Chapter Fifteen

I WASN’T sure what I expected, but Ambrose snoring in my bed while I cracked the latest offering from Nicholas Sparks wasn’t it.

My place had two bedrooms, but only one bed. The second bedroom was full of stuff. There were two overfull bookcases, an unopened box from IKEA, kitchen appliances that didn’t fit in the small cupboards of my kitchen, a broken chair from the dining set, a pile of cushions I no longer wanted on my couch, Ambrose’s old weights that I never used, an empty suitcase, a box of school memorabilia, a bag of Christmas decorations, a broken lamp, an ironing board, and an empty basket that I’d received full of food as a present. There was a filing cabinet that had come flat packed, but I had lost the instructions, so it was half put-together—badly—and stacked next to it were three archive boxes full of my filing. For a records keeper, my own records were appallingly kept.

In all that mess, there wasn’t room for a spare bed.

I’d let Ambrose have first go in the shower while I cleaned up from dinner. That involved me putting two forks, two knives, two plates, and two glasses in the dishwasher and throwing away the empty Lean Cuisine containers. I loved Lean Cuisine nights.

Then, while I relaxed and cleaned up in the shower, Ambrose helped himself to my bed and fell asleep. I came out of the bathroom to find him under the covers and snoring soundly, his crutches neatly placed on the floor beside the bed. A small search of the house showed me his clothes draped over the chair next to the dining table and his shoes in the corner of the lounge room.

I wondered whether the time-zone differences were still affecting him.

Unable—and unwilling—to do anything else, I grabbed my book and curled up on the couch where we’d both recently had an amazing orgasm. At least I hoped it was amazing to him. It was for me. At about chapter seven of the book, I started to get cold, so I checked the doors, turned off the lights in the main room, and crawled into the bed next to Ambrose to read another couple of chapters.

At midnight I could barely keep awake, so slipped the bookmark into the page, turned off my bedside lamp, and drifted off to sleep beside the man I loved.

At six the next morning, I decided I didn’t love him that much.

“Come on, Shane. Wake up. I’m hungry and you have no decent food in the fridge. I need you to walk to the shops.”

I pulled the covers over my head.

“Seriously. I’m hungry. And you said you want to lose weight, so how about you walk to the shops and get something healthy and decent.”

There was so much wrong with that sentence. I could’ve told him that healthy stuff was not decent, according to my taste buds, anyway. The me walking anywhere was also a big problem. I walked to the bus stop, and that was far enough. The fact that he wouldn’t eat the stuff in my cupboard was also worth noting, but I couldn’t be bothered arguing. So I picked the most logical and irrefutable part.

“Ambrose,” I said from beneath the covers. “This is Perth. Nothing is open at this time, apart from petrol stations. And it’s not like they’re selling you fresh, healthy hoopla.”

I felt him sit down on the bed next to me.

“There has to be somewhere.”

“No. There isn’t. Woolies opens at eight, and I’ll drive you down then if you want.”

I tried to roll over so I could go back to sleep, but Ambrose grabbed my elbow, pushed me back, and yanked off the covers. I screwed up my eyes against the daylight coming through the window that some idiot had already pulled the curtains back from.

“Come on, Shane. There has to be somewhere around. What about the farmers markets?”

I groaned and put my hands over my face. “Not until seven thirty.”

“And there’s nothing that’s twenty-four hours?”

I kept silent. Because there was. But I was not getting out of bed.

“Great!” Ambrose cried, obviously reading my silence correctly. “I’ll find you some clothes, shall I? You don’t need a shower, because you had one last night. Let’s go.”

He yanked my arm, and I tried to hang on to the bed, but he was used to wrestling with strong men to win possession of a ball. I landed on the floor with a thump.

“Great,” Ambrose cried again. “Now that you’re up, I’ll make you a coffee to drink while you drive.”

That’s how I found myself backing out of my carport ten minutes later, my hair unbrushed and my eyes barely focused. “I don’t think my car has ever been awake at this time,” I mumbled.

“You’re doing fantastic. So, where are we going?”

“Spud Shed.”

“Ah.” We drove in silence for another minute. Then he said, “You do realize I don’t know what a spud shed is, don’t you?”

It was too early to be nice.

“A spud is a potato, and a shed is an open building, usually used to store items.”

I swear I could hear him grinding his teeth. “I know what a spud and a shed are. I just don’t know why we’re going to one.”

I figured if I told him, he would shut up. Otherwise he would keep talking to me and not let me wake up in silence.

“The Spud Shed. It’s the name of the place. It’s owned by that potato-growing family. The Galatis or whatever.”

“The guy with black caterpillars for eyebrows?” Ambrose asked as though it had struck some sort of memory.

