“You make it sound,” Oliver said in his most have-to-stay-calm voice, “as though who I am and who I love only count if I want to put them on a banner or a T-shirt. A banner or a T-shirt that I don’t even get to design myself and must, instead, let the ‘community’ design for me.”

“Oh, you did not just air-quotes community.”

Oliver was on his feet. Why was he on his feet? “We’ve discussed this, Lucien. I don’t choose my friends based on who they want to fuck. My community is people I know and care about.”

“You know me. You care about me.”

The expression on Oliver’s face as he looked down at me wasn’t quite disappointment and it wasn’t quite betrayal. How had we even got here from a joke about a balloon arch? “I do. Which is why I accepted your proposal. But what I don’t want is either to get married surrounded by garish Pride merch or to be made to feel that unless I get married surrounded by garish Pride merch, I’m somehow a lesser member of this community you’re so proud of.”

“And I don’t want to be made to feel like you don’t think my community—our community—matters.”

He was staring at me like he barely recognised me. “Are you certain you want to marry me, Lucien? Because sometimes it—”

Before he could say anything else, his phone rang. It had been sitting beside him on the floor so he could use one of his many organising-things apps for the wedding planning, and that meant we could both see that it was his parents calling.

“I should probably take this,” he said. “It might be about the wedding.”

“The wedding you just accused me of not wanting.”

Sweeping up his phone, Oliver stepped outside into the corridor. I tried not to feel let down that he was still so under his parents’ thumbs that he’d taken a call from them in the middle of a fight about how under his parents’ thumbs he still was. But I didn’t quite manage it.

All the same, the time he was outside gave me space to catch my breath. To remind myself that whatever else happened, I loved Oliver and he loved me, and we didn’t need flags or banners or, for that matter, rings or weddings to prove it. And that we’d shown over the last two years we were strong and we could come through this, and that was why we were getting married in the first place.

When he came back in, I noticed he was very pale.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“That was my mother.”

“Are they not coming to the wedding?”

“No. It’s…it’s my father. He’s had a heart attack.”

“Oh my God.” I jerked to my feet. “Is he going to be okay?”