He sighed. “You’re right. I apologise. I’m…” He sighed again. Fuck. It was a double-sigher. This was going to be bad. “We’re at a wedding, we’re engaged to be married ourselves, and you’ve told me you think I have internalised homophobia.”

Well, that was worth the double sigh. “I’m not sure I did.”

“You did.”

“Okay but”—I tried to smile but it came out as a grimace—“I once told you that you had an eating disorder, and you found that very romantic.”

He didn’t smile back. “They’re not the same and you know it.”

I nodded, reaching a new peak of feel-awful-ness. “I do know. And, again, I’m sorry.”

We were silent a while, Oliver continuing to idly search for the intended path through the maze, while I kept pace with him on the straightforward one.

“I think,” he said finally, “what I find most difficult is that I can’t tell if you’re right or not. Or what it would mean if you were. Or, indeed, if you weren’t.”

I offered another grimace. “I’m glad you’ve got that therapist.”

Still, he didn’t smile back.

“Um,” I asked, concluding—as I should have concluded a while ago—that I couldn’t joke my way out of this one. “What does this mean? For, like, us?”

Oliver stopped and met my eyes. His had gone all dark grey and sad. Go me. I was the worst. “I’m not completely sure. But I don’t think it means anything for us. I think it just means something for me.”

“Okay.” I felt bad for being relieved this was an Oliver thing, not an us thing or me thing. But I was relieved. “So…what does it mean for you?”

He sighed for a third time. “That you’re right: it’s fortunate I’ve got a therapist.”

“And…and…the wedding?” Oh my God, Oliver was having some kind of serious emotional something. And I was all, but my special day. I was turning into a groomzilla.

“If anything,” Oliver murmured, “it should make things easier. You have your preferences, and I’m…I’m interrogating my own.”

“What?” I nearly tripped over an ornamental hedgehog. “No. This is…this is not what I meant to happen. I just wanted… Like, I don’t know. Maybe a rainbow balloon arch. Not to make you have a complete crisis of identity.”

And at last he smiled. “If it helps, I think the identity crisis was long overdue. Although I will say that a rainbow balloon arch still sounds dreadful.”

“Mr. & Mr. table confetti?”

“Twee.”

“Rose-gold penis straws?”

Oliver laughed. “Tasteless, phallocentric, cisnormative, and the kind of thing you’d have at a bachelor party, not a wedding.”

“A customised portrait where it’s two angels embracing but the angels have our faces.”

That earned me a worried look. “Suspiciously specific.”