Husband Material (London Calling, #2)

by Alexis Hall

ONCE THE CEREMONY WAS OVER and the new couple had finished kissing—which took longer than it had to—the celebration jumped straight to no-fucks-given dancing. Food was provided via a buffet along the sides of the room, and speeches were made intermittently by microphone from the main stage. In a lot of ways, had the context been very different, it would have been a great evening. I’d loved Bridge’s wedding because I loved Bridge, but sitting around while elderly relatives made corny jokes over a meal that, while exquisite, you’d never have ordered in a restaurant, wasn’t exactly the way most people I knew would choose to spend a Saturday. A gigantic party in a train tunnel with live music and speeches largely made by professional cabaret artists, on the other hand, was. Or rather, it had been. Now I spent my Saturdays doing boyfriendly things like hoovering the living room and going to art galleries and/or IKEA, occasionally fielding calls from the James Royce-Royces because Baby J had done something so unbearably adorable that they had to tell everyone immediately. And it wasn’t that I missed my party days—at least not the way they’d ended with me drinking, dancing, and fellating my way into oblivion. But it had been good for a while, and looking back, it didn’t feel so much like something I’d grown beyond as something that had been taken from me. So I looked around the room with this weird mix of nostalgia and… Actually, maybe it was just nostalgia, but in the serious pa...