Husband Material (London Calling, #2)

by Alexis Hall

“A wedding,” began the vicar, or rather, from the robes, the actual bishop, “is one of life’s great moments, a time of solemn commitment as well as good wishes, feasting, and joy. Saint John tells us how Jesus shared in such an occasion at Cana…” Oh no. We’d been here for fifteen seconds, and we were already getting a story about Jesus and some people who couldn’t be bothered to hire decent caterers. I guess I’d kind of forgotten, or let myself forget, just how, like, God-centric a full-on religious ceremony could be. And as much as I’d found the all-the-rainbows-all-the-queer-iconography-all-the-time setup of Miles and JoJo’s wedding a bit extra, this thing we were doing now was way weirder. I mean, we were sitting in a medieval building while a man in a triangular hat read to us out of a two-thousand-year-old book. “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” the bishop was saying, “the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.” “And also with you,” chorused literally everybody else. Fuck. Nobody had told me there was supposed to be audience participation. As a child of two eighties rock legends, my upbringing hadn’t involved a huge amount of churchgoing. And, for thirty years, that had been fine. But right now it was making me feel that I was living one of those dreams where you discover you’re in a play and everyone knows their part but you. Also, you might be naked. Fortunately, I was not naked. Unfortunately, the bishop was still talking. “God is love,...