“That’s not the reassurance you think it is.”
Shit, this was turning into Drag Race all over again. “Can’t you let it be?” I tried. It was the wrong thing to try.
“Lucien.” He was using my name a lot, which was never a good sign. “I absolutely don’t want to denigrate anybody’s values. But places like this are… Well, I’m sure for people who like to express themselves in this kind of way that they’re very empowering. But for me…” Now he ran a hand through his hair. Also not the best of signs. “It’s like this whole event is telling me I’m doing my identity wrong if I’m not draping myself in rainbows at every opportunity.
Ironically, it makes me feel judged.”
It was nothing he hadn’t said before. It was just extra weird for him to be saying it at my ex-boyfriend’s wedding while we were surrounded by my ex-friends. Because there was a part of me that still belonged here and hated that he didn’t. “I think that’s just in your head.”
He gave a cool blink. “I’m aware. But I’m also aware that I’ve told you on more than one occasion that I don’t feel especially represented by this kind of thing, and you’ve consistently failed to believe me. So I sometimes think it might not be quite as much in my head as all that.”
Fuck, were we having a fight? Was this a fight? Had I tried to show off my amazing barrister boyfriend to my arsehole ex and wound up having an embarrassing fight in the middle of said ex’s fabulous queer wedding? “Oh my God, Oliver,” I hugged him in the hope of de-escalating. “I didn’t mean to make you feel… Shit, I’m a crappy boyfriend and you’re so great for doing this for me and you don’t have to like anything you don’t want to like and we can go if you—”
“Luc? Luc O’Donnell?” I turned to see a man with an obscenely expensive suit and no sense of timing making his way around the edge of the dance floor towards us.
It took me a moment to recognise him. “Jonathan?”
We didn’t hug. Even at university Jonathan had never been the hugging type. Honestly, we hadn’t massively got on. On account of him being driven by a passionate desire for success and me being driven by a passionate desire for naps. He was one of those people who had sort of aged laterally, in that he looked almost exactly the same as when he was twenty. He’d somehow picked up a single grey streak in his hair, which gave him a bit of a werewolf vibe—only not in a sexy way—but otherwise he was the same lanky, grumpy git I vaguely remembered.
He stared at me for a long moment. “I have to say, you are the last person I expected to see here.”
“Same. You don’t even like Miles.”
“Since when is I don’t like you an excuse to get out of a wedding?” His mouth, which was a sneery kind of mouth, got sneerier. “I mean, you felt obliged to show up and Miles literally sold you out to the Daily Express. What chance did I have?”
The thing about Jonathan was that he’d occupied a strange position in our friendship group. Someone told me once that the reason Christmas cracker jokes are so bad is that they’re designed to be shared with the whole family and it’s way easier to get everyone to agree that a joke is awful than to get them to agree it’s funny. Jonathan was a human Christmas-cracker joke. We all hated him, and we were pretty sure he hated us, but somehow that brought us together. Unfortunately, without that context he was just a mildly unpleasant man. Then again, so was I.
“Anyway”—I gave a sickly smile—“this is Oliver Blackwood, my boyfriend. Oliver, this is Jonathan…” Aaaand I couldn’t remember his surname. “This is Jonathan, who I knew at university, but we didn’t like each other.”
“Good to know you’re still a cock, Luc,” said Jonathan.
Strangely more in his element now I was asking him to be polite to an arsehole in a suit, Oliver offered his hand. “Lovely to meet you.
If it helps, Luc didn’t like me either.”
“I like you now,” I protested.
Oliver laughed. “I should bloody well hope so. It’s been two years.”
“So…” Jonathan had always had the eyebrows of an angry cartoon character, and now they knitted together ominously. “What didn’t he like about you?”
“He thought I was boring.”
“Me too,” said Jonathan.
“Oliver, I didn’t,” I lied. “I just thought you were…you know, overachieving and a bit serious.” And too good for me, but I was fucked if I was admitting that in front of Jonathan.