Chapter Twelve

FRIDAYS ARE busy days for me. It’s a combination of people wanting me to find them stuff so they can work over the weekend and all those lazyarsed people who leave their work to the last minute and urgently need files for their Friday-afternoon deadlines.

And after three o’clock, people start to return all the files they’ve had out all week. I’m always busy.

So, by the time I had to do my sardine act on the way home, my patience was wafer thin. I was usually tired, fed up with humanity, and just wanted to shut myself away. It used to be that Friday nights were takeaway nights, but even ordering food requires human interaction, and since I was trying to watch my weight—and my budget—Friday nights had become Lean Cuisine nights. I stood on the train trying to decide whether I should have satay chicken or beef teriyaki.

I was such a party boy.

By the time my stop approached, I’d decided I would have chicken, because chicken is the feast of rebels. So many things can go wrong with chicken. I mean, salmonella is only the start. Chicken was like doing something completely dangerous, and you didn’t know if you would survive the end result.

I also decided a heck of a lot of other things, like surely prison would give me lots of time to read, free food, and time away from society. I was feeling homicidal toward the man behind me who obviously didn’t think deodorant was a thing he should wear, the woman whose conversation with a friend about a particularly bad date could be heard by the entire carriage, and the super-cute guy who scored a seat, pulled out his paperback, and proceeded to dog-ear the corners.

It was torture.

Why do the cute ones always commit the obscene acts?

I got off the train and joined the line to the bus. Bus transportation wasn’t as undignified as the train, but it was uncomfortable and long in the rush-hour traffic. This time I got a seat and sighed as I sat down. It would be another twenty minutes before I got off and walked the ten minutes to home. Did I have the energy to pull out my book?

The woman beside me had her phone out and was playing Word Cookies. She had to make a variety of words out of seven letters, and I stared at the screen and mentally yelled the words I could see but that she just couldn’t get. I was frustrated when she got off the bus without even making the word growths.

I zoned, thinking about nothing but about everything. I had messaged Ambrose to ask him what time to pick him up on Saturday, but he hadn’t replied. I was unsure if that meant he was still pissed at me or if he didn’t need a lift. On Sunday I would have to avoid questions from Vinnie again. Maybe I could rope Hiram into saving me. But that would mean pointing out to him that I was avoiding Vinnie’s questions, which would mean he’d ask me the questions instead.

I pressed the bell for my stop and trudged off up the street toward home. Being the middle of winter, it was cold, dark, and windy. Thankfully the rain was holding off for a couple of days, but it meant the temperature had dropped even further. I was looking forward to my house and my warm bed.

I turned the corner and scrunched through the gravel that had washed onto the path from one of the gardens. With prices in Perth skyrocketing, I had been extremely lucky to get the house in a set of five villas—five small residences squashed onto the equivalent of two house blocks that surrounded it, all with one common driveway. I loved the style of living because I only had two bedrooms—and who needed more than that—and a small backyard to take care of.

My house shared a wall with the residence next door, but it was the wall to the garage and the laundry. Out the back I had a very small patch of lawn and lots of pots with various plants in various stages of their life cycle. My mother kept buying me plants in pots. I tried to keep them alive, and some flourished under my haphazard care, but others shriveled and died a torturous death. My neighbors were mostly decent, and I was quiet enough that they liked me too.

And when I said I was extremely lucky to get the house, I was. I looked for months and lost a number of bidding wars. I couldn’t afford the mortgage for a decent place, so I started to look at hovels. Then Mum came home one day and put some papers in front of me.

“There’s a place I know of through work. The owner wants it sold this weekend. It’s a hugely reduced price so he can get rid of it. I’ve got the key, so we can check it out tomorrow, and if you want it—and from what I can tell, you’d be an idiot not to snap it up—I can inform him first thing Monday while you go to the bank. It’s a private sale, so there’ll be no real-estate agency fees. I can do the paperwork this week and file the forms, and you can be moved in by the end of the month.”

