"WE STILL DON’T HAVE TO do this,” said Oliver as we got off the Tube in Shoreditch, on our way to do this.
This being attending the wedding of the man who’d ruined my life. Well, ruined a bit of my life. A bit of my life that had seemed quite important at the time.
I took his hand decisively and definitely not desperately. “We do.
I mean, I do. I mean, it’s a closure thing. Look, I think I need to, okay?”
And Oliver, being Oliver, just said, “Of course.”
The problem was, I wasn’t actually sure why I needed to. I was calling it closure because that seemed a healthy and usefully vague label I could point other people at. And maybe it was closure. Maybe after tonight the little box in my head that had Miles written on it would finally be closed, and I’d never have to think about him—or what we’d been to each other or what he’d done to me—ever again.
Besides, if it wasn’t closure…what did that mean? What was I trying to prove? Or, if I wasn’t trying to prove anything, what was I looking for? Or, if I wasn’t looking for anything, what the fuck was I doing here?
Fuck.
It turned out that Miles, true to form, had chosen to get married in an abandoned railway tunnel lined with artisanal graffiti. It would have been a cool and daring choice except this particular abandoned railway tunnel lined with artisanal graffiti was a fully licenced venue, with its own bar. Right now, the exposed brickwork was splashed with rainbow-coloured lights because it was going to be one of those gay weddings.
“We still don’t have to do this,” said Oliver. And this time I was pretty sure it wasn’t for my benefit.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “At least twelve people I know have already seen me. And while I think no-showing at your ex’s wedding is fine, about-facing it isn’t.”
Mercifully, Miles and JoJo were far too trendy to do assigned seating—much as I’d enjoyed having a confused usher come up to me at the James Royce-Royces’ wedding and ask me “groom or groom”—which meant Oliver and I got to skulk at the back like we hadn’t done our homework. I kept hold of Oliver’s hand, partially because it was nice and partially just to apologise.
He leaned in slightly. “I bet you fifty pounds they have a drag queen officiating.”
Okay, this was going to be way more fun if I’d accidentally brought mean Oliver with me. “I am absolutely not taking that bet,” I whispered back.
Then I paused. I’d put off it for as long as I could, but I had eventually cracked and web stalked the guy my ex was marrying.
And that led me down a hell of a rabbit hole because he was a fucking YouTuber, with a subscriber count in the millions. He had several channels dedicated to various areas of his life, including a new one just for wedding prep, but his main source of “influence”
revolved around videos of him looking fabulous and claiming you could look similarly fabulous if you followed his tips and bought the products his sponsors paid him to recommend. Point was, there was no way he was going to be upstaged by anyone on his big day.
“Actually,” I said, “you’re on.”
And my instincts proved dead right, although to be fair, Oliver’s did too. Kind of. To a sudden round of applause, the minister entered and took his place on a stage that had been meticulously designed to look hastily improvised. Of course, I say minister. What I meant was “tiny drag king in full leather daddy getup wearing a T-shirt that, from the back of the room, I could just about make out read Gender Is Over.”
“Shit,” I whispered to Oliver, “that’s Roger More.”
“He’s looking good for a dead man in his nineties.”
I gave him a look. “Not Roger Moore, as in the fourth best Bond actor— Roger More. As in sexually penetrate with greater frequency.
He used to be one of our best mates back in the day.”
Oliver looked like he was about to ask a follow-up question when Roger began his typically bombastic introduction.
“Dearly beloved,” he began, “in case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t going to be a traditional service. We aren’t in a church and I’m certainly not a priest, but ladies, if you want to see God, call me after the ceremony.” He rode the laughter a bit before he continued. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the love of two totally fucking amazing people—”
And I sort of checked out after that because I was having feels.
Complicated feels. Because for all I could snark about the indie venue and the rainbow lights and the drag minister, this had been my world for years until one of the fucking amazing people we were here to celebrate had blown it up.