Chapter Five

THE TEXT message came at eight, which meant it was ten o’clock on a Monday morning in Melbourne.

They’re going to operate. Tomorrow.

I stared at the words until they began to blur. Then I glanced back at the message before that. It was a photo sent in February, five months previous. We hadn’t parted on the best of terms at Christmas, so I had wondered if the texted photo of him with a bunch of friends was a conciliatory gesture or a fuck-you gesture.

Had he been telling me he didn’t need me as a friend because look at all the great mates he had in Melbourne?

Ambrose had come home for the Christmas break, and Kendra came with him too. It was awkward. I still visited Tracy regularly, even though she was no longer next door to my mother and now lived in a nice house in a nice suburb. Ambrose helped her buy it.

I often told people I was raised by two women and sniggered to myself over their shocked looks when they assumed my parents were a lesbian couple. But I felt as though Tracy were my second parent. The friendship between Mum and Tracy had endured to the point where they met up at least twice a week. Dinner, coffee, shopping—the two of them would always be in touch. As a result I found I visited Tracy at least once every two weeks for dinner.

I expected to see Ambrose sometime during December, so it didn’t surprise me at all when I turned up on a Wednesday night and there was a strange car in the driveway. I noted the rental-car sticker in the window as I walked past and correctly assumed Ambrose was home for Christmas. But I didn’t expect Kendra.

Tracy answered the summons of the doorbell with a smile for me, though there was something in her expression that told me all was not right.

“What?” I mouthed silently as I shut the door behind me. She rolled her eyes and shrugged.

We entered the kitchen area together, and my eyes immediately went to Ambrose, who was seated at the kitchen counter, looking fit and handsome.

“Shane,” he cried, and he bounded toward me and hugged me in a manner that engulfed my smaller frame.

After eight years of playing professional football, he was solid muscle. For the first couple of seasons he’d been rather weedy, his immaturity shown in the still-growing body that couldn’t always take the hard knocks the more senior players doled out. I’d advised him to run faster so they couldn’t catch him. But after those first dodgy seasons, he laid down solid muscle and grew into his mature man’s body. He didn’t always realize his strength around me and often bruised me unintentionally.

He squeezed me until I let out a little yelp, and then he spun me around and said, “Kendra. Come and meet Shane. Remember? I’ve told you all about him. Shane, this is my girlfriend, Kendra.”

She was everything I wasn’t—toned and graceful where I tended to unfit and clumsy. I had the weights Ambrose had left behind, but they were dusty and stuck somewhere under my bed. Kendra also had a beautiful smile and was super friendly. She immediately came forward with her hand out and greeted me. Not only was she taller than me, she was dressed as though she were off to an upmarket picnic, which put my own shorts and T-shirt to shame. The weather in Perth was always around five degrees hotter than Melbourne, so I assumed our mild summer night was a little wearing on her.

She shook my hand, and we exchanged meaningless pleasantries.

I headed for Tracy’s fridge, grabbed myself a drink, and asked if anyone needed a refill. Tracy looked at me with relief.

“Yes, pour me a white wine, Shane. Ambrose didn’t warn me that Kendra was coming, and she’s a strict vegetarian, so I’m preparing something for her to eat.”

Kendra looked pained. “I’m really sorry, Mrs. Jakoby. I told you you don’t have to. I can go without.”

I winced while my back was to them all. Not only had Kendra used the words “Mrs. Jakoby” when Tracy had never been married and couldn’t stand the formality of titles, she’d also suggested that Tracy would let a guest in her house go hungry. I turned and tried to say something to lessen the tension.

“I’m sure it’s Ambrose’s fault. Let’s just blame him. It always worked for me when we were growing up.”

Tracy snorted where she was washing lettuce over the sink. Ambrose gave a cry of “Hey,” but Kendra took me seriously.

“Oh, no. Ambrose is the nicest ever. He’s always thoughtful and kind and generous.”

I took a sip from my lemonade to keep from laughing.

