Chapter Twenty-Five

DISGUSTINGLY, NEITHER man had a hangover. Ambrose swallowed a whole bunch of tablets with his breakfast, as usual, and claimed it was because he took vitamin tablets that he never got a hangover.

Dan stretched and wandered off to have a shower while I cleaned up the kitchen and started some washing. Ambrose had actually kept the house pretty clean during the week, so I didn’t feel the need to clean up.

“So, what’s on the diary for today?” Dan asked as he wandered out of the bathroom wrapped in only a towel. My gay genes appreciated the sight. He might’ve been retired from footy, but that obviously didn’t mean he was turning slothful.

Ambrose chuckled, poked a finger in my side, and answered. “Shane’s going to the Dockers game.”

Dan froze in the act of pulling on his shirt. “Yeah? Are we going too?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I picked up Ambrose’s plate from the table and walked it to the kitchen for him. “It’s the Pride Round. But they only celebrate it on one of the games, the Sydney clash today against St. Kilda. So my friends decided we’d make our own Pride Round here in Perth. We’re going as a cheer squad to Micah Johnson.”

The shirt went over his head. “Cool. Sounds fun. So why aren’t we going, Ambrose?”

“’Cause Shane never invited me.”

Dan was succinct. “Well, fuck him. We’re going anyway.”

“We are?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s football, and nothing is better than watching football on a weekend. Because I haven’t been to a game in ages because I have a wife and baby who are too cute to leave alone that long. Because it’ll be good for you to go to the football. Because it will be especially good for you to go and be involved in something like supporting Pride.” Ambrose looked unconvinced, but then Dan said, “And Shane’s going.”

Ambrose immediately got to his feet. “So when are we leaving?”

Dan brightened considerably. I looked between the two of them, completely unsure it was a good idea. “I don’t have tickets for you.”

Dan gave me a look that was distinctly pitying. “Shane, we’re Hawks. We don’t need tickets.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m pretty sure you can’t rock up to the gate and say, ‘My name is Daniel Egan. Let me in.’ It doesn’t work that way.”

He gave me a smug smile. “Just let me make a couple of calls.”

Thirty minutes later we were discussing what to wear. I had a white shirt that supported marriage equality that I was planning to wear, but Ambrose snitched it from my hands and declared he was wearing it. It was the stylistic map of Australia with seven states and territories shaded in different colors—very carefully leaving out the ACT, because whoever remembered about that territory?—and the word equality stamped across it. Australia was gearing up for a marriage-equality push, and the shirts were fundraising.

Dan frowned. “Where’s mine, then?”

With resignation I pulled open a drawer and retrieved an identical T-shirt but printed on black. Dan grabbed it with glee. The shirts were a little tight on the two men, but it only accentuated their chests. I wished I looked that sexy in those shirts.

Dan left the room wearing my shirt, so I dug through my drawer and pulled out a purple shirt that was a couple of years old. It was stamped with the word pride and had a rainbow above it. I put it on and smoothed it over my jeans. Then I turned to see Ambrose watching me with a distinct look of desire in his eyes… and it shocked me.

“Gosh you look sexy in that shirt,” Ambrose whispered as he leaned over to kiss me.

BY THE time we got in my car to drive to the grounds, I still hadn’t worked out what I was going to say to my friends. Was I going to show up with two AFL stars whom my friends, who were supposed to be the closest people to me, didn’t even know I knew? I was nervous—super nervous, like nearly run up the back of a police car nervous.

“Sorry,” I muttered as Dan chuckled in the back about it being a story to tell his wife when he got home. Ambrose mentioned something about whiplash. I just concentrated on driving smoothly. I didn’t think the police car noticed my sudden stop behind them, and it turned off into another street and left me free to go back to panicking.

By the time we parked, there were a bunch of messages on the group chat—Vinnie telling us all he was at the gate and he had our tickets, Hiram saying he was running late, Liam saying they were arriving, Aaron complaining that he felt exposed by lingering outside the gate at a Dockers game and what if an Eagles fan saw him? Tate told Aaron they no longer hanged people for treason.

We arrived on time but were delayed by Ambrose, who couldn’t walk that fast on his crutches. It meant all my friends—apart from the running-late Hiram—had already assembled.

“Oh fuck. I’m going to be in so much trouble,” I mumbled as we approached the group. They were hard to miss. Vinnie and Jamie were holding rainbow flags. Tate wore a straw hat with a rainbow ribbon on it. Jamie’s sister, Jackie, was there too, dressed in a rainbow skirt with a rainbow bandana tied around her hair. One of Vinnie’s sisters was sporting two temporary tattoos of the rainbow flag on her cheeks as well as an equality shirt identical to the one Ambrose was wearing. Of those I could see, Kee, Tate, Vinnie, and Aaron were all wearing some sort of Pride T-shirt.

