He was still laughing as he kissed me again, and for a while, we made out like Love Island contestants, only without the cameras and the sarcastic Scottish voice-over. The water buoyed us up in this slightly magical way and I was light as champagne bubbles, drifting with Oliver through the foam.
Lying back against the wall of the bath, I let him float in my arms for a while. “I can’t believe this is going to be us in a few months,” I told him.
“Isn’t it us right now?” he asked.
“No, I mean—getting married. Not in a cathedral, of course, and not putting all our guests up in a palace the night before but…yeah.”
He was quiet. Too quiet. “It does seem rather unreal, doesn’t it?”
Even this late at night, even naked and covered in soap, I could tell when he was tense. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, it’s just”—for a while he stopped there, leaving me to speculate about all the various justs it could be—“I think in an ideal world, my parents wouldn’t be making such a fuss.”
I shrugged. “Fuck ’em.”
“That’s all very well for you to say.” He half swivelled to look at me. “And I know you’re right on some level, but it doesn’t really make things any easier.”
Yeah, that was the problem. And chances are it would always be the problem. “It’ll be okay,” I tried. “We’re having lunch with them next week, and I promise I’ll do my best to get back in their good graces.”
“Thank you, but…their good graces are not that easy to access.”
And that was the problem too. Actually, it was the same problem.
“I know. But I’ll try. Although if it doesn’t work, I do reserve the right to go back to the fuck ’em strategy.”
“That seems a reasonable compromise.”
He relaxed back against me, and for a while it seemed like we could stay forever in that warm, magical space where all our troubles seemed as insubstantial as foam. Eventually, though, the water cooled and my toes got unattractively wrinkly. And so we climbed up the now-even-slipperier marble steps in search of towels. In some ways, I was sorry to see Oliver shed his still-on, still-transparent, still-clingy shirt but his body underneath, for all his insecurities, more than made up for it. I stroked lightly over his chest, making him shiver, before wrapping him up. Normally, Oliver was a vigorous and efficient dryer, rubbing himself down like he was sanding a bench, but tonight—or I suppose technically this morning—the time, or the bath, or the kissing had clearly got to him because he seemed happy to snuggle dry as per my preferred practice.
Entoweled, we headed back to the bedroom, where what sounded worryingly like the dawn chorus was beginning to filter through the windows.
“What time is it?” asked Oliver, blinking.
I scooped my phone from the table and had a look. “You don’t want to know.”
“Is it try-to-sleep o’clock or pull-an-all-nighter o’clock?”
“It’s quarter to could-go-either-way.”
“Ah.” He pushed his damp hair back from his forehead. “I’ll admit the all-nighter has never been my go-to strategy.”
I wouldn’t say it had been a strategy for me so much as how things tended to work out. “The trick is to push through the one hour when you really, really want to go to bed.”
“Just out of curiosity”—a wave of fatigue washed over Oliver’s face—“is that hour now?”
It wasn’t right now for me, but I suspected it could come on any minute. “Kind of. We need to find a way to distract each other.”
He laughed. “I could run another bath.”
“But think of your water footprint.”
“Is your way to distract yourself teasing me?”
“It’s working.” I grinned.
The other issue with the hour of all-nighter criticality was that it always passed incredibly slowly. I glanced around the room, looking for anything to occupy us. And it couldn’t be the bed because that was a one-way ticket to sleeping through Alex’s wedding.
Unfortunately, while our surroundings were sumptuous in many ways, they were surprisingly short on entertainment. I suppose when you could ring a bell and get a servant to bring you a live peacock and a hand job whenever you felt like it, there wasn’t much need to also keep a Snakes and Ladders set handy.
Finally, my gaze settled on the fireplace, which was still crackling merrily and casting orange shadows over what I suspected was a very expensive Persian rug.