“That’s him.”

“I saw it on the news in Melbourne where some Perth kid dressed up as him for Halloween or something. It was hilarious.”

“Unlike my current situation.” I was still pissed off. It was not even six thirty in the morning on a Saturday.

“I made you a coffee,” Ambrose said, as though it made up for the fact that I was out of bed before vampires had even brushed their teeth and gotten ready to retire.

“Then you should shut up and let it work.”

“Jeez, you’re grumpy in the morning. How come I never knew that?”

It didn’t take a genius to work out. “Because you rarely sleep over. You never see me in the mornings. And the times you have, like when we go away, you usually get up early and go for a jog, allowing me to wake up in my own time.”

“Hmm,” Ambrose mused to himself. “Well, my recovery will be an excellent time for you to join me. When I’m allowed, I’ll be walking, then a gentle jog. By that time your fitness would be improving.”

“What? No way. And you can’t improve something you don’t have in the first place. If you think I’m going to be merrily jogging next to you in about four months, you have a shock coming.”

“Of course not,” Ambrose immediately said.

“Good.”

“It will be six months, according to the doctor’s schedule.”

I nearly spilled coffee in my lap, and Ambrose had to rescue the cup. Only minutes later we turned into the driveway of the Spud Shed, which was surprisingly busy for the early hour.

I found a parking space that didn’t have another car on Ambrose’s side so he could open the door fully and get out. The trolleys were parked outside the store, and I grabbed one.

“Lead on, oh hungry one,” I mocked him with a salute.

Ambrose made straight for the fruit and vegetable section and picked out things like strawberries, mangos, and oranges from the large displays. On the far wall, he scooped up celery, spring onions, leeks, sprouts, spinach leaves, and radishes. I stopped watching Ambrose and began to look at the other people, curious about who else was shopping at that time.

There were a number of mothers with babies. I wondered if they’d been woken early by their children and thought that since they were up, they might as well go shopping. Others were people in gym gear and surprisingly many in work uniforms who looked like they were loading their trolleys in bulk.

I followed Ambrose to the meat section, where he picked out steaks, steaks, and more steaks, and not the cheap ones either. I wondered if he expected me to put some money toward the cost. I could be bookless for a while if that were the case.

Next were eggs and then stuff like milk, ricotta, and yogurt—but the healthy yogurt without the flavoring in. In other words, the yuck stuff.

“Bro-Jak!”

I was tossed from my reverie by a middle-aged man who approached Ambrose and offered his hand. It happened sometimes. I sighed. The man asked Ambrose lots of questions, and I tuned out, but he had attracted attention. A boy of about ten who was shopping with his mother approached, a notebook and pen outstretched. Ambrose signed it and ruffled the boy’s hair. He skipped happily back to his mother.

Another man approached, this one younger, and patted Ambrose on the shoulder. Then two women sidled over and gave him a shy smile. One asked for him to sign her arm, and he did. They both giggled, but then the taller one gave her friend a speaking look… and wandered away, leaving the shorter brunette to flirt—all with me standing all of two meters away. I had obviously gone back to being as noticeable as the wallpaper. The woman sympathized over Ambrose’s operation and then said, “So what are you doing in Perth? Are you at loose ends?”

Even blind Freddie could see that invitation.

“Nah. I’m a Perth boy. I have plenty of friends and family here to keep me busy.”

I wondered what the woman would think if I told her Bro-Jak had been really busy with me the night before.

“Would you like my number, just in case?” she persisted. I was amazed at her audacity. I was also amazed at how easily Ambrose handled it. He told her no in a way that didn’t offend her and then pointed to me and told her he had to keep going because I had somewhere to go. She looked at me as though surprised I had popped up out of nowhere.

I waved.

“Yep. I have to depart. People to do, places to go, banks to rob.”

I received a look that told me she thought I was not only crazy, I was Satan for pushing her away from her beloved Bro-Jak.

I shrugged and pushed the trolley, leaving Ambrose to catch up and the woman to drift away after her friend.

“Banks to rob?” Ambrose asked as he came up behind me and then leaned past me to grab some frozen fish.

“It’s what I do in my spare time.”

“Yeah?” he asked as though I had told him I polished shoes as a hobby. “You any good at it?”

“Never been caught, have I?” I said sarcastically.

“You’re that good?” he said, playing along.

“No. I’m that invisible. Didn’t you notice how none of those people acknowledged me? They didn’t even see me. I’m invisible. I’m going to take up bank robbing.” I followed his crutching form as we hit the bakery section. “No one ever sees me.”

Ambrose pulled flatbreads from the shelf and threw a couple in the trolley. Then he took two steps until he was in line with me and stopped to rest on his crutches.

“I see you, Shane.”