“Besides”—he gently removed a ladybird from my shoulder and deposited it on a nearby leaf—“irrespective of our mutual incapacity to accept that we live up to the standards set by the other, isn’t making a home together what we’re doing? And have been doing for actually quite a long time now.”
I looked at my feet. Which meant I was also looking at Spud, which helped in some ways. “Okay, but if I don’t have to make French toast or learn to cook or remember to pick up my coffee cups—”
“Iwouldlike it if you remembered to pick up your coffee cups,” Oliver pointed out, “whether you stay working or not.”
“If I don’t have to do any of that”—I broke off because Oliver was giving me a stern look—“any of that except the coffee cup thing, then all I’ll be doing is looking after a dog. My whole life will be looking after a dog. I’ll get…I don’t know, whatever the dog-related not-a-Muppet-on-a-boat version of cabin fever is. And then I’ll have no choice but to start an Instagram dedicated to my dog. This isexactlyhow people start Instagrams dedicated to their dogs. I’ll have been out of work for two weeks and Spud will be alldyed weird colours and dressed in tiny outfits I’ve bought off Etsy and our whole downstairs will be full of props I’ve been using for my Dogstagram tableaux and—”
“Youmight,” Oliver suggested, “be overthinking this.”
“I’m not overthinking this,” I yelled. “These are incredibly obvious consequences of me losing my job because of an anarchist peer and having nothing left to care about except a dog.”
We’d come to a pretty bench overlooking the lake, and with a suspicious casualness, Oliver sat down. “You wouldn’t be left with nothing to care about except Spud.”
“And you,” I added, loyally. Then my brain caught up with my ears as I realised he’d been using hisleadingtone, not hisplayfully chidingtone. “Oh. You mean…”
He smiled reassuringly. “Itwasalways the plan.”
“It was, but…” I sat down next to him. At my feet, Spud gazed up at us with the unquestioning faith and adoration you only saw in dogs and children and other people who didn’t know any better.
“But what?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Actually,” I admitted, “I have nobut. I was justbuttingout of habit. This was the plan. This is the plan. The plan is this.”
“Even so. The plan—as this and as present as it may be—doesn’t have to be binding if you don’t feel ready.”
For a while I distracted myself, fuddling with Spud’s ears. Then I glanced up, at all the many and varied families playing happily in the sunlight. And I noticed something, something unexpected. “You’ve met me,” I pointed out. “Have Ieverfelt ready? For anything?”
“No,” conceded Oliver. And then, he got thislookin his eye. A look that said he’d noticed the same thing I’d just noticed. Which was that I wasn’t having my usual freak-out. “But am I right in thinking you’re using that in the positive sense?”
At my feet, Spud wasruffingimpatiently. He’d signed up for walkies, not for sitties. And definitely not for sit-while-Daddy-Luc-and-Daddy-Oliver-have-an-intense-conversationies. “I guess so? I mean, I wasn’t exactly feeling ready for this one either.”
“Mruff,” said this one.
“And he seems all right, doesn’t he?” I gestured at exhibit D.Dfordog. “He doesn’t seem totally fucked up for life or anything?”
Oliver sighed very slightly. “Lucien, your faith in your capacity to totally fuck things up for life sometimes borders on the hubristic.”
“Thanks, I’ve worked really hard on it.”
“Spud is a perfectly well-adjusted normal happy puppy. We are, in fact, a good team.”
He was right. Our dog was fine. We were fine. Everything was fine. “And you think we’re a good enough team to, y’know…”
“Play doubles badminton?”
“Oliver.”
“Scam our friends at bridge?”
“No. You know.”
“I do know,” said Oliver, archly. “But, as with so many things, if you’re going to do it, you should probably be able to say it.”
There he was, being right again. Like a dick. “Fine. Kids. The kid thing. Do you think we’re a good enough team to do the kid thing? Do you want to do the kid thing with me?”
It would be a lie to say it was the happiest I’d ever seen Oliver look, because one of the weird things about being a decent way into a stable and functioning relationship was that if you were doing it right, you made each other happy a fair amount. But he looked at least as happy as he did when I picked my socks up without prompting, which was pretty fucking happy. “Yes, Lucien. I do.”
And, on one level, that wasn’t news. We’d had the hypothetical version of this conversation about a million times. Okay twice. But, either way, this was different. Because we had a dog now. And thatmade it real. That made everything real. “Okay,” I said. “Great. Cool.” And, then, cool and great as all this was, there was also realness to deal with. “Um. How do we actually, like,geta kid? Actually?”
