AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Liam pinched the bridge of his nose and quietly despaired as his mother warmed up to her subject. Liam truly did love his mum, but she was obsessed with finding him a partner, and his regular Sunday night phone calls home had become something he dreaded. “It’s not that I can’t find someone, Mum,” he tried. “It’s just that with uni and everything?—”
“Sure, and your sister managed to finish a degree and find a husband, so there’s no reason you can’t do the same, surely?” The implication was clear—Liam was single because he just wasn’t trying.
“I don’t want to date just anybody for the sake of it, though, Mum. I want to actually like them.”
“Well, how will you know if you like them if you don’t go out with them? It’s you and Vegemite all over again.” There was a note of delighted victory in her voice, and Liam suppressed a groan, knowing exactly what was coming next. It was his mother’s secret weapon—the fucking sandwich story. Liam could recite it by heart. Everyone in his family could by now. “For years, you were ‘Oh no, I don’t like Vegemite,’ and we all believed you. Well, why wouldn’t we? From the time you were five years old till you were fifteen, for ten long years, it was ‘no Vegemite for Liam!’ But what happened when Uncle Phil accidentally gave you a cheese and Vegemite sandwich that one day at lunch? Remind me, love?”
Liam was tempted not to play, to leave his mum and her punchline dangling in the wind, but once Mum was on a roll, there was no stopping her, so the best thing to do was get it over with, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “I liked it,” he said quietly.
“You liked it!” she crowed triumphantly, like she’d proved a point. Perhaps in her own mind she had. “It turned out you’d never even tried it!”
Liam did let out a groan then. “What does Vegemite have to do with dating, Mum?’
“Well, there might be a lovely boy out there for you that’s just like Vegemite,” she said, as if it were obvious.
Liam couldn’t help himself. “Looks weird, smells funny and sticks to your fingers?”
“Don’t be crass, Liam,” his mother tutted. “I just mean there might be someone you might not think is your kind of person at all, until you get to know them.”
Liam flopped back on his bed, clutching his phone and staring at the paint on his bedroom ceiling as if it might somehow save him from his mum’s interrogation. “Mum, come on. Why does every conversation we have end up talking about my love life?”
Or his lack thereof, which Fiona Connelly took as some sort of personal failure if her many phone calls on the subject were any indication.
The sniff of disapproval was loud in his ear. “It’s been ages since you had a date, Liam. Years. Not since that lovely Jonah”—Liam winced at the reminder of his cheating arsehole ex—“and well, we worry about you, your dad and I. We don’t want you ending up old and alone.”
“I’m twenty-three, Mum. I’m hardly old.” Liam closed his eyes and wondered, if he made enough weird hissing noises, whether he could pretend he was losing reception.
“Well, still. You can’t leave these things,” his mother said darkly. What the hell did that even mean? Liam could tell she wasn’t going to let it go, and her next words confirmed it. “You know, my friend Mary has a son who lives in Sydney. You remember Richard, from when you were little? He’s gay. Shall I give him your number?”
“No!” Liam said quickly. He remembered Richard only too well, and frankly he’d sooner shove an angry echidna down his pants than go on a date with him, because the guy was a total dick. He could probably give that wanker from last night a run for his money—at least the guy last night had been hot, whereas Richard’s build and features leaned more towards rodent-like. Then he blurted out, before he could think any better of it, “Actually, I am seeing someone!”
“What?” His mother was silent for a moment, before saying, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s…it’s new,” he said. “And I don’t want to jinx it. And I have to go now, Mum, okay? We can talk about this later.”
“You can bring him to dinner when we’re down on the weekend,” she said in that no-nonsense voice that brooked no argument. “We can meet him and Neve’s young man at the same time. Did I tell you? Neve says they have news. Hopefully that means wedding bells!” The satisfaction in her tone was unmistakable.
Liam panicked, looking desperately around the room as though there were something there that could save him. He only saw the cat, and the cat was an evil bastard who would sit on Liam’s head if he were drowning. “If I bring him, will it stop you nagging me about it?”
“William Patrick Connelly, I don’t nag,” his mother huffed. “I encourage.” She hummed. “Strongly.”
Both Liam’s parents had been amazingly supportive when he’d come out at the tender age of seventeen, telling him they didn’t care who he was with, as long as he was happy with someone. Seeing her kids settled really was Mum’s only goal, and he knew his single status stressed her out.
‘Happily single’ wasn’t a concept that registered with Mum. She came from a large Irish family with six brothers and sisters, and she was big on marriage and babies and happily-ever-afters—it was as much a part of her as her red hair and freckles, or her fondness for Guinness, and her intentions were good. It was just that she was an incurable romantic, as evidenced by her not-so-secret addiction to those novels that all seemed to feature a shirtless man and a gorgeous, wide-eyed woman clutched in his embrace on the cover.
Liam’s dad had met her when he was in Ireland as part of a six-month backpacking tour around Europe, and it had been love at first sight, to hear his father tell it. They’d fallen for each other hard, which had resulted in her packing up and following him back to Australia. They’d been happily married for years and were still besotted with each other, and Mum seemed incapable of understanding that it wasn’t like that, not for everyone. She couldn’t fathom that some people didn’t get to have adoring partners and happily-ever-afters. Some people just got cheating arseholes like Jonah.
“Mum,” he said wearily.
There was a long silence. “I just want you to be happy,” his mum said wistfully, and Liam felt his resistance weakening. He knew that to his mum, happiness meant being successfully partnered off, because that’s what had made her so happy. He was pretty sure she viewed his older sister’s marriage as more of a success than her getting her master’s degree in PoliSci. “You will bring him to dinner, won’t you?”
God. What the hell had he been thinking? He squeezed his eyes closed like he was about to swallow something nasty, and before he could change his mind, said, “I’ll bring him to dinner, I promise.”
“Oh, Liam, that’ll be grand! We can’t wait to meet him!”
With that, she ended the call. Liam was left to immediately regret his decision and wonder who the hell he could convince to go to dinner with his parents.
Liam squinted in the bright morning sunlight as he yawned and stretched and cursed the very existence of Monday mornings. He locked his bike and meandered across the uni grounds towards the lecture theatre. His parents had offered to get him a car more than once, but it honestly wasn’t worth the expense and hassle of trying to get parking. Between his bike, public transport and the occasional Uber, he did okay. He let out another yawn and wondered once again why he’d chosen a morning class when all his friends had been smart enough to take the afternoon electives. Then he remembered that this was the only time this particular class ran, because his lecturer was a sadist who preferred to work in the mornings.
