Husband Material (London Calling, #2)

by Alexis Hall

“I’m honestly sure you two are going to make it.” “Even though I have terrible taste in men?” “Because you have terrible taste in men. You spent so long refusing to go out with Oliver that he’s bound to be right for you.”

We can move at whatever pace you like. But you should know that I am yours, more truly than I have ever been anyone’s. Because when I’m with you, I’m me. Not someone I think I should be. And I’ll be with you, however you want, for as long as you’ll have me.” Only Oliver would say something like that in the middle of scrubbing his kitchen cabinets. And maybe that was why I could listen to him, when I sometimes couldn’t even listen to myself. Why he made me feel safe and hopeful and worth something when I had a bunch of reasons not to.

Back at the flat, I took the extremely sensible and grown-up precaution of opening all the windows and taking the batteries out of the smoke alarm. And then I got to it.

“Oliver. It’s not your job to make being with you convenient for me. Just like it’s not my job to make being with me convenient for you.

I’ve spent a lot of my life living by a set of rules that I never really interrogated and you make me interrogate them. I would never have been able to do what I did today without you, and maybe I shouldn’t have, maybe it was a dreadful mistake, but I’m inordinately grateful that I was able to do it.” “Oh,” I said, trying to not melt into a pile of squish and then drain away in the drizzle. “So I’m your helpful shoulder demon.” Oliver nodded. “Intermittently helpful.” “I will very much take that.”

Oliver had apologised, and I’d apologised slightly less than he had which—according to the Disagreeing Couples Act of 1974—meant I’d won.

for a moment, just for a moment, I half wished this was our first date again. I mean, not literally because it had been a disaster. But I wanted to keep this. This almost fragile feeling of everything being what it was and being for its own sake and not needing to go anywhere or become anything else. But that was how relationships began. It wasn’t how they lasted. You couldn’t live forever on lemon posset and French toast. At some point you had to think, really think, about where you were going and what it meant. You had to ask if you were in this forever, and if you were, what were you going to do about it, and if you weren’t, what were you even doing.