We’d checked out the house the following morning. It was perfect for just me, at a price I could afford, and I wanted to move in immediately. Mum even gave me a housewarming gift of $1000 to spend at IKEA.

I trudged up the driveway to my place at the back of the block and halted in surprise. Ambrose was sitting on my doorstep, his crutches and a backpack beside him. He looked up and smiled as I approached.

“Finally. I was beginning to think you were never going to make it home.”

I frowned. “Ambrose. What are you doing here?”

He got to his feet and awkwardly picked up his things. “I was bored at home. No one’s there.”

I hurried over, took his backpack from him, and pulled out my keys. “I thought you were going to have your orgy party tonight?”

“Everyone I invited canceled on me,” he said lightly.

I stopped in the act of opening the door and looked at him over my shoulder. “And how many people did you invite?”

“None,” he said happily.

I growled low in my throat and entered the house, switching on the lights as I went. Something was up with Ambrose.

But goddammit, it was a cold Friday night, and I wanted my salmonella chicken, my book, and a warm bed. I dumped my bag on the table and put Ambrose’s backpack on the chair. Then I swung around and watched him close and lock my front door.

“Okay. Out with it. What’s up? Is it your injury?”

He made his way straight to my lounge and sat down with a groan. “What? Can’t I visit?”

He wasn’t going to deflect me. “Sure you can. But usually visits entail prior warning, permission, and for the person to be home so he doesn’t find stray waifs on his doorstep. How did you get here anyway?”

“Uber. It’s cold in here. Can you turn the heater on?”

In a bad temper, I stomped to the panel on the wall and pressed the button.

“Thanks,” he said sunnily. “I like the new decorations.” He nodded to the wall opposite, where I’d attached a shelf to the wall and filled it with Funko Pop figures on one side and my treasures on the other side. My new Thorin Oakenshield was central, next to a cheesy old snow globe.

“Hmph” was my articulate reply.

“It would look even better with a large poster of your favorite football player,” he teased with a grin.

It was an old argument of ours. As a kid, Ambrose had always urged me to put up pictures of football teams and players. I kept to my preferred movie posters. When he started playing for Hawthorn, he sent me a couple of pictures of himself so I would have a reason to put up a football poster.

“My poster of Alex Rance is in my bedroom.” Two could play the teasing game, and mentioning the cutest player on a rival team was sure to get his ire up.

Ambrose frowned at me. “It better not be,” he ground out.

Happy that I’d won, I turned the conversation back to him. “So, what are you doing here? I said I’d come and pick you up tomorrow.”

“I was bored,” he repeated. “Mum’s working.”

I rolled my eyes. “Ambrose, you lived by yourself in Melbourne. I’m sure you can survive ten hours in a building alone. Now tell me what’s wrong.”

“Do you have anything to eat? I’m starving.”

I refused to let him change the subject. “What’s wrong? Is it your knee? What did the doctor say?”

He turned away and pretended to study the figurines on the shelf.

“Ambrose?”

He ignored me.

I sighed. “Ambrose, you have been to the doctor since you got home, right?”

He turned to look at me. “How about pizza? My treat.”

I was horrified. “Ambrose, why haven’t you been to the doctor?”

He shrugged and pulled out his phone. “Any good pizza joints around here that deliver?”

If he was going to be like that, he could do without pizza. “No. And it’s Lean Cuisine night. Chicken Salmonella.” I stomped to the kitchen and pulled out a packet from the freezer. “Pizza’s bad for your waistline.” I thrust the meal into the microwave and turned it on.

“Oh heck. Please tell me you’re not eating Lean Cuisine, Shane.”

I spun around, crossed my arms, and glared at him over the counter in the kitchen. “And why not?”

“But you’re a great cook. And how many times do I need to tell you, you don’t need to lose weight. You look fine to me.”

Why was I the one in trouble? “Cooking for one is boring. And obviously you’ve never hung out on the gay scene. You need to be thin and beautiful or big and hairy in order to grab a guy.”

