“I can’t marry you.”

The words made no sense. Like traffic lights in the rain. Like this blur of colour that took a moment to a moment to resolve into distinct shades of red and amber and green.

I. Can’t. Marry. You.

What.

The.

Fuck.

I’d been up all last night worrying about this wanker’s feelings, and here he was doing to me exactly what I had, with great maturity and compassion, decided I couldn’t possibly do to him. Lurching to my feet, I grabbed the wastepaper basket and upended it over Oliver’s head, showering him in a confetti of old receipts, chocolate wrappers, and those little paper circles from the bottom of hole punches. “You bastard. You utter bastard.”

“I’m aware,” he said with far too much dignity for a man with a Crunchie wrapper on his shoulder, “that this is selfish and that…” He had to stop because he got all choked up again, for which—given the circumstances—I had zero sympathy. Well, maybe one sympathy. Make it one point five. “And that,” he went on, “I’m probably going to lose you.”

I was trying to hold on to my anger because the alternative was collapsing on the floor in a pool of broken heart and sad feels. “Yes, Oliver. Leaving me at the altar might just do that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice breaking. “I’m so so sorry.”

Deciding that avoiding the floor was delaying the inevitable, I crumbled down beside him. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” I asked him. And myself as well.

“Because I love you. And, fully acknowledging the irony of this”—with an attempt at composure, he plucked a discarded treasury tag from his collar—“I was afraid of losing you.”

It was getting hard to stay angry because my relationship was dissolving, Oliver was falling apart, and I—let’s be honest—was kind of being a massive hypocrite. “Well, it’s good that you appreciate the irony,” I told him, “because you picked a weird strategy.”

“And an ineffective one,” he agreed.

I got it. I couldn’t admit it, but I got it. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you to say no when I proposed?”

“How could I?” He gave me this devastated, half-pleading look. “I know what it cost you to ask me, and I know what it meant.” For a moment, he seemed unable to go on. He just sat there breathing and looking sad. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Yeah.” I prodded the wastepaper basket with my toe and watched it roll across the floor, then roll a little way back as what was left of the contents settled on the bottom. “Nice of you in theory. Not super great in practice.”

“I’m sorry,” said Oliver again. “I don’t think I understood quite how wrong this would feel.”