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“This is nice,” Ambrose said, and smiled and closed his eyes.
Liam didn’t let go of his hand.
Eventually it got too cool to sit around in wet shorts, so Ambrose went inside and got changed. In the spirit of appearing like a terrible person, he left his wet shorts and towel in a pile on the bathroom floor after he’d changed, but his heart wasn’t in it, not really. He sat on the closed toilet seat and pulled out his phone, opening his banking app and staring at the five-hundred-dollar deposit from Liam.
He wondered if he should return it—it wasn’t like he was doing a very good job of making the family hate him. But then he thought about the power bill stuck on his fridge at home, and Mum’s prescriptions that he still had to collect and pay for, and he put the phone away.
“You’ll get offered jobs as an actor that you might not like,” his mum had told him when he was growing up, when his budding career had made him worthy of her time and advice, “but you’ll take them anyway, because you don’t know where they’ll lead.” He guessed this was one of those jobs.
He put the phone away and opened the door, almost running into Liam with his fist raised to knock. They stood there for a second chest to chest, the air between them sizzling with something, then Liam cleared his throat and said, “Um, Mum says lunch is ready.”
“Right.” Ambrose looked down and pulled his phone out, just to have something to do with his hands, and made a mental note to charge it later. “Do you want me to be a bit of a dick at lunch? I mean, it’s why I’m here.”
“You probably should,” Liam agreed. “They almost like you after you saved the baby from the deadly lizard, so you might need to crank it up a bit.” He sounded as enthusiastic about the idea as Ambrose felt, and for a moment Ambrose was certain he wasn’t the only one who wanted to drop the charade. “Listen?—”
“There you are, boys,” Grandad Billy said, a hand settling on both of their shoulders. “Time for lunch, and afterwards I’ll take you to see my tractor.”
“Is that code for more wine?” Ambrose whispered, stomach lurching at the thought as the hand on his shoulder steered him towards the kitchen.
Liam laughed. “No, Grandad actually has an old tractor he’s restored that’s practically an antique. He’s very proud. Besides, I don’t think you could take any more wine.”
“Fi says I’m not to intoxicate you anymore,” Grandad Billy grumbled.
“Oh, thank God,” Ambrose breathed, and Liam laughed again.
Lunch was a barbie, and by the time Ambrose had eaten four sausages in bread, a steak sandwich, and a serving of potato salad, the residual stomach acid from last night was soaked up by the sheer volume of carbs and grease, and he felt almost human again.
He made sure to pull his usual annoying stunts—putting his elbows on the table, licking the serving spoons, slurping his can of Coke obnoxiously—and waited for an opportunity to be a dickhead. But there never seemed to be an opening—either that or he wasn’t really trying—because they made it to the end of the meal without him managing to make one outrageous statement. He had to settle for belching loudly, and all that did was make Balian giggle from his highchair.
“So,” Marcus said, settling back in his chair and dabbing sauce off his mouth, “Neve and I were thinking about the wedding.”
Fi’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, yes, have you set a date?”
Neve took Marcus’s hand and beamed. “We were thinking about October?”
“That’s only six months away!” Fi said.
“We know it’s quick,” Marcus said, “but I don’t want this one to get away.”
Maybe it was just Ambrose, but that sounded more creepy than affectionate—like Marcus was a big game hunter, and Neve was an exotic cat to be skinned and stuffed and mounted.
Or maybe it’s because I’m still seeing everything through my ‘Marcus is a cheater’ filter, and that’s colouring everything.
He needed to sort that out. Because while imploding Neve’s relationship would be the ultimate dickhead move to pull, he didn’t want to hurt her over a misunderstanding.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters who you’ll have in the wedding party, Marcus?” Ambrose asked. Please have a sister, please have a sister, he silently prayed, while hoping Liam would just think he was being weirdly personal as part of his dickhead act.
“I’ve got a younger brother,” Marcus said. “But I think I’ll ask my mate from school to be my best man. Me and Campbell aren’t that close.”
“So no sisters?” Ambrose asked. “Or girl cousins? Or lady best friends or work wives?”
Marcus looked at him like he’d grown a second head. His perfect brow creased. “What?”
“I have enough sisters to fill all the bridesmaid positions,” Neve said with a laugh. “We were thinking of having the wedding here, of course.”
“Of course!” Fi exclaimed, and just like that the conversation moved on to stuff like colour schemes and themes and things that Neve had seen on Instagram, and even Ambrose, who could talk with a mouth full of wet cement, couldn’t get a word in.
He caught Marcus looking at him strangely a few times.