“Why?” asked Dan, confused about me being in trouble.

Confession time all around. “I’ve never even told them I’m friends with the mighty Bro-Jak. Now I’m turning up to a game with him and the famous Dan Egan?”

He looked shocked. “They don’t know about you and Ambrose?”

I was full of sympathy for his mistake. “Who would ever believe me?”

He couldn’t reply because we were upon the group. Kee was the first to notice me. “Shane’s here.”

They all turned. Vinnie, who was in the act of hefting a bag onto his shoulder, dropped the bag with a thump. It landed on Aaron’s foot.

“Ow. What the fuck, Vin? Why did you—? Holy shit.” Aaron obviously recognized Ambrose immediately too. And I thought Dan and Ambrose were well disguised wearing sunglasses and hats.

“Fuck me to hell.” That was Liam’s brother Ben.

“Oh my God!” That was Vinnie’s cousin Ricky.

“Seriously?” John looked amazed.

Some of the others evidently didn’t recognize my two famous tagalongs, but from the whispers in ears and the shocked expressions that filtered through our gathered crowd, they were quickly informed. I took a deep breath.

“Guys, this is my childhood friend, Ambrose Jakoby. We lived next door to each other when we were growing up, and our mothers are best friends. And this is Daniel Egan, his friend from Melbourne. When Dan heard I was coming to the game to cheer on Micah, he asked if they could tag along. You don’t mind, do you?”

They were all stunned to silence. It was awkward until Liam limped forward. “Of course they can join us. Welcome.” He stuck out his hand, and Ambrose shook. “You’re in good company. I spent close to three years on crutches of some sort. You’re just lucky you’ll get better.”

I pointed to everyone in the group. “Dan, Ambrose—this is Liam, Jamie, Kee, Tate, John, Jackie, Vinnie, Aaron, Ricky, Sandra, Tony, Lachie—no, sorry. That’s Lachie, and the little one is Tony. And that’s….” I had to stop while Patrice confirmed her name, because I always mixed her up with her cousin Linda. “Patrice, Mario, Frankie, Ben, aaaannd”—I pointed behind Ben—“that’s Hiram, who’s running because he’s late to meet us.”

Hiram raced up behind the group, some of whom were still staring at Bro-Jak and Daniel in shock. “Hey, everyone. Sorry I’m late. I had to stop and—holy fuck. Who brought Bro-Jak?”

“Shane.” My name came in stereo from around the group.

Oh yes. I was going to cop so much shit.

“Shall we move inside?” Daniel asked to break the stiff silence.

“Do you have tickets?” Mario, Vinnie’s dad, asked.

Dan smiled. “Not yet.”

Vinnie’s little brother was only six, and he stared at the mighty Bro-Jak with wide eyes. “Are you sitting with us?”

Dan reached out and ruffled his hair. “I hope so. Let’s see what magic I can pull.”

And with a broad wink at me over his shoulder, Dan walked up to the security guard at the gate and said, “My name’s Daniel Egan. I’m here with Ambrose Jakoby. I was told you could let me in?”

I remembered what I had said to him. “I’m pretty sure you can’t rock up to the gate and say, ‘My name is Daniel Egan. Let me in.’ It doesn’t work that way.” The man was fucking with me.

The guard nodded, spoke into his radio, listened to the reply, and then personally escorted Ambrose and Dan through the gate. I was peeved.

The rest of us lined up to have our bags checked for dangerous weapons, and we were let into the grounds. A man in an official-looking suit was chatting with Daniel, and as we emerged through the gates, Daniel pointed us out. Vinnie marched us through the stadium to where we were sitting, and Daniel, Ambrose, and the suited man followed us. We climbed the stairs. Since we were late to purchase tickets to the game and Vinnie had to try and get so many close to each other, we’d be in the nosebleed seats.

We were spread over three rows—six seats in one row, seven in the next, and then five seats behind that. There was the usual kerfuffle of who was going to sit where, asking people around us to move so we could sit down, sliding into seats, stowing bags under chairs, and then working out if the view was okay. Since I was trailing behind the group, I got placed in the third row with Jackie, John, Liam, and Jamie—in that order. I was kind of glad for that. If Jamie was yakking in my ear, I couldn’t be interrogated by the others.

And being seated next to Jackie and Liam within arm’s reach of each other could get really interesting. Insults usually hurtled through the air.

“Oh my gawd. I can’t believe we’re at Subi Oval, about to watch a football game and cheer on our dreamboat gay poster boy….” And Jamie was off.

