Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Liam

O n Wednesday morning, Liam lurked anxiously outside the purple "Institute of Rheumatology and Orthopaedics" sign on Missenden Road. It was right next door to the Alfred Hotel, and across the road from two of Sydney University's oldest and most prestigious residential colleges. The colleges seemed to come from an entirely different era, complete with spires and church-like arched leadlight windows, and Liam couldn't shake the idea that they were probably haunted by the ghosts of long-dead university students, wailing and gnashing their teeth as they perpetually crammed for finals.

Next door at the Alfred, there was a line of people waiting for coffee and breakfast at Freddie's. Liam sat down on the edge of a garden bed and scrolled through the messages on his phone just for something to do, so he didn't look like a weirdo just standing there. A moment later a shadow fell across him, and he looked up to see the dickhead from the other night at Bayside standing in there, a coffee in one hand, a breakfast roll in the other, and a grin on his face that, even knowing what he now knew, Liam kind of wanted to punch off him.

"Hi, I'm Ambrose," said Ambrose. His grin ratcheted up a few degrees. "I'd shake your hand, but…" He sat down next to Liam. "Uh, so this is weird, right? How much do you still want to smack me in the head?"

Liam snorted. "God. So much. You were…you were awful ."

"Thanks," Ambrose said brightly. He bit into his breakfast roll and moaned like it was a religious experience. Or a sexual one. Or one that met uncomfortably in the middle. "This is so good. Do you want to get anything?"

"No, I'm good."

Ambrose balanced his coffee carefully in the garden bed and tackled his roll with both hands, while Liam tried very hard not to notice the way his tongue darted out to chase the stray spots of sauce as he ate. If Ambrose picked up on him trying hard not to stare, he didn't comment.

"So," he said, "you need a date?"

Liam jolted slightly. "Um, yeah. For this Saturday." He flushed. "My parents are kind of hung up on me being single, and my mum was threatening to set me up with someone unless I can prove to her that I can actually find a date myself." He wrinkled his nose and looked away. "It's, um, well, it's how they are."

"Mate, overbearing parents are my wheelhouse," Ambrose said. "No judgement. So how awful do you want me to be?"

"Oh, um…here's the thing. I might have, um, lied and told Mum I met someone, and now she wants me to bring them to dinner."

Ambrose raised his eyebrows. "Wait, you don't want a bad boyfriend, do you? You want a nice boyfriend."

"Well, yeah," Liam said. "I think so. Is that okay?"

"Sure," Ambrose said. "It'll make a nice change. Hey, maybe I can even eat dessert for once instead of getting asked to leave!"

Liam narrowed his eyes at Ambrose's grin. "It took me an hour to clean the floor."

"Sorry," Ambrose said, biting his bottom lip. His eyes still danced though. "Just so you know, that was supposed to work."

"It never works!"

Ambrose knocked him with his shoulder. "I practised at home! It worked there!"

Liam laughed, despite himself. "Sure it did."

"It did! Though I can't argue that failure on the night didn't work out better for Kelly." Ambrose shoved more of the breakfast roll into his mouth. "Anyway," he said around a mouthful, "just to be clear up front, I will hold your hand and kiss you if you want to give off that kind of PDA-loving couples vibe, but there's no sex. Okay?"

Liam jolted again. "Sure, of course. I didn't think there would be!"

"Because if that's your thing, I can point you towards Craigslist," Ambrose said frankly, "but I don't do it myself."

"No, I get it," Liam said, swallowing. "No sex."

"Or handies or gobbies," Ambrose added.

Liam wrinkled his brow. "Do you, like, get any action at all by calling them handies and gobbies?"

"You'd be surprised," Ambrose said, and winked, and Liam discovered that, no, he wasn't surprised at all. Ambrose was hot. He was still at least fifty-percent dickhead, but he was hot. Okay, his display of douchebaggery from the other night had been fake, but it was still a hell of a first impression to try to overcome. And, in Liam's defence, he was pretty sure that being paid money to act like a dickhead was something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It wasn't the sort of job a non-dickhead would take, right? At least some of Ambrose's douchebag act had to be a case of art imitating life.

