Chapter Four

SOMEONE ONCE said that courage isn’t about a lack of fear. Courage is measured by how much fear you overcome.

So what is it when fear overcomes you and you work out a way to avoid your best friends so you won’t be put on the spot? Yellow-bellied? Devious? Smart? Slytherin?

It took me a good five minutes to let down the tire on my car. I considered puncturing it, but I didn’t want it to cost me any unnecessary money. Letting the air out of my spare tire took a little more deviousness. I had to sit on the tire to force the air out. Then I had to jack up my car and take off the flat tire so it looked like I’d been halfway through changing it when I discovered my spare tire was flat too.

The problem was, I’d never changed a tire before. Yeah. I can hear the derisive laughs and the jokes about adulting already. It wasn’t because I’m gay and not masculine enough or because I’m not intelligent enough to figure it out, but simply because I am intelligent and paid for roadside breakdown coverage. So I pulled out the instructions on the wheel jack, had a go at it, jammed my finger, scraped my knuckles, and finally retreated inside to watch some YouTube videos on the subject and figure it out.

It was a large waste of an hour. Finally, when it was all set up, I started a text message conversation with the one guy I was trying to avoid.

Me: You need me to bring anything today? I can dash to the shops.

It was total bullshit. If Vinnie asked me to bring anything special, I’d be walking to my local supermarket.

Vinnie: Nope. You’re fine. You’re going to be early, right?

I let that message sit for a bit before I answered. It was the big con.

Me: Yes. I don’t know why you want me to come early. I told you on the phone—it was just a bet.

He answered immediately.

Vinnie: You’re hiding something.

Me: Only the fact I don’t know much about our national sport. Did you know that statistically more AFL players are born in March than any other month?

Vinnie: Deflecting.

Me: I’m getting ready now. Did you know 9% of AFL players are indigenous, yet only 2% of the general population are?

Vinnie: I only want to talk about one AFL player. See you soon?

Me: Yes. Leaving now.

Then I went and made myself a coffee. I read six more pages of the Jack Reacher novel I had bought and disliked most of them. It was my second Jack Reacher novel, and I couldn’t work out why they sold so well.

I took a deep breath and messaged Vinnie.

Me: I have a flat. Changing it now. Going to be a little later than anticipated.

Vinnie’s reply was a cartoon picture of Pinocchio, so I wandered to my garage and snapped a photo of my flat tire propped up against my car. Vinnie’s answer was a picture of Jim Carrey in his Liar, Liar role. I snapped a picture of the grease stain I’d accidentally got on my jeans. He sent me a picture of Macaulay Calkin doing his Home Alone scream face. Vinnie might have—correctly—believed I was lying, but any gay man with self-respect would freak about grease on their clothes.

I read some more of Jack Reacher and then changed my jeans and rang Hiram. He agreed to pick me up on his way to Vinnie and Aaron’s house, which worked perfectly. By the time Hiram picked me up and I’d shown him the two flat tires, we were late to our usual get-together. So the rest of the crew were already there—Kee, Tate, Liam, Jamie, and John. Vinnie glared at me as I walked in with Hiram, but I dutifully showed my damaged knuckles and told the story without blushing.

I thought I was safe.

Nope.

He waited until after lunch and then tackled me in front of everyone. Not literally, although that had been done before. Aaron was a physical sort of guy and had played out more than one wrestling match on his lounge-room floor. Aaron had tackled me a couple of times but had given up. I was too easy to conquer. No, Vinnie tackled me verbally.

“So, Shane. What’s your interest in Bro-Jak?”

John groaned loud. “Aw, man. Out for the season. He must be devvo.”

The lines were clearly drawn in our group—there were the footy-lovers and the nonfooty-lovers—and between the two groups, a yawning divide existed. No one had crossed over. On the weeks we went down to watch John play in the local amateur league, divisions between lovers existed for the two hours of the game. Liam had attempted to explain the rules to Jamie, but organized team sports were something beyond Jamie’s comprehension, and it had ended badly for the couple. Kee didn’t even bother to try to interest Tate in the game, so Tate and Jamie usually spent the time chatting about everything under the sun—apart from football. It was great to see them getting on.

I was placed with Tate and Jamie—the nonfooty-appreciation side of the gap as Kee liked to tell me. I didn’t mind. I let them think I didn’t know the rules of the game and immersed myself in my latest paperback.

Liam picked up the conversation. “Devastated?” he asked. “He still gets paid, doesn’t he? I wish someone would pay me to sit around and rest my leg.”

Liam still walked with a limp from a car accident when he was sixteen.

“Who cares about Bro-Jak?” Aaron asked as he thumped down into the red beanbag in the lounge room. “No one goes for Hawthorn here, do they?”

There were scoffs and roars as each man on the footy-appreciation side of the gap rushed in to assure Aaron they hadn’t switched allegiance. I didn’t say anything.

It was noted by the one person I didn’t want to notice.

“Shane?” Vinnie said with an innocent tone. “What team do you go for? I don’t think you’ve ever told us.”

Whatever team Ambrose is playing for.

“I don’t have a team,” I lied through my teeth to say. “You know I don’t like football.”

Truthfully I didn’t like football. I watched because Ambrose played. And I hated the sport because Ambrose got injured from it.

“You have to have a team,” Liam said. “Even Jay has a team.”

