“If you’re totally honest with yourself, didn’t part of you think this would be…easier for you than it is for other people?”
“Because I have such an unbelievably high opinion of myself?”
“Because you’re really good at stuff. You’ve been really good at stuff your whole life. And I know you’ve always had your issues and there’s always been things you’ve struggled with, but it’s always been, like, internal stuff. Not stuff other people can see and judge you on.”
Oliver had gone very quiet, and I tried to pivot into a more positive direction.
“You did great at school, and at university, then went on to do a very cool job that you also do great at. You’re an amazing cook. You’re good in social situations. Dogs love you. Even Next Door’s Kid at leastpretendsnot to think you’re a cock. I’m not saying either of us have covered ourselves in glory over the last few months, but I think part of the reason I’ve handled things better is because I’mwaymore used to fucking up than you are.”
For a little while, Oliver was silent, unable to manage more than a weak smile. “This has been so hard,” he said at last. “More than hard—terrifying. And not just the fostering, but all of it. You’ve probably already noticed this, Lucien, but we’re…we are actuallybuilding a life together, and that’s—that’s probably the most difficult, most frightening thing I’ve ever done.”
“Hey, I’m notthatdifficult to live with.”
It had been a joke, but Oliver was in a sincerity space, so it didn’t quite land. “Sorry. No,” he stumbled. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean we have so much to lose now. Not just the simple fact of each other. But everything we are together.”
That was, honestly, kind of meltingly romantic. But I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to let the romantic meltiness of it distract me from the fact that things were still in a kind of a fucky place, coparenting-wise. So I stayed silent, and let Oliver continue.
“I think…” he went on, far more uncertainly than I was used to him being, “I know you said that teenagers resent everyone, but I don’t think I was emotionally ready to be so consistently rejected.”
“Pretty sure teenagers reject everyone too.”
“She doesn’t reject you.”
I tried not to burst out laughing. “She does. Of course she fucking does. She’s constantly going on about how I’m a shit parent who can’t drive, and she obviously wants to go back to her mum.”
“With you,” Oliver insisted, “she’s coming around. With me, she isn’t. You called this a learning process, but where I’m concerned, she isn’t learning.”
Oh. Yeah. I’d dodged this last time because I didn’t want to make Oliver sad. Only now he was sadder. It was almost like emotional cowardice wasn’t a good idea, long term. “The thing is,” I said, “I didn’t actually mean a learning process forher; I meant a learning process forus.”
“And what am I supposed to learn?” he asked despairingly. “To put up with her insulting me—insultingus—and ignoring us and occasionally sabotaging us until she turns eighteen and leaves?”
It said some weird things about where I was emotionally, at least as far as Jaz was concerned, that even expressed in Oliver’s mostcynical, most rational terms, it didn’t sound like the worst thing in the world. “Maybe? That’s basically what we’d do if she was our own kid.”
“If she was our own kid, we would have had fourteen years of setting positive examples, so she would hopefully be a lot more reasonable.”
“Okay,” I said. “Two things. Firstly”—apparently I couldfirstlywith the best of them—“if you really think that, you’ll be in for a massive shock if we ever do adopt. I’m pretty sure all kids are nightmares one way or another. Secondly, this is aboutfamily, Oliver. Family isn’t about rules and boundaries and best practices. Kids or no kids, you’re my family, and I’m not with you because you’re setting mepositive examples. I’m with you because I love you.”
He looked over at me, conflicted in a way that made me feel conflicted, committing us both to one big confliction loop. “And I love you. But while William Morris might have had a point about romantic relationships, I don’t think even he would have applied the same principle to parenting.”
My face sagged. “You’re going to make me ask who William Morris is, aren’t you?”
“He wrote a poem called ‘Love Is Enough,’ which allegedly once received the three-word review ‘It is not.’”
“Okay, but itis, though, isn’t it?”
Oliver gazed at me. “For us, of course. But we’re grown men and largely responsible for our own well-being. Where a child is involved, there are—”
“Fuck me, Oliver.” I flopped my head against the sofa cushions in exasperation. “Will you please wake up and smell the…the William Morris. I mean obviously when you’re looking after a kid you need to, like, make sure they don’t starve or join a gang or get hooked on smack or whatever. And that shit is probably harder than it seems. But after that, love is, like—fucking hell, it’s not justenough, it’severything.”
“That’s a nice sentiment, but—”
“Do you think that I’ve gone from being a miserable twentysomething fuckup who hates himself and lives under a pile of abandoned pizza boxes to a very happy thirtysomething fuckup who you’re building a life with because youset me clear boundaries?”
His face grew just the tiniest bit pinched. “Well no, but—”
“You changed my world,” I told him, breathless and only partly from all the swearing, “because you loved me. Just loved me. For who I was, with all my weird bits and my shit bits and my socks all over the floor. I didn’t change because you tried to change me—”
“That would have been difficult to achieve and counterproductive.”