“And I think that one of the most important things in our society today is owning up to our mistakes,” she went on earnestly. “I know you meant it in jest, Shane, but you should always take the blame for the mistakes you make. If you’ve hurt someone, apologize. If you got something wrong, make amends. If you smashed a vase, don’t blame the dog. It may seem like a small thing, but they often grow.”

I tried hard not to blink, because I thought I would look more interested that way. A silence fell over us, broken only by Tracy’s knife as she chopped celery on the cutting board. I struggled for something to say. Thankfully Ambrose rescued us.

“Oh hey, Shane. I got you a present.” He grabbed at a bag nearby on the table and extended it to me. It was from Dymocks, the biggest bookstore in Australia. My eyes lit up, and I eagerly thrust my hand into the bag and pulled out three paperbacks. “There was an author signing at one of the stores,” Ambrose said. “So I used my celebrity status to jump to the head of the line and get stuff signed. We swapped signatures.” Ambrose laughed. “I ended up signing one of his books with my signature, just for him.”

The author was unfamiliar to me, but that didn’t matter. The cover of the top book showed a stylistic Asian figure with what looked to be a samurai sword. It looked like I was going to be reading fantasy for the next couple of nights. I flicked it open and saw that it had been addressed with my name and the author’s signature.

I loved it. Ambrose knew it too. He sat back with a smug look on his face.

The rest of the dinner limped along. Mum arrived, which eased the conversation some. Kendra was nice, sweet, and naïve in a lot of ways—not in a refreshingly sweet way, but in an “are you for real” way. I kept flicking a glance toward the stack of books on the edge of the counter in the kitchen and searched for an excuse to leave.

Then Ambrose stood and said, “Shane. I want to show you something. Come on.”

He led the way to the bedroom he kept at the back of Tracy’s house. It showed heavy occupation, with a bag open on the bed and a silky pink nightgown draped across the pillow. Ambrose shut the door behind me and then turned and crowded me up against the dresser.

“I was thinking that perhaps you and I could get together on Friday night? Just us boys?”

It shattered my image of Ambrose. Perhaps that was the beginning of the end for me. I pushed him away and scampered to the other side of the room.

“No. No way. You have a girlfriend. I recently shared a meal with her, and I’m currently standing in the bedroom you will share with her later tonight, and you ask me that?”

I had been pathetically easy on previous visits—not every time, though near enough. And after that first season, when he came home and acted like nothing had changed between us, I stopped expecting anything more than what happened between the sheets. So each time he arrived home for Christmas and we were both single, I figured we hurt no one. But this was different.

Ambrose knew it too. He didn’t try to change my mind. He slumped down on the bed and contemplated his fingers. “She’s not really my girlfriend. Not like you mean,” he said.

I was angry at him, but at the same time, it was an anger I knew I couldn’t hold on to. Not only did I love him, I also loved him like a brother. Just like you can be angry with your parents, but you know that somehow you have to forgive them or get through the anger, I knew I had to work through the anger with Ambrose. Our lives were too entwined to simply throw it away. We needed to talk.

“Does she know that?” My voice was tight and furious.

Ambrose stormed to his feet and gave me a look that promised his own temper was barely below the surface.

“You don’t know what it’s like, Shane, out there on the field, playing top-level AFL. It’s not like you’ve ever come over and visited me, is it? I’ve asked you to. But books are more important.”

I tried to keep my voice down so our mothers wouldn’t realize we were fighting. “Don’t turn it back on me and heap the blame my way, Ambrose. All I’m saying is you have a girlfriend and you seem to have forgotten that. I’m sick of being your leftovers.”

He glared at me. “Don’t talk like that. I don’t think of you like that. Kendra is… well, window dressing. If you don’t have a girlfriend, then you have like a hundred girls trying to get in your pants every time you leave your house. The guys on the team are always urging you to take what’s on offer. Or they try to matchmake you with all these… women. I just want to be left alone to play footy.”

My anger abated some at that statement. That was the sixteen-year-old Ambrose I knew, the sixteen-year-old Ambrose who had been confused about society’s requirement that everyone enter into a romantic relationship. Football was more important to him.

He slumped back down on the bed, so I sat beside him. “Do you want a girlfriend?” I asked gently.

