“I know. It’s just…she’s my best friend.”

“And she’s my friend too.” Oliver sounded unhappy. Worse, he sounded like he was trying hard not to be unhappy, which would only make him unhappier. “But you know Bridge… She always has some crisis or other.”

“She thinks Tom’s cheating on her,” I blurted.

“Oh,” he said again. For someone who talked for a living, Oliver could be very monosyllabic sometimes.

“Yeah.”

He was silent a little longer. “And does she… Is he?”

I wished I had an answer to that. “She’s got a picture? Of him with another woman. And…honestly it doesn’t look good, but this is me talking and I’m not exactly the poster boy for healthy trust-based relationships.”

“Thank you for that vote of confidence, Lucien.”

“Fuck. No, I didn’t mean that. I mean, like, I have, you know, issues because of history shit.”

“Sorry. Yes. I do understand. I just—” The breath Oliver took next was so deep it became almost crackly over the phone line. “It doesn’t matter. You should go and be with Bridget.”

I winced. No wonder I hadn’t wanted to do this. “I will. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He didn’t, if I was being completely honest with myself, sound all that fine. “I’m sure I can get our tickets moved to another night.”

“We could go see that grown-up play you wanted to see instead?”

“Oh, no”—I loved that he was making an effort to be cool with this, even if he wasn’t entirely succeeding—“I’m very keen to see a musical based on a popular movie from the 1990s. My only regret is that it’s going to have original songs instead of thinly repurposing popular music from the era.”

That struck me as a very specific concern, and one that was a lot easier to talk about than me ditching him on our first date in ages to hold someone else’s hand through something that was almost certainly a storm in a teacup. “Is this because I made you watch Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again?”

“Actually, I enjoyed that more than I expected to. Which I will admit was a low bar.” For some reason, Oliver trying to make me feel better was making me feel significantly worse. “And while I appreciate your willingness to sacrifice yourself on the altar of Arthur Miller, I’d rather rebook our tickets for Pretty Woman. It turns out I am, to my mild surprise, disappointed we aren’t seeing it this evening.”

“Really?” I asked. “Really really?”

“Oh, yes. Big disappointment. Big. Huge.”

“I see what you did there.” It was my sardonic voice. But I had seen what he did there. And that made standing him up even harder. “You could take someone else?” I offered, trying to get in on the self-sacrifice gig.