Husband Material (London Calling, #2)

by Alexis Hall

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 h...