He shrugged. “They can be nice to be with. Someone who responds to texts and shares dinner with you. But mostly they’re a shield from the rest of the crap.”

I swallowed and wondered how he’d take my next question. “Do you want a boyfriend, then?”

I saw his chin jut forward. Then he whispered, “They’re about the same, aren’t they? Just with the baggage of not being straight.”

It had weighed on my mind for months. Vinnie, my supergay friend who I’d known for years and was very close to, had been falling in love with Aaron, the superstraight best friend of Jamie’s partner. I had wanted to steer Vinnie away from the “sleeping with a straight guy” heartbreak, because I knew all about it.

I had never actually tackled Ambrose on his sexuality. It was a personal belief of mine not to ask, and it came from thinking people had a right to reveal or conceal as they wished and that our sexuality is always evolving. I strongly believed people had the right to change or refine their boundaries all the time.

“I’m gay, Ambrose. To me, having a boyfriend is very different from having a girlfriend—sexually and romantically. I like girls as friends, but I could only ever fall in love with another guy.”

He frowned and looked at me in confusion. I was transported back ten years, to when I was trying to explain algebra to him. He had given me the same look of incomprehension then.

“I don’t see the difference,” he said.

“Then you’re bisexual?” I asked him hesitantly. “You feel sexual attraction to both guys and girls?”

He sighed and gave another half shrug. “I guess.”

I had to chuckle. “There’s no right or wrong answer here, Ambrose. And only you can know the right answer for you. And no one in this room is judging you for it.”

He thrust his hands into his curly hair and hid his face from me. “I just don’t know, Shane.”

I gave up. Bravery isn’t my strong point, and neither is tackling hard issues head-on.

“That’s okay.” I patted his back. “It’s not that important. But what is important is that Kendra is your girlfriend. She thinks it. You think it. People think it. You introduced her to me as your girlfriend. That means you have to be honest with her. And that means I’d love you to come and visit me, but I’m not going to have sex with you.”

He placed a hand on my knee, squeezed, and heaved a big sigh. “Okay.” Then he said, “Do you hate me now?”

I placed my arm around his waist and leaned my head on his shoulder. “I don’t think I could ever hate you, but I have to draw this boundary. I’m sorry.”

And his visit to his mother’s house had continued like that. Ambrose had given me hard looks throughout Christmas and New Year, but I kept my distance. Even when Kendra went home and Ambrose stayed behind for another couple of weeks, we didn’t close that gap.

In a way I was glad. It had taken a while, but I’d stood up for myself. I hadn’t been ruled by my hormones or my lovesick heart. My head had made the choice. Sure, we spent time together. Ambrose took me to Rottnest Island and got tickets for a play I knew he was bored shitless at, but stayed for my sake, but we didn’t fall into bed.

And then he left. Back to Melbourne. And the last text I received from him was a picture of him, Kendra, two other Hawthorn players, and two unknown women, all crowded around a table littered with empty glasses and wine bottles, all smiling at the camera. It had hurt me more than I could verbalize, the fact that he thought it was okay to send me pictures of him having fun with Kendra.

And now a text out of the blue—a text that told me nothing. I stared at the words.

They’re going to operate. Tomorrow.

Why was he telling me? Did he think it mattered that much to me? Hadn’t my silence been enough?

We’d always texted in past seasons. In the beginning he’d text every day. But then, as he grew friendship groups in his new hometown, the texts became less frequent. It wasn’t like I had much to say to him about my fanatically boring life, so I would keep my messages to him footy oriented. Good game. Great mark in the third. That was fantastic. Or sometimes family related. Don’t forget your mum’s birthday on Friday.

But since Kendra’s visit, I hadn’t messaged him at all.

And he hadn’t messaged me either.

I swallowed and tried to think about what would happen if I ignored him. Then I remembered Tracy. Maybe that’s why he was messaging.

Does your mum know? I typed back.

I was at my desk when his reply arrived. Yes. I told her too.

Though it physically pained me, I replied immediately. Then I tossed aside my phone and got to work, ignoring the cutting message I sent back.

Good. I’ll keep in touch with her to find out how you go, then.