And then he kissed me and I stopped caring too. Because whatever else was going on—in spite of Miles and JoJo Ryan, and Bridge’s wedding, and the mess of my past and the mess I was probably going to make of my future—Oliver was mine, and I was his, and I was kind of completely, embarrassingly, disgustingly in love with him. Especially when he knew exactly how to touch me, rough and tender and careful and endlessly…Oliver. When he knew how to make me forget my uncertainties and my self-consciousness so that I wasn’t afraid to cling to him like I needed to cling and let him cling to me the way he needed to cling back. And tell him how wonderful he was, how happy he made me. All the other things I was just beginning to find words for.

And not even say I told you so when we totally wrecked the table.

Chapter 4

FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF days I back-and-forthed on whether I wanted to go to Miles’s wedding or not. The con column was looking pretty long because it would be a faff, Oliver would have an unbelievably shitty evening on account of not knowing anybody, and, oh yes, there was that tiny, insignificant detail that showing up at all would be a tacit admission that I was totes chill with that one time Miles completely fucked me over.

But somehow, that didn’t stop me secretly wanting to go.

Because things were good. I was—not that I’d ever admit it to anybody at CRAPP—actually enjoying my job. My relationship with Oliver was as strong as it had ever been, although it wasn’t like two years in with Miles I’d been thinking to myself, Wow, this guy’s going to hurt me worse than any human being has ever hurt me in my life. And, God, what was my brain doing? Why was it comparing the selfish prick I’d dated nearly a decade ago with the objectively better man I was seeing right now?

I mean, Oliver was objectively better, wasn’t he? Our relationship was objectively better. We were older and more mature and more sensible and… Wait. Were we just boring? Safe and predictable and full of table lamps. Of course, given recent events, we were getting to the point of having more lamps than tables. Which definitely wasn’t boring. After all, if we were still breaking the furniture, we were doing something right.

Okay. This was exactly why I needed to go to the wedding. I need to show my ex-boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend’s fiancé I’d met once, and a bunch of strangers that I was free and happy and over it and moving on with my new, infinitely better boyfriend. And if I did that well enough, maybe my own brain would believe me.