Oliver sat back on his heels. “Even before we met, I never ran my dishwasher at half load.”
“I did that one time. And I said I was sorry.” I couldn’t tell if this was going really off track or really on track. “But it does sort of make my point. If I had a dishwasher in my flat, I’d run it at half load all the time. I’d have to—I’ve only got two plates.”
“You could always buy more plates?” Oliver suggested.
“True. Or I could just stay here and use yours.”
Swapping the designated scrubber for a carefully rationed piece of paper towel, Oliver returned to the cupboard. “I suppose that is the best strategy from a strict carbon-footprint perspective.” The scrubbing continued. “And, well, since as you observe you’ve rather stumbled into living here anyway, if you wanted to… Well, there’s a certain logic in making it an official arrangement.”
The part of me that was terrified of commitment, betrayal, and finding myself ten years down the line telling Oliver to fuck off at his wedding gave a little yelp. The part of me that was terrified of blowing a good thing gave a different yelp. I let them yelp at each other for a bit and tried to distract myself by turning my attention to Oliver’s arse.
“That is,” Oliver went on, “if you’re not… If it isn’t too… And, of course, you wouldn’t have to give up your flat if you didn’t want to.
It’s just, I don’t think you like your flat very much.”
“Since I originally got it with Miles, no, I really don’t.” My brain was still in crisis mode, which meant all it could think of were endless variations of worst-case scenarios. “But that could happen to you as well. What if something goes wrong with us and then you start to hate this house, which you love and clean all the time, because you used to share it with this guy who cheated on you.”
Emerging abruptly from the cupboard, Oliver stared at me wide-eyed. “Lucien, are you trying to tell me you’re cheating on me?”
“What?” I cried. “No. It’s the kind of thing I would do. I mean, it’s not the kind of thing I would do. It’s the kind of thing the kind of person I am would do if they were going to fuck up their relationship with the kind of person you are.”
Oliver took a deep breath. “You are not that kind of person. You just worry you might be every time somebody likes you.”
That was at once reassuring and embarrassing. “Stop knowing me,” I whined.
“It’s a little late for that. I have, as you’ve observed, actually been living with you for at least a year and a half.” He paused. “And as for the house, if it came to it, I’d get a new one. And I’d have more money for the deposit because you’d have been paying half the mortgage.”
I stared at him helplessly. “Oh God, you really mean it, don’t you? You want me to, like, move in and shit and keep stuff here and —”
“You already keep quite a lot of stuff here.”
“No,” I said decisively, “I’ve left stuff here. It’s a different vibe.”
“You’ve left stuff here, in increasing quantities, for nearly two years.”
“That’s not emotionally significant. I left a pair of formal shoes at Priya’s after my graduation, and she’s still got them.”
Oliver’s mouth was doing that thing where he tried to pretend he wasn’t smiling. “I find that very easy to believe. But I don’t think you have an entire drawer of variously salacious underwear at any of your friends’ houses.”
He was right. I didn’t. This was unintentional, but it was real. It was very real and it had always been very real. You couldn’t get realer than a drawer of pants. “And you…trust me to…” I made a gesture that, frankly, could have encompassed anything.
“Of course I trust you, Lucien. For a start, as I’ve said many times, you’ve already been…” He imitated my gesture.
I made a noise. Because all my internal yelping had decided to come out of my brain through my throat.
Drawing off his marigolds with deliberate care, like he was satisfying a really specific but highly mundane fetish, Oliver took my hands in his. “I know this seems frightening and it seems like a lot.
But it is not a lot. It is exactly what we’re already doing.”
I made another noise.
“It’s no different,” he went on in his gentlest voice, “than when we were first dating. Nothing actually changed. We just agreed to start calling it something different.”