Chapter Twenty-Four

“YOU HAVE to tell me about Ambrose as a kid,” Dan said, and I realized neither he nor Ambrose were displaying any signs of being sober. I hoped they didn’t get hangovers easily.

“Focused very much on football,” I said as I poured myself another drink, sat on the floor next to the coffee table, and helped myself to some chips.

“That’s just normal,” Dan said, and I had to appreciate that Dan was probably entirely focused on football too. He’d been drafted at the tender age of seventeen, exactly like Ambrose. “No. Give me something juicy.”

Ambrose was sprawled on the lounge with a loopy grin on his face. I wondered what had put it there. “I was a choirboy. Nothing juicy happened.”

“What?” Dan cried. “Not caught kissing a girl behind the sheds or even a boy in your case? No toilet paper around the teacher’s car or caught skipping a science test?”

I bit my lip. “You did seem to get a lot of colds when maths tests came around,” I said soberly to Ambrose, and he flipped me the bird. I considered him and thought back to our childhood. “There was that time a pair of red underwear somehow ended up on top of the flagpole at school.”

Ambrose choked on his drink. “Shit. It took me nearly an hour to get them up there too.”

“Or that time every single door in the gymnasium was mysteriously locked, and no one knew who had the key because they hadn’t been locked for years?”

Ambrose pointed a finger in my direction. “That one you can’t blame me for. That was all Jonathan.”

“And how do you know that?” I asked idly.

“Because I saw him do it.”

“Saw him?” I asked. “You probably egged him on.”

He rolled his eyes. “No. I was keeping a lookout. He needed no encouragement.”

Dan laughed. “How did Jonathan lock the doors if no one had a key?”

Ambrose shrugged. “Jonathan’s brother’s favorite pastime was breaking and entering. He had a huge set of random keys and told us it was amazing how many times a random key would work on a lock. Jonathan would bring about ten to school every day just to try them. And one day it worked, so I kept a lookout while Jonathan locked all the doors.”

Dan wiped tears of laughter. “Okay, then. What about things Shane did?”

I froze. “No. I was good,” I protested.

Ambrose held his stomach as he laughed. “Don’t think I didn’t know it was you who photoshopped Hunter Mackenzie’s head onto that picture with the porn star and put it on Mr. Sloane’s computer as a screen saver. So, when the projector finished playing its film about the war and Mr. Sloane turned it off, the photo came up.”

I could feel the tips of my ears burning. “That wasn’t me.” My face turned red and clearly showed I was lying.

Ambrose wagged a finger in my direction. “At least three people in the class snapped a photo with their phones before Mr. Sloane could turn it off. It was brilliant.”

Dan’s mouth hung open.

I sighed and fessed up. “No. The brilliant bit was that Hunter got in trouble for it. The teachers thought he’d done it himself. Who risks sneaking into a teacher’s office while he should be in class, just to put up a picture of someone else?”

Dan looked between me and Ambrose. “Hunter got busted for it?”

I shrugged. “Not really. They couldn’t prove it was him, but he got grilled at the office, and the teachers didn’t bother looking at any other suspects.”

“And what did this terrible Hunter do to you to deserve that sort of treatment?” Dan wondered aloud.

Yeah, Shane. What did Hunter do?

Ambrose answered first. “I remember laughing because it wasn’t long after Jodie dumped me for him. At that stage I thought of him as an arse.”

I nodded. “He was a total arse. He used to call me and my best friend, Jamie, names—terrible ones like fag and poo pusher and butt fuckers.”

Daniel grimaced. “Total arse, then.”

It was Ambrose who surprised me. “You should’ve told me, Shane. I would’ve thumped him harder.”

That time Dan raised an eyebrow. “Harder? You mean you thumped him anyway?”

Ambrose smiled. “The guy was thicker than pig shit. He was warned not to make homophobic remarks. One of the other guys in our group was gay, and he didn’t like it either. So every time Hunter said something bad, I thumped him.”

“Someone else in your group was gay?” I asked, completely shocked. “Who?”

“Ben Dietsch.”

“No way. Ben Dietsch was fucking gay? He never even came up on my gaydar. Wait until Jamie hears about this.”

Dan had a small smile playing around his lips. “You can never pick them. Right, Ambrose?”

That gave me an opening. “So how did you find out?” I asked Dan with interest. “About Ambrose, I mean.”

The look Dan gave Ambrose was one of deep mateship. “Probably much the same as we’re doing now—hanging out. He got super drunk. Then we started talking about stuff, and out Ambrose pours about this guy at home who he misses.”

I lost the ability to breathe.

“He says to me that this guy is perfect,” Dan said with a wink in Ambrose’s direction, and Ambrose sat back with a reminiscing expression. “There was something about the way he said it that I suddenly knew.”

