“And,” he admitted reluctantly, “it is.”
“Ruff,” said Spud, affirming the toiletness of the cosmos. Like, verbally. He didn’t demonstrate. Though, of course, my sexy barrister boyfriend had a pocketful of poo bags anyway.
As we strolled along, Spud frolicking joyfully in his massive massive toilet, I tried to enjoy the moment and not think too much about how Next Door’s Kid was a sociopathic master manipulatoror how a punk earl was about to destroy my livelihood or how that one guy—that one highly attractive guy jogging towards us right now—was definitely checking Oliver out.
I mean, I didn’t blame him because Oliver was a smokeshow and a bag of chips, especially when he was all relaxed and wearing one of his well-fitted cream jumpers. Okay, also when he was not at all relaxed and wearing a suit because he had to stop an innocent person going to prison or something. And also all the other times. Anyway, point was, someone was checking out my boyfriend, and it was extremely cool because my boyfriend wasn’t checking him out back.
Which meant, after all these years, I’d won at gay.
Oliver gave me a curious look, probably because he’d caught me smiling, and while he saw me smiling more than most people, it was never going to be my usual state. “You seem happy.”
Even I knew it was slightly unclassy to boast to your boyfriend that he was so into you he didn’t realise how hot other people found him. So I kind of flailed. “Oh, I just…remembered something.”
“What sort of something?”
“It was back when we were doing that whole dating-but-not-dating-but-dating business.”
“Ah yes.” Oliver smiled. “A time in our lives when we were both behaving extremely sensibly.”
“For verisimilitude,” I reminded him.
He nodded. “Naturally.”
“Right. Well, as part of my extremely sensible and verisimilitudinous behaviour back then, I…” Actually, maybe I should have just told him about Attractive Jogging Guy. Fuck. “I mean, you were just very casually being the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I couldn’t imagine ever being, like, worth it—”
“Lucien,” he said, in this faintly chiding way that I found oddly romantic because it meant he truly couldn’t imagine thinking as little of me as I used to think of myself.
“Anyway, as well as all the other shit you were pointlessly good at, you turned out to be amazing with Judy’s dogs.”
“Ruff,” said Spud.
“Not you,” I explained. “Different dogs.”
“Mruff.”
“And”—I turned back to my boyfriend—“in that moment I built this whole scenario in my head about how you were going to get a dog with three legs and you’d be walking your dog with three legs in some park and then some guy would come up to you in the park you were in with your dog with three legs and he’d be all, ‘Wow, it’s really nice of you to be looking after a three-legged dog,’ and you’d be like, ‘Yes, I’m just kind of amazing like that.’”
Even in my head, this had sounded pretty bad. It was way worse in my actual mouth. I was sort of hoping Oliver would do the merciful thing and let me drop it. But he seemed far too amused. “And what do I do,” he asked, “after I tell a complete stranger how amazing I am?”
“Obviously,” I went on helplessly, “he’d be all, ‘I find that very sexy, let’s bang,’ and you’d bail on me and get with Three-Leg-Dog-Park-Kindness-Is-Sexy Guy and you’d have this great life while I was found dead under a pile of empty pizza boxes.”
Somehow Oliver contrived to look meltingly affectionate while also making it clear I was talking absolute bollocks. “I can see why this was making you so happy,” he said. “You always did love pizza.”
“It’s not about the pizza.” Two seconds ago, I’d been desperate to talk about literally anything else. But I’d come this far. I was seeing the weird three-legged dog pizza death story to the end, no matter what it cost. “It’s about how, you know, we’re here and it’s years later and stuff. So nowwe’rein the park withourthree-legged dog, and Kindness-Is-Sexy Guy can’t have you…because…because me.”
Oliver gazed at me for a long moment, then looked down atSpud and said, very seriously, “Don’t worry. I won’t let Daddy Lucien cut your leg off.”
“He’s metaphorically three-legged.” I pouted.
“Thank you,” said Oliver. “This is a very romantic way of pretending you weren’t checking that jogger out earlier.”
“What? No. Our eyes met as we were mutually checkingyouout.”
“It’s okay to look at other men, Lucien. I’m not threatened. After all, we have a metaphorically three-legged dog together.”
“Ruff,” said Spud, apparently happy with his metaphorically three-legged status.
There was no way to keep debating this without sounding mega defensive. But I kept debating it anyway. “No, no. Hang on. I agree with you that neither of us should be threatened because dog, five years, etcetera. And I agree looking isn’t cheating, but I genuinely wasn’t looking. He just—”
