Page 185 of Father Material
“Oliver, you’re still crying. Why are you talking about dusting?”
He gave a weepy, self-conscious half laugh. “Because I’m…I’m at a loss, I think.”
“So am I. Let’s just be at a loss for a while? Maybe take Spud for a walk in a bit?”
“Ruff,” said Spud. And then, seeming to remember Jaz was gone, added, “Aroou.”
“That doesn’t seem…” Oliver broke off. Then tried again. “Adequate?”
“Is anything going to be?”
“One would hope so. Eventually.”
“Okay,” I said. “But eventually’s ages away. I’m trying to get through now.”
Oliver drew me closer, half protective, half needy. “We’re going to be all right.”
“Of course we are.”
“It’s just…hard to think. About anything.”
“That’s okay.”
“Or to imagine what we’ll do next.”
I was quiet, the seconds and minutes slipping away, as I snuggled deeper into Oliver’s embrace. “I guess,” I said finally, “we don’t have to?”
“Isn’t that a little nihilistic?”
“I don’t think so. I think it might be the opposite of…of that.”
“You aren’t totally certain what nihilism is, are you?”
“I mean, is anyone? Like, something something abyss, something something monsters, something something God is dead.”
Oliver opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Actually, that’s pretty much it.”
“I think,” I went on, leaving the dead God in the abyss with the monsters, “I just meant that it doesn’t matter that we don’t know what we’re doing today. Because we’ll always have tomorrow?”
“You,” murmured Oliver, “are the only person I know who can make procrastination sound romantic.”
I shrugged. “Well, maybe that’s because I can’t imagine anything more romantic.”
“Than procrastination?”
“Than being so sure of someone, so completely in love with them, that you can stop worrying about the future on account of how the most important thing about it is already sorted.”
Oliver blinked, crying again, but more gently this time. “Oh, Lucien,” he said.
And when he kissed me, there in our under-hoovered living room with its under-dusted television, he tasted a little bit of coffee and a little bit of crying, but mostly of forever.
Our forever.
Whatever that looked like.
