Chapter Twenty-Six

ONCE THE anthem had been sung, the teams finished their warm-up, the coin toss was made, ends chosen, and the siren sounded to get them into place.

“Oh,” said Jamie as we watched the umpire hold the ball aloft, ready for the center bounce that would start the game. “This is where the guys do their grand jetés, right?”

“For the sake of all things holy, Jay,” Liam burst out. “The ruckmen are not doing ballet moves.”

“They should,” Jamie replied, not perturbed in the least that he still didn’t know the rules of football after two years of Liam trying to teach him.

“I need to shift seats,” Liam muttered. “I knew I shouldn’t have sat next to him.”

“Shh,” John said in a conciliatory tone. “We’ll move after the first quarter.”

Liam sat back in a huff, and the game went on. Geelong took a mark and lined up in front of the goals. “Too much wind,” Dan said beside me.

“Too much wind from more than just the ground,” Liam muttered darkly.

The Geelong player kicked, and it flew through the air only to hit the post. The crowd of mostly Dockers supporters cheered with relief that the opposition would only be awarded one point instead of the six they would’ve received for a goal being scored.

Jamie cheered along with them. Then he turned to Liam. “I forget. Is managing to hit the pole a good thing or a bad?”

I saw Liam’s fists clench in frustration, but John was there to save the day. “Jamie? Do you think all the Geelong players are wearing white jocks under their white uniform? Or do you reckon some of them go for the jockstrap?”

It diverted Jamie’s attention as he concentrated on trying to see what they were wearing under their clothes.

Dan had his head turned my way as he tried to hold back a grin from my best friend’s idiocy.

“How do you know all these people again?” he asked me.

“Next to you is my best friend from school, Jamie. Then next to him is his boyfriend, Liam. Then next to him is Liam’s brother, John, who happens to be engaged to Jamie’s sister on the end there.”

“Ah. Awkward.”

I laughed.

“Just a bit. Then in the front row with the flag is Vinnie, who Jamie met not long after high school, and we became firm friends with him. Next to him is his boyfriend, Aaron, who also happens to be Liam’s best friend.”

Dan nodded. “Keeping it in the family, so to speak?”

Considering the truth about Vinnie’s biological family—as his dad, mum, and mum’s sister lived in a poly relationship—I had to bite my tongue. I pointed to the guy decked head to toe in Dockers-supporter gear. “Next to Aaron is Liam’s brother, Ben—the obvious Docker fan. Then there’s Vinnie’s brother, Frankie, and their nephew, Lachie. Then on the end is Hiram. We used to date, but now we’re just friends.”

“Another awkward relationship?” Dan asked.

“No, actually,” I refuted. “We tried dating, but we were better friends. There’s no hard feelings either side.”

“You and Ambrose are a better fit than I imagined.”

I decided I’d think about that comment a bit more before asking questions, so I pointed to the row immediately in front of us. “Up the end, looking resplendent, is Tate. Don’t bother talking footy to him any more than you’d discuss the finer points of the ruck with Jamie. Tate is here because his boyfriend, Kee, dragged him along. I’ve known Kee since I was about twenty-two. I can’t remember how or why he joined our friendship group—probably Jamie and Vinnie. Then the others in the row are Vinnie’s dad, sister, brother, cousin, and cousin’s wife.”

The Dockers scored a goal, and people all around us who were paying attention to the game jumped to their feet and screamed their approval. Since Ambrose’s injured leg was resting on my lap, I didn’t move. Instead I looked over and smiled at him. He watched me with an expression I could only call contented.

“What?” I mouthed.

His smile widened. “It’s been a while since we’ve watched a game together.”

It had been. And if I was honest with myself, I’d missed it. Of course I knew I missed Ambrose, but I was fooling myself if I said I didn’t miss watching games with him too. Over the first five years since he’d been drafted, I’d managed to watch a couple of finals with him—they were the years Hawthorn didn’t make it to the finals and his season had ended early. The only games I watched in the intervening year had been games where he was playing or the amateur games John played in.

“I’m hoping that will change,” he said, and he held my gaze. I shivered visibly and saw by his smirk that he caught it.

I managed to keep my attention on the ball for the rest of the quarter. When the siren sounded to bring the game to a halt, Dockers were holding a wonky one-point lead. Many of the crowd around us, obviously seasoned spectators, stood to stretch their limbs from the cramped confines of the seating at Subiaco Oval.

“Dockers are playing well, right?” Jamie chirped, and Liam turned his back on his boyfriend.

“Kee. I need to swap seats with Tate. I knew it was a bad idea to bring him.”

“You were the one who insisted,” Jamie called, not offended in the least that his boyfriend didn’t want to sit next to him. Liam clambered over the back of the seats in Tate’s direction, but John protested.

“Oh no, you aren’t leaving me here with those two. Ben, you can swap with me.”

“In your dreams,” Ben replied without moving.

“Sandra? You’ll swap with me, won’t you?”

Sandra looked at him over her shoulder. “I’m sitting with Patrice. You can’t leave Patrice in among you men by herself.”

John started to look desperate. He fixed his eyes on Dan.

