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Ambrose sagged back down onto the mattress, still grinning. “Shit. This is suddenly a lot less entertaining. It’s still pretty entertaining, but now it’s less entertaining.” He tilted his head as if he were thinking and said, “We could break the glass panels in the door?”
“We’re not breaking the glass panels! The panes are too narrow to get through, and we’ll have fucked the entire door. Grandad will go spare.”
Ambrose walked over to the window and tried to open it, but it remained stubbornly closed. “It’s locked.” He raised an eyebrow. “I guess breaking the glass is out of the question?”
Liam gave Ambrose a flat look. “We’re not breaking anything.”
Ambrose shrugged. “Well then, we’re stuck here till they rescue us. At least we have sandwiches. Liam, can you get me a sandwich?”
“Are your legs painted on?” Liam asked him.
Ambrose grinned. “Excuse you. I saved your adorable nephew from a deadly snake attack this morning. Look at my skinned knee. Look at it!”
“You’re such a martyr,” Liam said, and rolled his eyes. But he went and grabbed the sandwiches. When he came back, Ambrose was sitting cross-legged on the bed, patting the doona beside him.
Liam climbed up with him and opened the bag. “Okay, we’ve also got some sparkling apple juice in here.”
“I’ll get the glasses!” Ambrose said, scrambling off the bed.
“Oh, your legs are fine now, are they?”
“It comes and goes.” Ambrose danced back with the glasses, his eyes shining. He also grabbed the remote control for the TV. “Movie picnic?”
“Is that a thing?”
“It is if we say it is,” Ambrose declared. He got back onto the bed and held the glasses out so that Liam could pour. Then he handed Liam’s glass to him and dug through the bag. “Wow. Your family goes all out, doesn’t it? Before you said they were so fancy, I figured it’d be Vegemite or something.”
Liam made a face.
“What?”
“Family joke. I never used to like Vegemite.”
Ambrose blinked at him. “Who doesn’t like Vegemite?”
“Most of the world, actually. An anti-Vegemite stance happens to be incredibly valid.” He shrugged. “But I like it now.” He smiled. “For a while there, Mum tried to go gourmet and she figured since it went well with cheese it’d go great with brie, but we soon talked her out of that madness.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t even try to go gourmet with Vegemite,” Ambrose agreed. “Vegemite on cheap white bread is the only way to go. It’s a bogan staple.”
“And student food,” Liam agreed. “Unless you’re a student running a scam where you go to fancy restaurants and are a dick over seafood.”
Ambrose grinned as he bit into a sandwich. “For the record,” he said around a mouthful, “that was a top-notch seafood platter. Five stars. Would recommend. Certainly some of the finest I’ve ever eaten in all of Sydney”—he paused before adding—“plus, the waiter was cute.”
Liam snorted, feeling his face heat up. “He thought you were pretty cute too. Until you opened your mouth.”
Ambrose’s mouth dropped open. “Rude! I’ll have you know I was Kelly’s dream date!”
“Nightmare, you mean,” Liam said, grinning so hard his cheeks hurt. “But, to your credit, I guess, her and Greg seem to be going strong.”
“He’s a good bloke,” Ambrose said. “And they’re cute together. I wonder, if they ever get married, if they’ll invite me to the wedding.”
“I think if Kelly’s dad ever saw you again, he’d murder you,” Liam said frankly.
Ambrose got a faraway look on his face. “I do sometimes wonder if my dates ever come clean. If they’re like, ‘Hey, remember that awful guy I dated? Guess what? He’s actually an okay guy’.” He shook himself and snorted. “But probably not, right?”
“Probably not,” Liam agreed softly, wondering if he’d ever tell his parents the truth and wishing that he weren’t contributing to a growing number of people who would only ever think of Ambrose and shudder at the memory. The fact that Ambrose had brought it up, the fact that he wondered about it at all, that surely meant that on some level it mattered to him.
“Ah well, like Mum always told me, never read your reviews,” Ambrose said, and there was something wistful about the way he said it that made Liam suspect it bothered Ambrose a lot more than he was willing to let on.