I looked around and wondered where Ambrose and Dan had gotten to. I assumed they would’ve been slowed by the stairs. Then I spotted the man in the suit speaking with the older couple who Jackie had asked to move so we could get into our seats. Their seats were the last two on the row. It meant there was an empty seat between me and them. But to my surprise, the couple returned, collected their bags and jackets, and followed the suited man away. Then Ambrose materialized and moved to their seats, shuffled in, and attempted to sit. He couldn’t with his knee, so after some discourse, Dan demanded I switch, took my seat next to the stunned Jamie, and told me to sit next to him. Ambrose took the seat on the very end, stretched out his leg across the empty seat between us, and rested his foot on my knee.

There was a bit of a silence around us as we got settled, and I looked up to see all my friends in the rows below me had turned and to stare with disbelief at Wallpaper Shane seated between two famous players.

“Manners,” I stage-whispered. A couple of them got the hint and turned back. I spoke in an undertone to Dan. “Where is that man in the suit taking that couple?”

He was smug in his reply. “To better seats. My famous arse managed to get some free tickets in a better place than this. Then we offered to swap with them. They didn’t even thank us, they were running so hard to get to their new spot.”

“Famous arse? In your dreams.” Ambrose was full of friendly cheer from the other side of me.

“Can I get an autograph?” Vinnie’s nephew, Lachie, asked from the row in front. He was coming into his teen years and evidently hadn’t worked out how to be cool around his heroes.

“Sure,” Dan said affably with a long look in Ambrose’s direction, as if to say “So there!” “We’ll be here all day, so it doesn’t need to be done right now. Okay?”

“Why are you at a Dockers game?” Tony asked Ambrose in confusion. “You’re a Hawk.”

Ambrose smiled. “Yeah, but I like watching footy, don’t I? So when I heard you guys were coming, I decided I’d come along and watch. So tell me, who should I go for today? Dockers or Geelong?”

Tony gave it serious thought. “I think you should go for the Dockers, because you’re from Perth. But I don’t think Geelong have very many people here today to cheer for them. So maybe it would be nice to go for them?”

It was gorgeous to see Ambrose pretend to frown and give it serious thought too. “That’s true. But what do you think my Hawthorn teammates will think if they see me going for Geelong?”

Tony considered this. “I think that maybe they’ll hurt your other knee. So maybe you should just be Shitzaland.”

The adults around him broke into noisy laughter. Seated next to her little brother, Patrice looked horrified. “Switzerland. It’s Switzerland.” She turned a bright red face to Ambrose. “I’m sorry. My aunt says that a lot when we go to her if we think Mum is being unfair.”

Ambrose shook with laughter and waved her away. “Not a problem. And I think he’s right. I should be Switzerland today.”

Most of the others turned away, and I saw Ambrose look beyond me down the row. Jamie was sitting forward with a big grin on his face. “Oh my gawd. I haven’t seen you in, like, ten years. You’ve grown.”

Oh God. Jamie was going to say something awful. I knew it.

“Jamie, right?” Ambrose said. “I remember you from school. You were always hanging around Shane.”

“I think Shane was hanging around Jamie,” I muttered but was ignored.

“Oh my gawd. Can you remember the haircuts we had back then? It was all Nellyville and grunge-rock wannabees. I definitely want to die when I look at some of those photographs. Shane was the sensible one who never tried to follow the latest looks, so he ended up looking so normal in all the photos, while we looked—”

“Hi, I’m Jackie.”

Jamie’s sister had stood up, which meant she was only half a head taller than John, who was seated—she was very short and could be very vocal if you felt the need to point it out—and was leaning across everyone with her hand out to shake. She’d also cut off Jamie’s monologue, which was sort of a good thing.

“Hi, Jackie,” Ambrose politely replied and shook her hand.

“I don’t know if you remember me from school. I was the year above Jamie and Shane.”

Ambrose nodded and murmured something nonspecific so she wouldn’t be offended that a boy whose only interest was football didn’t remember a girl three years older than him at school from twelve years earlier.

“It was the only time she was above anything after age nine,” Liam said as an aside to Dan. John groaned loudly.

“Did you have to stir the pot, Liam?”

“No brains,” Jackie sniped. “What would you expect from—?”

“Stop,” John said loudly to the two of them on either side of him, and he held his hands up like a policeman directing traffic. “We’re not going to snipe at each other for at least the first half of the game. Okay?”

Jackie and Liam glared at each other while quite a few of us snickered.

Any further developments were halted as the Geelong team took to the field. Vinnie, in the first row, unfurled his flag, which had actually been turned into a banner with writing on it. He’d attached a second pole to the other side of the flag so he could hold it open. When the Dockers took to the field and the crowd roared, he held up his banner and we were able to read it from the behind, even though it was backward to us.

HAPPY PRIDE MICAH was written in black over the rainbow stripes of the banner.

We all shouted our approval and cheered.