.” The breakout single from Jon Fleming’s multiplatinum album Pendulum of the World. As part of the hype for the second season of The Whole Package, my dad had given this series of powerful, heartfelt interviews about how his struggle with cancer had made him confront his own mortality and realise what really mattered in life. Somehow the fact that he’d never had cancer in the first place —that nobody had even told him he had cancer or given him any reason to suspect he might have cancer—had got lost in the noise, and he’d become this poster child for survivors everywhere. He was even doing a public awareness campaign for the NHS.
Anyway. Pendulum of the World was his album about how fucking wise and brilliant he was now he was a selfish old prick instead of a selfish young prick, and “Tartarus” was this navel-gazing dirge about staring into the abyss and coming back stronger that had won the bastard a Grammy and could entirely fuck off. Especially because the last thing I needed just when I’d had an unexpected run-in with the narcissistic ex who’d sold me out for short-term gain was to be reminded of my narcissistic dad who’d sold me out for short-term gain.
In an effort to distract myself, I looked down at my phone. My text to Oliver had somehow autocorrected from It’s okay, see you soon to Its okay see your document, which had prompted a series of replies reading:
What document?
Was that text meant for me or somebody else?
Lucien, is something wrong?
I’ll be there as soon as I can. If something is wrong, tell me.
I’m sorry I took so long.
And I should probably have replied, but I couldn’t quite face it.
Fate or the universe or whatever had decided to rub my clearly happy and successful piece-of-shit ex and my clearly happy and successful piece-of-shit dad in my face within thirty seconds of each other. And while I was also technically clearly happy and successful, it felt a whole lot less clear with my amazing barrister boyfriend sitting in traffic while I was being introduced to fabulous, perfect look-how-engaged-and-beautiful-I-am JoJo
and
his
Technicolor
waistcoats and his sparkly ring.
Especially since, as I suddenly remembered, I was still wearing a crocheted vulva on my head.