He was super-hot though. And his smile was cute, and made Liam want to smile in return.

"So, tell me about you," Ambrose said, wiping his greasy fingers on his jeans. "And also tell me how we met, and how long we've been dating, and anything else I might get third-degreed about over dinner with your parents."

"Third-degreed isn't a verb," Liam said.

"Aha!" Ambrose grinned broadly, the sunlight sparkling in his hazel eyes. "English major, right?"

"No," Liam said, slightly abashed. "Um, just a pedant?"

Ambrose laughed. "Okay. I'll keep that in mind."

"Um," Liam said. "My name is Liam Connelly. I'm twenty-three. I'm doing a joint degree in Science and Commerce, and I'm hopefully going to do my master's in Agriculture and Environment."

Ambrose narrowed his eyes. "I hope our backstory isn't that we met in class, because there is no way I can fake any knowledge of, or, if I'm honest, interest in any of the words you just said." He brightened. "Oh! Maybe we met at the Royal Easter Show! You were there checking out cows or something."

"Why would I be checking out cows?" Liam asked.

"Because agriculture! Cows are a part of agriculture, right? Or am I thinking astronomy?"

"Jesus, I hope not," Liam said. "No, I'm not interested in cows. I'm interested in grapes."

"I like the green ones without seeds," Ambrose said. "Do you have a favourite grape? Maybe we met in the produce section at Woolworths?"

"My family owns a winery," Liam said. "And no, we didn't meet over grapes. Can't we just say we met here one morning, when we were both getting coffee?"

"That'll work," Ambrose said. "Wow. A winery. That's cool. Okay, so you're doing a double degree, and a master's, in stuff that'll help the family business." He smiled, and a single dimple appeared in his left cheek. "That's kind of awesome."

"Yeah," Liam said. "It's pretty cool, actually. I've always loved the family business, so my parents were really pleased I wanted to go to uni and do something that would lead into that, you know?"

Ambrose nodded. "Connelly, you said? Isn't there already, like, a famous wine label called Connelly Cellars? Is that awkward for your family? Do you always have to be like, ‘Oh no, we're the other Connellys who make wine'?"

"No," said Liam, furrowing his brow. "Because we are those Connellys."

Ambrose fumbled his coffee. "Shit! Seriously? Holy crap!"

He was even cuter when he was flustered, Liam decided, even if he was a dickhead. Who didn't know astronomy from agriculture?

"Oh, wow," Ambrose said. "Wait, so you're hot, and you're rich, but you can't get a date? What's that about?"

"Um, not that it's really any of your business, but I've been busy." Now that he was saying the words out loud to a third party, it occurred to Liam that they did sound kind of pathetic. God. Was his mum right? No. Impossible. "I mean, I'm concentrating on uni." He became aware that Ambrose's smile was growing as he listened. "I have a really heavy workload right now, and I don't need the distraction. Not that…not that a relationship is a distraction. I don't hate relationships, or people. I mean, if the right guy came along, I wouldn't chuck him out or anything. "

"You could have just said you're not looking for a relationship right now," Ambrose said. He bumped their shoulders together. "That's a valid response."

"Oh." Liam blinked. "I'm just not looking for a relationship right now."

"That's it," Ambrose said, his smile digging that dimple back into his left cheek. "So, is there anything you want to know about me? Or anything you think I should be to really get your parents on the hook here? I'm not used to coming up with good qualities."

"Yeah, I remember," Liam said dryly.

"Oh, let me think!" Ambrose pinched the bridge of his nose. "I was in a cult, and I was selling some MLM brand, and I also did online porn, right?" His eyes danced. "Yeah, those go down great with parents!"

"You're a student, right?" Liam asked.

Ambrose nodded. "Theatre."

"Well, I told my mum we just met, so it's okay if I don't know everything about you," Liam said. He shrugged. "Like, we met here, which is true, and you're a student too, which is true. You don't need to do anything extra to get my parents on board." He felt his face heat up. "They'll be embarrassingly happy for me that I'm dating anyone at all."