Ambrose stared off in the distance, as though caught up in a happy memory. In the silence Dan suddenly yawned and put his hand up to his face to rub at his cheeks. I realized it was probably two in the morning for him.

“Oh, shit. You probably need to get to bed,” I said to him. “Where are you staying? I’ve just had a drink, so I’m not fit to drive.”

“I was going to sack out on your couch if you didn’t mind. I’m used to sleeping on odd furniture. It will probably be heaven not to have to balance a three-month-old baby on my chest while I sleep.”

Oh. That would mean he would see Ambrose join me in my bed… although it seemed that he realized Ambrose and I slept together on occasion.

I looked at Ambrose in exasperation. “You do realize that you have a bed at your mother’s house, and that house has two spare guest rooms, and those spare guest rooms have double beds? And here you’re making your best mate sleep on a couch.”

Ambrose grinned a loopy smile at me. “I can’t help it if your father was stingy and only bought you a small house. Next time ask him for more.”

I snorted. “My father didn’t buy me shit. Not even a birthday card. You know I have no idea who he even was. This house was bought by me with my own money.”

The look Ambrose gave me showed his incredulity. “Oh, come on, Shane. You don’t really think that, do you?”

I was confused and frowned. “I don’t know what you mean. I got this house by myself. I saved for years to get the deposit, and I’m paying the mortgage. My nonexistent father probably doesn’t even know I’m alive.”

Ambrose sat up and shook his head. “Shane. Come on, mate. You looked for houses for months but couldn’t find anything in your price range. Prices were sky-high everywhere. First-home buyers were squeezed out of the market. And then, one day, your mother comes home with miraculous news? Someone she knows through her work, which is a lawyer’s office that deals with private law, has a place to sell that’s perfect for you and at a price that is so unbelievable that it has to be a setup? So you agree to buy it, and your mother takes care of all the paperwork for you?”

It was like someone poured ice water over my head. My face went slack, and I shivered as a freezing sensation traversed my body. I couldn’t comprehend. No. What Ambrose was suggesting couldn’t be true.

“Surely you’ve worked it out by now,” Ambrose said.

I shook my head. On my right, in my peripheral vision, I was aware of Dan getting to his feet and saying something about needing to use the bathroom. I knew that was a ruse just to get out of the room and give Ambrose and me some privacy. If I knew that was a ruse, why hadn’t I known that my mother had set me up?

“No.” My voice was croaky. “She wouldn’t do that to me.”

“Shane.” Ambrose’s tone was slightly pitying. “Elaine is one of the smartest people I know. I never swallowed the story that she didn’t know who or where your father was. I never even swallowed the story that she accidentally got pregnant. It follows that she knows where your father is. Eighteen years of child support payments is a lot of money. Who’s to say she didn’t confront this guy and demand that he help you out?”

I felt sick. My house? My little house that I was so proud of buying all by myself with no help? I hadn’t bought it?

I flopped back on the carpeted floor and stared at the ceiling.

“Shane? Shane.”

I heard a grunt of pain and rolled my head to the side to see Ambrose crawling toward me. I was so full of my own problems that I couldn’t worry about his knee. That was his knee. It was connected to his body. I was stuck with my own problems in my own body.

My mother had lied to me. She had fooled me into thinking I didn’t have a father and then schemed up something to help me buy a house.

“Shane?”

I didn’t know how to explain what was going on in me. “I have a father?” I asked Ambrose helplessly as he made it across the floor to sit by my side.

He chuckled. “Do we need to have a little birds-and-bees talk?”

I ignored that. “I never missed him. I mean, most of my friends had fathers who were somewhere else. They talked about getting excited when they were going to visit their dads, or sometimes wanted to call him. I never had that. I mean, I had you, and I had Tracy. I never missed him.”

Ambrose gently stroked my forehead as though I were an unwell toddler. “I know. Elaine’s a pretty special parent. She was always fair and kind and tried to be both mum and dad.”

“I can’t comprehend that he… might exist. Does he want to meet me?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Elaine that question.”

That made me feel worse. “She lied to me.”

It meant a lot to me that Ambrose didn’t shrug it off as nothing. “Yeah. But she’s also human. And she’s also done everything to put you first. She probably lied, thinking it was best for you not to know.”

Yes. I could see that about Mum. Ambrose and I sat on the floor together for another minute, and then Dan reappeared and didn’t comment at all about our use of the floor when there were plenty of chairs in my house… or actually not exactly my house.

“Oh, hey,” he said.

“Sorry,” I apologized without moving. I didn’t feel able to move. Dan could deal with that.

