He normally didn’t descend to my level, but tonight, he smirked. “I’ve had no complaints.” Then he grew quiet. “About the…the”—he cleared his throat—“wedding. I spoke to my parents today.”

Oh dear. For some reason, Oliver’s parents had never liked me. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the way I dressed or the fact that my own parents were rock stars or if it possibly had something to do with that one time I told them to go fuck themselves at their ruby anniversary. I’d met them a couple of times since and I’d been marginally better behaved, but the cloud of go-fuck-yourself had trailed behind me like a fart on the way out of a lift. For the first year they’d clearly been biding their time on the assumption that Oliver would come to his senses and dump me—much, to be fair, as I had. But when it had become clear I wasn’t going away anytime soon, they’d come to accept me the way one might accept a piece of spinach between a dinner guest’s teeth. They knew I was there but, for the sake of their continued happiness, pretended I wasn’t.

“And,” I asked nervously, “how did that go?”

“They said they’d support me in whatever decision I made.”

I winced. “Bad as that, huh?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I mean…” I didn’t even know what I was trying to say. I wanted to be supportive of Oliver, but I didn’t really want to spend the next however-many months tiptoeing around David and Miriam while they by—infuriatingly—either their presence or their absence made me marrying Oliver all about them. “We can… I mean… Do they…”

To my relief, Oliver cut me off. “Let’s just not think about it for now.”

Except I wasn’t sure that made it better. Especially because Oliver was terrible at just not thinking about things. And my ability to just not think about things scaled proportionately with how important that thing was to think about. Meaning, I was great at ignoring bills and hopelessly unable to ignore mean things people said on the internet. “You know I am always onside with hiding from problems in the hope they’ll go away—”

“That’s not what I’m doing, Lucien,” said Oliver sharply.