I spat out half the bath. “Fine. Lungs are overrated.”

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.