He waved off the apology. “Don’t sweat it. I grew up in St. Kilda. If ever there were a place for family dramas, it was St. Kilda. I was just lucky my dad didn’t drink. He had the philosophy that if we were playing sports, we weren’t on the streets. I grew up playing every sport known to man—cricket, soccer, rugby, hockey, T-ball, softball, baseball, futsal, tennis. I did them all. Which meant Dad was never at home, because he was working to pay for all the fees. So in a way, my dad paid for my house too. If he hadn’t pushed me so much into sports, I would never have played AFL, which paid for my house.”

“My dad paid for my house too,” Ambrose said. “By not wanting to have anything to do with me, it made me try harder for approval, especially the male approval of my coaches and sports teachers. It made me have the drive I do. It paid for my house.”

I looked at Ambrose in surprise. I hadn’t realized that was part of the reason behind his enjoyment of sports.

“I don’t like the idea that my dad paid for something I consider mine.” It was hurtful.

Dan answered. “Don’t be stupid. A parent paying for something is a parent being a parent. Just because my dad paid for my footy uniform, my footy boots, my footy registration fees, and even paid for the bike that got me to the game every Saturday, it doesn’t mean the glory of playing belongs to him. Everything you do in this life is your own. You’re the one with the job and paying the mortgage, Shane. Don’t be thinking of being noble and giving his gift back to him.”

How did he know what I was thinking?

I turned suddenly to Ambrose. “I don’t want to meet him. I don’t have to meet him, do I? I mean, I’ve gotten to twenty-nine years old without him. I don’t need him, right?”

Ambrose stroked my hair back and ran his fingers down my cheek in what was becoming a familiar action. “No. You don’t have to meet him. You don’t have to even know his name. You just go on as you were and don’t say anything to Elaine. I’m sorry I brought it up. It’s Dan’s fault.”

“Hey,” Dan protested from across the room. “What did I do?”

Ambrose gave him a withering look. “You descended into Perth without warning and then proceeded to buy us alcohol to have a party. You got me drunk and my tongue loose.”

Dan put his hands on his hips and glared. “I got on a plane because Sean and Coach and me were all worried about you. You get an injury and then bolt back home and go radio silent? It’s your fault.”

“I came home because Shane wasn’t talking to me and I needed to make things right between us again. I went radio silent because I was brooding about what to do with Shane. It’s Shane’s fault.”

They both turned to look at me, and Dan nodded. “Okay. We’ll blame Shane.”

And just like that, it was my own fault that I’d been told about a father I never knew I had. I closed my eyes to the ridiculousness of it.

Dan clapped his hands. “Right. Now that we have that sorted, get yourselves off the floor and go to bed. You’re lying around in my bedroom for the night, and I need my beauty sleep.”

I hauled myself to my feet and started to gather some of the mess. Ambrose wasn’t supposed to walk anywhere without his crutches and therefore couldn’t carry anything to the kitchen to clean up, so I shooed him away to get himself ready to sleep. Dan paused beside me in the kitchen and whispered, “I’m really glad to meet you at last. Ambrose needs you. Whatever’s necessary to keep you guys together, you tell me, and I’ll make it happen. He’s one of my best mates, and I’ll do anything to help him get what he needs. He told me he’s asked you to come back to Melbourne with him.”

Dan had obviously kept Ambrose’s secret for years. I hoped I could trust him.

“I don’t think the AFL world is ready for a Bro-Jak in a same-sex relationship. I can’t see how Ambrose could keep playing and be with me.”

Dan nodded and seemed to think about it for a moment. “Well, I guess you’ll simply have to be the childhood friend Bro-Jak lives with. You’re like his big brother. No offense, but you don’t come over that you’re gay, and Ambrose probably only has another couple of years left in him. I reckon it would work.”

I glared at him with a mixture of anger and shock. “You want me to go back in the closet? Do you realize how hard it is to be in the closet? Do you realize how difficult it is to come out in the first place?”

He shook his head. “I’m not suggesting you lie. I’m merely suggesting that you don’t parade every single outfit you have in that closet out to the world to comment on and dissect.”

“Same difference,” I argued.

He shook his head. “No. I’m saying that much of a footballer’s life actually doesn’t make the media if they don’t want to. Kendra was always on that app, posting pictures of everything they did. It was visible. But I bet you you can’t name a single footballer from any of the clubs who live together? Who does Sean live with?”

I frowned. I had no idea who Sean lived with.

Dan nodded knowingly. “He lives with his cousin. His cousin is studying at the University of Melbourne and shares his house. Sean lets him live there rent-free in exchange for him cleaning the house and looking after the garden. It won’t be a big deal, Shane. I don’t think you have to hide in the closet at all. As long as you’re not caught kissing in public, it won’t be a big deal.”

I wasn’t overly fond of public displays of affection anyway.

Dan touched me on the shoulder. “Just think about it, mate. Now go to bed. I’m wasted.”

I grabbed him a spare pillow and blanket and went to join Ambrose. It couldn’t be as easy as that, could it?