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“Oh, you’re still thinking of buying up here?” Mum asked excitedly, Balian perched on her knee. Liam imagined she was envisioning a future where the baby was a permanent fixture.
“If we can get the right property,” Orhan said. “And we still need to do a lot of research.”
“Orhan wants to make cheese,” Grandad Billy said, elbowing Ambrose. “How good would that be? What do they call that? Business synergy. Wine and cheese, see?”
“Sure,” Ambrose said. “I’ll open a cracker factory, then I can marry Liam.”
Liam’s heart stuttered in his chest, and he felt his cheeks redden as a silence fell across the room. “Or, um, wineglasses,” he stammered out. “You know, glass blowing?”
Fuck. Why had he said that? Now it sounded like he was making future plans, instead of setting the stage for a breakup. And, worse than that, he’d given Ambrose the perfect opening to be awful. Which, he had to keep reminding himself, was what he wanted and what he’d paid for. He just hadn’t known it would be this excruciating. He kept wanting to defend Ambrose for reasons he couldn’t even explain, except he suspected that it had less to do with Ambrose and more to do with not wanting his family to think he was stupid enough to date someone so terrible.
That was what he told himself, anyway, but maybe there was also a part of him that wanted them to know that Ambrose wasn’t a terrible person for Ambrose’s sake too.
God, he thought. We really should have had a better plan coming into this.
They should have laid some ground rules or something, because while his parents might be happy that he was single after this weekend, it would be nice to come out with his pride intact too, and he couldn’t see that happening. After this, his parents wouldn’t trust him to tie his own shoelaces, let alone date someone. He fought the urge to groan and hoped against hope that Ambrose wouldn’t take the opening Liam had just given him.
Ambrose, predictably, took the opening. He probably thought it was deliberate. After all, how was he meant to know that when Liam was nervous, all sorts of bullshit fell out of his mouth? Probably another thing they should have discussed.
Ambrose grinned widely. “Oh you know me,” he said. “I’d be a natural. I’ll blow anything given half a chance. Did Liam tell you all how we met?”
Liam had the impression that they weren’t going with the coffee at Freddie’s backstory after all, and it didn’t escape his notice that Mum moved her hands to cover Balian’s ears.
“We met getting coffee,” Liam said, shooting Ambrose what he hoped was a look telling him to dial it back a bit.
“Yeah,” Ambrose said. “At Freddie’s, by the uni. I’d dropped my wallet, and Liam tapped me on the shoulder to give it back to me.” His smile was warm, and Liam almost imagined that had happened. Then that smile ratcheted up a degree or two and nudged into wicked territory. “The blowing came later.”
Liam winced and shut his eyes briefly as Grandad Billy roared with laughter. When he dared open them again, Ambrose was grinning like the cat that got the cream, and his perfect teeth and dimples were out in full force, and fuck. He looked good when he smiled, even with dog slobber on his shirt and a lap full of cracker crumbs.
Bridget and Orhan still weren’t fans of Ambrose, and Mum looked baffled, but Dad was smiling ruefully and shaking his head. What was that about? Riley had stars in her eyes. Of course she did. Ambrose was cute, rude and clearly didn’t give a fuck about anything. He was right up Riley’s alley. And Grandad Billy looked like he was ready to adopt Ambrose any second now. Maybe his eccentricity had finally tipped the scale into legitimate senility. They should probably get him checked for that. And they should probably get Liam checked out at the same time too. Because the fact that he’d ever thought this was a smart idea? It had to mean he was certifiably fucking crazy.
Will Connelly did all his talking over water. Sometimes that was hosing the lawn, sometimes it was fixing a leaking sink, and sometimes, like today, it was washing up coffee mugs.
“So,” he said, squirting detergent into the sink and swirling it around, “Ambrose is a bit of a wild one, is he?”
From the sitting room, Liam heard Grandad Billy roar with laughter again. Whatever Ambrose had said that had stunned the rest of the family into silence, Liam was sure he’d hear about it later.
“I mean, not as wild as all that,” he hedged.
“He’s not like anyone you’ve dated before,” Dad said, and Liam fought the urge to stare at the ground and shuffle his feet. He tried to remember how Kelly had played it at Bayside—totally oblivious to all of Ambrose’s faults. Dad cleared his throat. “Well, maybe that’s not a bad thing.”
Liam blinked. “What?”
“Well, there was Joseph, wasn’t there?”
“Jonah,” Liam corrected, his heart thumping wildly.
“Oh, that’s right,” Dad said. His brows tugged together. “Jonah. Well, Jonah wasn’t right for you in the end, was he? That’s why you drifted apart.”
Yes. Jonah had drifted right onto some other guy’s dick.
“I s’pose,” Liam said. God. Dad wasn’t going to say that Ambrose was right for him, was he? Had they taken a wrong turn on the way here and ended up in a different dimension?
“Listen,” Dad said, and looked uncomfortable for a moment. Then he didn’t say anything else.
“I’m listening.”
“Yeah, I’m just wondering how to phrase this,” Dad said, and Liam felt a burst of relief that Dad was about to warn him off Ambrose, followed by a flood of guilt for putting him in this position in the first place. Dad rubbed his damp hand over his forehead. “You’re young, Liam. You’re young and you’re thinking with your dick, and I say that with nothing but love.”