Ambrose's smile was softer this time. "That's really nice."

"No, it's really embarrassing," Liam said.

Ambrose leaned in closer, then, lowering his voice as he was about to impart a great secret, he said, "Liam Connelly, I don't know if you've noticed, but there is very little that embarrasses me."

"I noticed," Liam said. "Believe me."

And Ambrose laughed again.

Liam got home to Potts Point that afternoon, a little after six, to find that Tobermory was starving to death—according to Tobermory, at least, but he'd been known to exaggerate. Tobermory was a black and white cat of dubious origins who'd been adopted by Liam's sister Neve when she'd been in her last year at uni, and Liam had been in his second, and they'd been sharing the flat. Neve had moved out after graduation. Tobermory hadn't.

"Hey, Toby," Liam soothed as the cat wound itself frantically around his ankles and tried to murder him on the short walk from the front door to the kitchen.

He set his mail down on the kitchen bench and fed Toby before the cat collapsed and died of hunger. Then he dug through the freezer for something he could heat up for dinner, stabbed the package a few times and threw it into the microwave. He went through his mail while he waited for his dinner to cook.

There wasn't much mail—a couple of bills and an Amazon package, none of which had actually fit in the wooden letter boxes in the lobby, which, like the un-automated lift doors, were an original feature of the Byron Hall apartments. The building, a mix of Georgian and Deco architectural styles, dated back to 1928. Grandad had snapped up the flat at a ridiculously low price after the 1987 Black Monday market crash, and it had been in the family ever since. It was only a few blocks back from the water—with the doors to the balcony open, the flat caught the cool breezes, and from the communal rooftop area, the views of the harbour were spectacular.

"So," Liam said to Tobermory. "Met a cute guy who may or may not be a dickhead. Arranged to hire him to be my fake boyfriend because I'm a complete loser. So that's how my life's going. Yours? "

Tobermory ignored him, too busy scarfing down his food to give a fuck about Liam. Though the food probably had nothing to do with it. Tobermory generally just didn't give a fuck about Liam, apart from his appreciation of his can-opening skills.

He ate his microwave dinner on the balcony, enjoying the breeze and trying not to think about Ambrose and how crazy this whole fake date thing was. But if it got his parents off his back for a while, it'd be worth it, right? He shifted uncomfortably, thinking of how Ambrose had said no sex. And Liam hadn't expected sex—of course not!—but at the same time, Ambrose was hot, and once he'd mentioned it, Liam hadn't been able to stop himself imagining what sex with Ambrose would be like. If he was honest with himself, watching Ambrose eat his breakfast roll had been the closest thing to an erotic encounter Liam had had in, well, almost forever. And Ambrose was hot, but he wasn't that hot—it was just Liam was in a hell of a dry spell, and even if it was by choice, his dick wasn't happy about it.

It had been fourteen months since Liam had broken up with Jonah, and Liam hadn't missed being in a relationship, not really. Okay, so he missed sex, and he missed having someone to talk to and hang out with, but what he'd told Ambrose was the truth—he wasn't looking for a relationship right now, not after how he'd been burned last time. He was busy with uni and work. But sometimes, like now, it would have been nice to share his evenings with someone apart from the cat.

Tobermory hadn't liked Jonah. Looking back, Liam wanted to believe it was because animals always knew. That was what people said, right? Except Tobermory didn't like anyone, so his opinion couldn't really be trusted. And Jonah hadn't been a bad guy… He just hadn't been the right guy for Liam.

Well, that wasn't exactly true. Jonah had been a lot of fun, the life of every party, and the problem wasn't just that he hadn't been the right guy for Liam—it was that he'd been the right guy for everyone else, while still dating Liam and living in his flat.

Jonah had thrown himself right back into the dating scene after their messy breakup—last time Liam had talked to him he'd been seeing some guy who " plays rugby league and has thighs like tree trunks "—but Liam hadn't. Fourteen months later, he still hadn't. And there were things he missed, especially on quiet evenings like these, but he was happy. Like ninety percent happy. Maybe eighty. Certainly no lower than seventy-five. The point was, Liam was a strong independent guy who didn't need no man, or something.

