Part OneSummer/Autumn
Chapter 1
I have, in fact, always seen the point of children’s birthday parties. For children. Not for their adult parents to invite their adult friends to, even if those adult friends don’t have kids of their own. Because for adults, children’s birthday parties fucking suck. You can’t swear. You can’t have sex in the toilet. You can’t get wasted or high or pass out in the corner. You can’t do any of the things that make parties bearable.
Thinking about it, maybe I’ve just never liked any kind of party ever. I’d always known my mid-twenties fuckboy clubkid phase had been self-destructive. But it had never occurred to me I might have been trying to annoy myself to death.
“You’re hating every second of this, aren’t you?” said Oliver, making me feel both seen and taken-the-piss-out-of.
“Not at all. I love being surrounded by tiny balls of snot and chaos.”
He gave me an amusperated smile. “Children are just in a developmental stage that makes controlling nasal flow difficult. There’s nothing to—whoa there.” With typically Oliverian expertise, he scooped up an errant child who had somehow acquired a terrifyingly large, terrifyingly sharp pair of scissors. “Those are not for you.”
“They are,” protested the child, chaotically if not snottily. “I found them. So they’re mine.”
Deftly separating infant from implement, Oliver flipped the scissors and held them with the blade tucked responsibly against his forearm. “Contrary to popular belief, possession is not, in fact, nine-tenths of the law.”
Before Oliver Blackwood’s Jurisprudence for Six-Year-Olds could get into full swing, we were interrupted by Ben, of Ben-and-Sophie, one of the many sets of straight married people who had somehow become my friends as a consequence of their having gone to university a decade ago with the man I’m in love with. As usual, Ben was five foot ten of stress and finger paints wrapped in dad jeans and a garishly coloured shirt. “Oh my God,” he cried. “Luc, Oliver, have either of you seen Twin A come this way with an actual murder weapon?”
Oliver turned slightly, displaying weapon and twin both.
“Thank fuuuuuuu—goodness.” Ben looked at his kid with an expression that was slightly too harried to be stern. “What were you thinking? Where did you even get those?”
Twin A wriggled futilely under Oliver’s arm. “They were in the big wardrobe on the top shelf at the back in the box in the other box, but I found them. And then”—he tried to glare at Oliver but couldn’t quite turn his neck far enough—“hestole them.”
“You stole them first,” Ben pointed out. “And someone could have been hurt.”
“Technically,” I said, channelling my inner Oliver, who unfortunately had far worse judgement than the real Oliver, “he just took them without consent.”
With a triumphant kick, Twin A disentangled himself from Oliver. “You see. They’re mine.”
Ben took his hand with parental aggression. “Nothing’s yours. You’re a child.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Well, life’s not fa—” Ben’s gaze floated up to Oliver and me. “Shit, I’m turning into my mother.”
“Daddy saidshit,” yelled Twin A, pulling free before dashing out of the kitchen. “Mummy, Daddy saidshit.”
“Shit,” sighed Ben. “I’d better—” Something bright and fast-moving caught his eye through the kitchen window. “Oh my God, is that Twin B? I think he’s got matches.”
As Ben parented off, Oliver and I were left alone, listening as the merry babble of kids at a party was cut through by Ben shouting “No, those are for grown-ups” and Sophie adding “You can commit arson when you’re older.”
“You know,” I told Oliver, “I used to be cool before I met you. I did cool stuff.”
“Did you?” Oliver raised a bullshit-calling eyebrow. “Because to my recollection, the first time we met, you ignored everybody and spent the evening talking to Priya in the kitchen, the second time we met you were blackout drunk, and the third time—on an actual date—you pretended to speak French to either impress or vex me. I’ve still not worked out which.”
I did that embarrassing thing you do when you’ve been with someone a long time and you just naturally drift closer to them like the last two Maltesers in a packet. “So what you’re saying is that the first time I was busy with my extremely interesting artist friend, the second time I was sexily self-destructive, and the third time I was a man of mystery.”
“And look at you now.” Surrendering to his inner Malteser, Oliver drew me to him. “Ruined by domestic bliss.”
“I know. It’s awful. How dare you make me happy.”
He stretched up and kissed me in a sweet-and-totally-appropriate-for-a-children’s-birthday-party kind of way. “How dare you make me happy back.”
I had one of those flashes where you see yourself from a distance or from above or through the eyes of a person you used to be. “Fuck,” I said. “We’re legitimately disgusting.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Oliver murmured, his eyes all soft and silver and never leaving mine, “I’m about to make you miserable again.”
