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“The hustle?” Ambrose demanded. “Mate, the only hustle I know is the dance, and I’m way too sober to give that a whirl right now.” He looked pointedly at the door.
Marcus leaned even closer, his expensive aftershave threatening to make Ambrose sneeze. “So, is it true that gay guys give the best head?”
The question felt like suddenly being dunked in icy cold water, so cold that Ambrose struggled to draw a breath through the sharp shock of it. This wasn’t just being a dick like Marcus had been before over Monopoly. This was physical intimidation, from a guy taller and maybe even stronger than he was, from a guy who was giving off every physical signal that he didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘no’, and Ambrose felt queasy. He looked over Marcus’s shoulder. Marcus had closed the bathroom door when he’d come in, and Ambrose really didn’t like the implication that he’d wanted privacy for this. He managed to draw a breath at last and summoned up his outrage.
“Uh, how about you go and get fucked?” Ambrose got an elbow between them and jabbed Marcus in the chest, but Marcus only pushed back harder, ending up with Ambrose shoved back roughly against the vanity unit. The edge of it dug into his lower back almost painfully.
“Come on,” Marcus said. “You’ve got a good thing going here, Ambrose. You wouldn’t want to fuck that up, would you?”
“Um…what? Are you blackmailing me?” Ambrose asked. He stared at Marcus’s arrogantly handsome face, expecting a denial and not getting one. “Holy shit, are you seriously blackmailing me?”
“I saw you last week at Circular Quay,” Marcus said, narrowing his eyes. “On your date.”
Ambrose almost laughed. He didn’t bother to explain. Why the hell would he, when Marcus was sitting in his very fragile glass house throwing stones? “And I saw you too, remember? Which makes this a fucking stalemate.”
“Jesus.” Marcus rolled his eyes, as if he were suddenly bored of this entire conversation. Well, that made two of them that wanted it over and done with. “Seriously, what the fuck have I got to do to get a fucking blow job here?”
Yeah, no. That was not how Ambrose wanted the conversation to end at all.
“Fuck you,” Ambrose said. “Not if hell froze over, arsehole.”
“You think?” Marcus asked, a corner of his mouth lifting in a knowing sneer. “Like I said, you’re on a good wicket here. These people are fucking loaded. You really want to jeopardise that just because you’ve suddenly decided to play hard to get?”
Hard to…what?
“Come on,” Marcus said again. “You know you want to.”
“Get the hell away fr—” Ambrose’s brain short-circuited and his skull filled with static as Marcus grabbed him by a handful of hair and pulled him forward into a kiss. For a moment he didn’t know what shocked him so much—the fact that Marcus was such a scumbag, or that his ego was really that huge that he thought kissing Ambrose would lead to a grateful blow job in return. Oh, yes, Marcus. Thank you for bestowing me with such a magical kiss. I, a lowly gay, would be honoured and privileged to suck your cheating straight-guy dick in return.
And before he could even decide, before he could even unfreeze and push Marcus away, the door to the bathroom opened again, and Neve was standing there. For a moment she was frozen too, then she screamed.
“Marcus!”
Marcus thrust away from Ambrose, and Ambrose winced as the lip of the vanity dug into his back again.
“Babe,” Marcus said, showing her his palms. “Neve. I can explain!”
“What’s going on?” Bridget asked, appearing beside Neve.
Neve was tearful and full of rage, her face twisted and her mouth wavering. She pointed an accusatory finger into the bathroom. “They were kissing!”
Bridget’s mouth dropped open in shock.
Panic rose up in Ambrose, threatening to overwhelm him. He pushed past Marcus on shaky legs, then past Neve and Bridget in the bathroom doorway.
“Ambrose,” Bridget said, but Ambrose kept moving. Away from the bathroom, away from Marcus and Neve and Bridget. He just needed to get away.
He wanted Liam. God, he did. He wanted to explain, and mostly he wanted Liam to feel angry on his behalf. He wanted Liam to be outraged, to match Ambrose’s outrage and maybe even eclipse it with some of his own, but no.
“Oooh,” he’d said jokingly on Friday, “maybe I’ll make a move on Neve’s fiancé? That’d be heart-breaking enough for you, right?”
And what had Liam answered?
“Nobody would believe it.”
Well, it had happened now. Not that Ambrose had been the one to make a move, but Liam didn’t know that, and it wasn’t like Marcus would tell the truth, was it? And Ambrose would, but would that count? A part of Ambrose thought that Liam would believe it, maybe, if only Ambrose could explain it to him. That might not be enough for the rest of the Connellys, but maybe it wouldn’t feel so bad if Liam believed it.
But another part of him—the kid from Macquarie Fields who would never be good enough for a family like this, the guy who lied for a living, who’d never had a proper family and probably didn’t deserve one—didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to look Liam in the face and see the moment that Liam decided he was a piece of shit, and that it hadn’t been an act after all. That a guy like Ambrose was just awful and not worth sticking around for. Not worth falling for. Not worth anything at all.