Jamie looked up from his conversation with Tate and nodded. “Yes. The Swans. The red team. Sydney, isn’t it?” He looked to Liam for confirmation that he’d picked the correct capital city that his supposed favorite team played for. “Red is my favorite color, so I picked them. I considered the team that has yellow in it, the same as Daisy, but it was more of a mustard yellow than the canary yellow she is.”

Jamie’s car was a bright-yellow Mini called Daisy. None of us would ride with him—not because of the color, but because of the sunflower he’d attached to her aerial. I was sure a swarm of bees would follow him home one day.

“I go for the Dockers,” Tate put in. There were a number of cheers from the footy-appreciation side. “I live in Perth, after all. And I really do like purple.”

Vinnie turned to me in triumph. “See. Even Jamie and Tate have teams. So what team do you go for, Shane?”

I chewed the inside of my cheek.

“It wouldn’t be the Hawks, would it?” Vinnie asked. “It wouldn’t be Bro-Jak’s team?”

“Who’s Bro-Jak?” Jamie asked.

Vinnie spared enough time for a glance at him as he answered, “Ambrose Jakoby. Plays for Hawthorn over in Melbourne. He’s Perth-born—our local talent making it big.”

Jamie nodded as he frowned. “Ambrose?” Then he turned to me and said, “Isn’t that the guy we went to school with?”

Oh, my secrets were unraveling a mile a minute.

“Yeah.” It was all I could manage.

Surprise rippled through the gathered crowd.

“Why have you never told us before?” Vinnie asked as he narrowed his eyes on me. I hated that he was blaming me for not telling him. I was the quiet one. Why didn’t he blame Jamie, who was the motormouth of the crowd?

I shrugged. “What’s to tell? He went to the same school. There’ve been a number of semifamous people who went to that school. Dean someone was a footballer too. And there was some girl who got some sort of singing contract with a record label.”

Vinnie didn’t buy it. “There’s a difference. You were with Ambrose Jakoby at school and never mentioned it.”

Thankfully Jamie finally opened up that motormouth and corrected Vinnie. He gave a high-pitched giggle and said, “It’s not like we were friends, Vinnie. Ambrose was a couple of years below us and wouldn’t ever be caught hanging out with us. He was part of the cool crowd. We were the dorks still trying to find our place in the world. I only remember him because of that teacher—what was his name, Shane? The sports teacher who was built like a tank and used to call us all gents? He was always shouting, ‘Come on, gents. Get moving.’ What was his name?”

“Mr. McGivern.” He was a torturer. He expected bookworms like me to run an entire lap of the oval without stopping.

“That’s him,” Jamie exclaimed. “I remember him once saying Ambrose was worth more than our entire class put together. I thought that was a little unfair and told him that, so he gave me detention for answering back. Every time Ambrose received an award at assembly after that, I cringed.”

That derailed the conversation for a long while, as the guys jumped in with all the shenanigans they’d gotten up to as a kid and the punishments meted out. The gathering moved on, and subjects changed. I sighed in relief and sat next to Jamie. No one could get a word in edgewise when Jamie was going, so I didn’t have to speak.

I avoided Vinnie as much as possible, but he cornered me in the kitchen.

“You gonna tell me about Bro-Jak yet?”

I sighed as though it were still ten days until payday and I wanted the latest George R. R. Martin hardcover.

“It’s embarrassing,” I confessed. I’d spent the last thirty minutes coming up with this cover story, sticking close to the truth without it being the whole truth. I hoped Vinnie would buy it. “I had somewhat of a crush on Ambrose in high school, okay? I may pay close attention to his career because of that. It’s not like I have a boyfriend to take up my time.”

It was deflecting, as he’d accused me of previously, but to my relief, it worked. Vinnie began to cluck and embraced me in a hug. He was a hugger.

“Oh, hon. You’ll find someone. In the darnedest of spots too. Just look at me and Aaron. I was looking for a boyfriend, and he was looking for a girlfriend. Instead we found each other. And Liam and Jamie met on a train. Like, how romantic is that? You should be looking for your own man on your daily commute.”

Vinnie had obviously never been a sardine before. No one was looking for a date on their daily commute.

“I was thinking of giving Grindr a go,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. In the fifteen minutes after I put my book down at night and before I fell asleep, I often did wonder if Grindr was for me.

Unfortunately—or actually fortunately since I was trying to deflect—Vinnie looked horrified. “Oh no no. We cannot allow a friend of ours to search for a soul mate on Grindr. Especially not you. You’re not going to be able to handle the type of guys on there. It’s like—” He stopped and tried to think of a suitable analogy for me. “It’s like letting a couple of rebel forces wander around the Death Star. They’ll end up in closets and garbage chutes. Let me put the word out, and we can find you a nice boy to date.”

I was more horrified than Vinnie was seconds before. “What? No!”

“Do you know?” he said to me wonderingly. “I don’t even know your type. What sort do you like? Bears? Twinks? Doms?”

“Uh….”

Then he gave me a sharp look. “Or perhaps the athletic type?”

I clammed up.

He nodded as though I had said something interesting. “Yes. But what would our Shane do with an athletic type?” he murmured.

Then there was a yell from the living room, and it broke the tension. We hurried to see what the problem was and found Aaron had John in a headlock in the middle of the room.

It was just a typical Sunday for us.