“Then I’ll send out song requests. Thank you for being so… I’m sorry, Lucien, I really am.”

“Me too.” I thought it best to apologise back, even though we’d now formally diagnosed this as an Oliver issue. And it definitely was an Oliver issue. Not one that my years of baggage and self-loathing were in any way exacerbating. “And I’ll be back first thing tomorrow to… What’s next on the list?”

“Bronwyn wants to finalise the menu.”

Oh yes, that was the other big compromise. We were having all-vegan catering. But that one I’d been fine with, even though I’d have secretly loved a burger option. Because unlike the band, it had clearly mattered. “I mean, I’m still the opposite of an expert. As long as it’s got those spiced-seed things, I’ll be happy.”

He was smiling now. “She’ll be here at noon.”

Egh. That meant getting up at a sensible time. “I’ll be there,” I told him. “Love you.”

He love-you-too’ed, and we hung up. Then I lay down on the bed wondering why I didn’t feel happier. I mean, we’d fixed the music thing and found a middle ground that was a middle ground, instead of something neither of us wanted. And Oliver had apologised, and I’d apologised slightly less than he had which—according to the Disagreeing Couples Act of 1974—meant I’d won.

For fuck’s sake, I was getting married. I was getting married to an amazing man I was in love with. As was my hard-won legal right. And, yes, Mum had tried to do that thing that mums do when you’re picked last in sports where they tell you not everyone has to be good at everything. But this was my relationship, not a game of rounders. I couldn’t just shrug and say, “Well, when am I ever going to need that in real life anyway.”

No. This was fucking my wedding. I’d planned it, I deserved it, and I was damn well going to have it.

Chapter 37

PICKING A BEST MAN WAS a complicated business. Because you didn’t want to be gender normative, but if you got too role-reversey you ended up with something that was gender normative in the other direction. For Oliver, it had been simple. Well, simple-ish because he’d asked Christopher. Which had been obvious in one way (because apparently asking your brother was traditional) but really difficult in another (because post-funeral Oliver and Christopher had only just settled into a place where it was even a reasonable thing to ask). But they’d pushed through it and were now slowly building the kind of relationship where they could actually like each other.