He didn't hate Jonah. It seemed like that would be a waste of his emotional energy. Fourteen months had definitely been enough time to get over something he'd been way too quick to get into in the first place—they'd met at a party, and two weeks later Jonah had moved in with him. They'd both made dumb decisions. Liam had stupidly let a near-stranger move in with him. And Jonah had fucked a Grindr hook-up in their bedroom and forgotten that Liam's late lecture that afternoon had been cancelled.

So, yeah, it had been a mess. A whole dramatic mess. And Liam wasn't exactly eager to try the whole relationship thing again. And just because he was sitting here eating his rapidly cooling microwave mac and cheese, suddenly wondering exactly what it would be like to have sex with Ambrose—was he a top or a bottom or was he versatile? Would he let Liam leave hickeys all over his flawless skin? How loud was he?—didn't mean he was missing a damn thing.

He wondered, not for the first time, if maybe he should have told his parents exactly what had happened with Jonah, instead of just telling them it hadn't worked out. Maybe if they thought he was still heartbroken and stinging from Jonah's betrayal, Mum wouldn't be pushing him so hard to find someone. But he hadn't told them what had happened, because he'd been embarrassed, he supposed. He didn't want them to feel sorry for him, and he didn't want them to think he'd been heartbroken. He'd thought he was at first, but once the sting of betrayal had faded, he'd discovered he hadn't been, not really. If anything, he'd been a little bit relieved. Liam liked a quiet life, and Jonah had been chaotic.

Which was exactly why he shouldn't be entertaining any fantasies over Ambrose, because Liam didn't like drama, and Ambrose seemed to be the kind of guy who didn't just attract it but revelled in creating it. He was a Drama student, for fuck's sake—it was literally his calling.

Anyway, it was only one date. For the reasonably low price of two hundred dollars—how Ambrose calculated his rates was a mystery, but Liam hadn't been going to argue when he'd been expecting twice that—Liam would hopefully get his parents off his back for a while. They didn't get down to Sydney that often, so it might even buy Liam a few months before he had to either pay Ambrose for a second date or tell his parents they'd broken up.

Or, he thought, stabbing a piece of macaroni, maybe in a few months he might actually have a real boyfriend. He wasn't looking, but he hadn't been looking for Jonah either, and that had just happened. Wasn't that how it was supposed to work? You were just out there living your life, and something, someone, just happened?

" Holy shit ," he remembered Kelly saying a few months ago now. " My friend Jacey from work invited me to her pub quiz night, but I went to the wrong pub, and now I'm dating the bass player of the band that was playing there! His name is Greg, and his band is terrible, but he's so nice !"

Though Liam supposed that in order to go to the wrong pub, you had to get invited to the right one in the first place. And the people Liam knew from uni had pretty much given up asking him out anywhere, because he mostly just declined. When the hell had he gotten so antisocial? Was it after Jonah? Probably. God. Was it because of Jonah? Maybe. Liam hadn't been heartbroken, but he'd sure as hell felt stupid, and he wasn't keen to put himself out there for the chance to be humiliated in exciting new ways. But maybe he'd pulled back a little too far and for a little bit too long, and he hadn't noticed because uni kept him so busy. Maybe he'd forgotten how fun it could be to go out with friends and meet new people. After he got this date with Ambrose out of the way, maybe he'd try to remember that, and actually surprise the hell out of his friends in his study groups by agreeing to go along to the pub after a study session.

But until then, he reminded himself decisively, he was at least seventy-five percent happy.

Tobermory strolled out onto the balcony and leapt up onto the table. Then, with zero regard for the fact that Liam was eating, Tobermory sprawled, back legs open, and licked at the place his balls had been.

"Don't do that. It's gross," Liam said. "And I'm not just saying that because I'm jealous that nobody's licked me there in over fourteen months."

He ate his macaroni and cheese and ignored the smug stare from Tobermory that called him a liar.