Ambrose scowled. “Please don’t start in on me about how everyone needs a partner. It’s so annoying. It’s all they ever talk about in Melbourne. Daniel’s wife is always trying to set me up with her friends, and people think that if you’re single you’re unhappy.”

I raised my eyebrows. “From where I’m standing, Ambrose, you are unhappy. You haven’t left the house all week that I know of, and when you do, you come to visit boring, old Shane. You haven’t gone to the doctor. You could’ve had a party tonight but decided not to. You didn’t even respond to the text messages I sent.”

“Ugh,” he scoffed and looked away. “Stupid people on my phone. I don’t want to talk to them, so I’m ignoring them.”

So it wasn’t only me Ambrose was ignoring?

I stormed over and plucked the device from his hands where he was still scrolling for pizza. “Hey,” he yelled, and I quickly danced out of his reach as I looked at the phone.

“Thirty-three text messages, Ambrose? What the fuck? Who are you ignoring?” Ambrose struggled to his feet and limped after me without his crutches. I retreated to the kitchen. “Sean. Dan. Geoff. Stella. Tony. Bart Simpson?” I looked up in shock. “You know someone called Bart Simpson? And you’ve ignored three of his messages?”

Ambrose still followed me, but slowly. “Hawthorn captain. I didn’t want to put in his name.”

“Your captain? And you’re ignoring him?” I almost shouted as I retreated farther, through the kitchen and into the laundry. “Ambrose. You can’t ignore your captain.”

“I can do whatever the fuck I want, Shane.” He followed me farther and held out his hand. I looked at the phone again. “Geoff? The team doctor? Oh, you are so fucked over that one.”

I backed up and was surprised to bump up against the washing machine. Ambrose lunged and pushed me into it with his body as he reached for the phone. Even injured, I was no match for his strength and bulk. We wrestled for a moment, but he still got the phone from me and slid it into his back pocket.

“No. You need to message those people back, Ambrose. Some of those messages are important. Some of them are concerned. You should message them.”

I put my arms around him to try to reach the phone again, and it could’ve been a rather intimate embrace, but we were struggling against each other. Ambrose grabbed my wrist and pushed me until I was sitting on the washing machine, one leg trapped between his two.

Finally I stopped trying to reach his pocket. Instead I sagged and looked up at him. “What’s wrong, Ambrose? Tell me. What can I do to help?”

If he had kissed me right at that moment, I wouldn’t have resisted. He could’ve persuaded me into anything.

But he looked hurt. “A year ago you wouldn’t have asked me why I was coming to visit you,” he whispered. “A year ago you would’ve been happy I was here. What changed, Shane?”

What changed? Perhaps my heart had given up. “I learned there’s more to life than sex. And I want that.”

He didn’t move, merely stared me down as though trying to find the answers in my face. “Why does everything always boil down to sex? I don’t get it.”

I frowned. “Everything doesn’t always boil down to sex. I’m your friend, Ambrose. I’ve always been your friend. I’ll always be your friend. But it felt like every time you saw me, it was all about the sex.”

He pulled back slightly. “No it wasn’t. Didn’t we go to the theater and to Rottnest Island? And last year we went to Exmouth, and we went out to that place near Merredin? What about that time we went on that fishing holiday?”

“We went on that fishing holiday so we would be alone together and we could have sex.”

He shook his head. “No. We went on that fishing holiday so we could spend time alone together, Shane. We simply happened to have sex while we were there.”

“What about all the other times you’ve been home and you came over my house, simply to have sex? You’d come over, have sex, and then leave.” I thought I knew what the boundaries of our relationship were. I didn’t like that Ambrose was moving the lines.

He looked at me as though I were being silly. “No. I came over your house to watch movies with you because I know you like that stuff. We’d watch a movie, discuss it, argue over it, and often you’d have to go back to the film and show me whatever scene I missed, just to prove your point. We’d have a good time, then we’d have sex, and I’d leave because you never invited me to stay.”