“Dan, you can move too.” Then he bossed him around and made Dan move, as though the famous Daniel Egan had been his friend for years. He shifted Tate next to me into Dan’s spot, moved Patrice and Sandra to between Jackie and Jamie, and then Dan and John took the seats between Ricky and Tony. Tony gazed up in awe at his hero sitting beside him.

Fifteen minutes into the second quarter, the suited man reappeared at Ambrose’s side and bent to whisper something in his ear. Whatever it was, Ambrose nodded agreeably and clapped Daniel on the shoulder. I frowned at him, and he said, “Duty calls. We’ve got to go and pay the price for being famous.” I had no idea what he meant.

“Will you be okay?”

He hauled himself to his feet and picked up the crutches. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry about me. Have fun with your friends.”

The moment he and Daniel were out of sight, Vinnie stood, exited his row, walked to my row, and sat down in the seat beside me.

“No one I need know about, huh?”

I remembered saying that to him the night he found the photo of Ambrose on my phone. I didn’t have an answer for him, so I stayed silent.

“I don’t actually remember you telling me who took that photo, Shane. I mean, it was a pretty intimate shot. Only someone who was completely trusted would be able to get that close to him.”

“Vinnie, please. Don’t make a fuss of this.” I was willing to beg.

He tapped his chin with his finger to appear to be thinking. “I remember you telling me you’d once converted a straight guy for one night.”

“And I remember Liam telling us the only straight guy who would give another guy a blow job was someone who wasn’t so straight in the first place.”

Vinnie conceded this point. “True. Some guys are really afraid of admitting to their bisexual tendencies for fear of appearing less than men.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Micah Johnson get tackled. He managed to hang on to the ball long enough to handpass it off to his teammate. I thought what Ambrose’s life would be like if he were to come out during his career. Look what happened when Declan Tyler was outed.

“I don’t think it’s that at all. That’s not how he thinks of gay men. It’s more what other people think of gay men. Then you add the layer of bisexuality, and people are complete arseholes about it.”

Vinnie was still stubborn about it. He scowled. “But that’s the point. The more high-level players and actors and such come out about it, the better it is for those in the public who are queer. There needs to be representatives for them in high-profile positions.”

“I agree. But that’s not your decision to make, is it? You don’t label someone contrary to what they feel about themselves, and you don’t out them against their wishes. You don’t tell a transman he’s really a woman, you don’t tell a gay man he’s really bi because he was married to a woman, and you don’t insist that you know better than someone when they label themselves. You have no idea about other influences in someone’s life that stops them from coming out. When you do that, you become the arsehole.”

Vinnie stared at me wide-eyed. Okay, maybe I was a little defiant there.

“You’re right,” he said eventually with a large sigh. “I am an arsehole for thinking of only myself and my own label instead of allowing someone else to discover for themselves.”

“Sometimes it’s clear that you’re gay, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” To illustrate my point, Jamie screeched “Oh my gawd!” at something he and Tate were discussing. “To the others, like Aaron, you just let them move at their own pace.”

Vinnie went puppy-eyed at the mention of his boyfriend and looked over to where Aaron and Ben had their heads together and were furiously debating a call by one of the umpires. “He’s come a long way, hasn’t he?” he asked softly.

Aaron was clearly in love with Vinnie. They didn’t do public holding hands or passionate kisses, but if you knew Aaron, you could see the care he had for Vinnie.

“He has.”

But then Vinnie turned back to me. “Enough of my man. I want to know about you. I get that there should be no labels, but you’re my friend. I want to know if this is okay with you? What are you going to do? What do you think you’re doing? Where is this going?”

I checked to make sure no one was listening, but I needed someone to confide in.

“He’s asked me to move to Melbourne with him.”

Vinnie’s eyebrows rose so high it was almost comical. “In what capacity?”

“Friend.” I waited a heartbeat. “And more.”

“A secret more?”

I winced. “More like don’t ask, don’t tell. No one’s business but ours. Cross that bridge if someone decides to blab.”

“And? How do you feel about this? Do you want to do it?”

I looked at my friends surrounding me. Aaron was in the front row, and Vinnie was in the third. Liam was sitting next to Kee while Jamie sat next to Tate. Even John and Jackie and Sandra and Ricky were separated. It didn’t matter to them who they sat next to in public, but it would matter to them who they went home with.

I raised my chin and said with a conviction I didn’t know I had, “I don’t need fireworks. In fact I think I would be uncomfortable with that. I’ve loved him for the last nine years he’s lived in Melbourne. I loved him for several years before that too. That love hasn’t dimmed due to distance or even through lack of contact. Every other person I’ve tried to love just hasn’t stood up to what I feel when I’m with him.”

“Will love be enough?” Vinnie asked softly. “Sometimes love isn’t enough.”

My eyes were wet when I whispered, “He buys me books and then lets me read them without complaining that I’m not paying attention to him. He listens to my opinions and watches dumb movies because I want to. He keeps coming back to me. Despite everything, we seem to gravitate toward each other. He gets me, Vinnie. He gets who I am. He doesn’t want me to change into someone else.”

“But… Melbourne?”

I shook my head. “Melbourne won’t be forever, just for a couple more years. And it’s not like I’m doing anything critically interesting with my life here in Perth. I’m stagnating at best.”

“But does he love you?”

I felt my face go slack. That was the question, wasn’t it?