Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Liam

L iam checked his bags one last time and tamped down his jitters about the weekend. Bridget and Orhan were picking them up from Liam's place tomorrow at lunchtime—by leaving on Thursday, they'd beat the Good Friday traffic—but Liam had packed tonight, unable to relax, a weird sort of itch under his skin making him jittery and unsettled. It wasn't that seeing his family made him nervous. Despite the ribbing he always got from his sisters and the inevitable hangover after drinking with Grandad, he normally loved spending a weekend at the winery with them, getting to unwind properly in a way he couldn't in Sydney.

No, family wasn't what had him twitching so much as wondering how his family would react to whatever fuckery Ambrose had planned for the weekend. Maybe it was just anticipation over spending the weekend with Ambrose—or maybe even Ambrose himself.

Ambrose was a puzzle that Liam couldn't figure out. He was hot, he was funny and he was equal parts clever and annoying, and Liam wasn't quite sure what to make of him. One thing was certain. The guy who'd had dinner with his family was the polar opposite to the dickhead Liam had waited on at Bayside. The Ambrose at Bayside had been obnoxious and terrible, but the Ambrose at family dinner had been funny and charming and clever, and every time he'd laughed, Liam had wanted to laugh right along with him. Liam had liked that guy. But one of the two Ambroses had to be an act, and Liam was damned if he could figure out which one it was.

Not that it mattered. After this weekend, it wasn't likely he'd see Ambrose again, which was kind of a shame because Ambrose was—quite possibly—a decent guy. But Liam also wouldn't have Mum breathing down his neck about dating, and that was the point of this whole thing, right? They'd break up, he'd tell his mum that he was heartbroken, and she'd coo over him and commiserate for a week or so. Then, any time she started asking if he'd met someone, he'd just have to sigh and say, "After Ambrose…" and she'd back off.

That was the theory, anyway.

He ended up putting on a TV show he'd watched a dozen times before and letting the familiarity soothe him as he half-watched, resisting the urge to text Ambrose and check he was still coming, until finally it was late enough, and he was tired enough that he managed to get to bed and actually fall asleep.

The following morning, for reasons he couldn't quite explain, Liam found himself tidying the flat, putting away the pile of shoes near the door, gathering the assortment of coffee cups and plates that he'd left scattered around the place and loading them into the dishwasher, and throwing out the tower of junk mail that had been steadily growing on the coffee table. He even changed Tobermory's litter box and sprayed some Glen-20 around while the cat glared at him, seemingly offended by the implication that his shit did actually stink. Mrs. Isakson, the elderly widow who lived in the flat next door, had a spare key to Liam's place and she was going to feed Tobermory while he was away. Tobermory and Mrs. Isakson pretended to hate each other, but Liam had once got home early from a weekend in the Hunter Valley and found them sitting together on his couch eating cheese and crackers and watching Parliament Question Time , so he didn't believe it for a second.

As Liam swept the dust bunnies off his floor, he told himself he was only cleaning so Bridget wouldn't tell Mum he was living in a pigsty. It had nothing to do with impressing Ambrose at all. In fact, for the five hundred bucks Liam was paying him, Ambrose had better bloody well pretend to be impressed.

Liam was impressed. He couldn't remember the last time the flat had looked so clean.

At eleven o'clock Liam's phone rang. It was Ambrose. "I think you gave me the wrong address," he said.

Liam frowned, "Why? Where are you?"

"I'm at this really swanky building. Byron Hall?"

"Yep, that's me. I'll buzz you in, and you can come up. It's number twelve."

There was a moment of silence, then Ambrose said, "I'm afraid to ask, but what the hell are they paying waiters these days if you can afford to live here? Have I been in the wrong game all along?"

Liam laughed. "No, Grandad bought it ages ago because it was going cheap, and he hung onto it long enough that it got trendy."

"Oh!" Ambrose's tone brightened. "My place is like that too, except I'm pretty sure my landlord keeps it as a hovel and rents it to students just to fuck with the neighbours. He's that perfect storm of old and spiteful, which is kind of great because it means cheap rent for Harry and me. "

"Harry?" Liam's chest tightened inexplicably. "Your boyfriend?"

"Nah, he's just a mate. I'm single. Sort of comes with the job."

That was a waste, when Liam thought about it. Then he told himself to stop thinking about it, because it was none of his business.

Ambrose cleared his throat. "So are you gonna let me in? Because there's a lady watching me from the balcony and frankly it's creeping me out."

"Hang on," Liam said, and walked over to the security panel to buzz Ambrose in. He always felt like something of a fraud when he made use of the building's security features—he was pretty sure that as a twenty-three-year-old uni student he wasn't at risk of anything more deadly than exam stress and terminal eyestrain. He opened the front door and debated leaving it propped open, but then caught the gleam in Toby's eye as the cat nonchalantly settled three feet from the door.

"Oh no, you don't, you slippery little bastard," he muttered and slammed the door shut again. Tobermory took any chance he could to bolt and made a game of staying exactly one arm's length out of reach while Liam spent an hour trying to coax him back inside, and Liam absolutely didn't have time for the cat's bullshit today.

He glared at Tobermory, Tobermory glared back, then Liam went down the hall to the kitchen and pointlessly opened the cutlery drawer just so it would look like he was doing something when Ambrose arrived.

It didn't take Ambrose long to get to Liam's floor. Sometimes people were a bit thrown by the lift, which had a cage you had to close yourself. The cage was one of the building's original features. The lift itself, fortunately, had been updated since the Depression. A knock on the door heralded Ambrose's arrival, and Liam went back to open it.

"Hi," he said, then noticed he was holding a potato masher. He shoved it hastily behind his back.

"Hi." Ambrose was wearing faded jeans and a worn T-shirt that might have been black once, but was now grey, and whatever logo it had ever had on it had almost vanished under way too many washes. His dark hair was tousled, and there were smudges under his eyes. He looked a little tired, but his hazel eyes were as bright as always.

"Come in," Liam said, gesturing with his potato masher. "I was just, um…"

"Making a snack for the road? That's what Irish people do, right? Eat potatoes?" Ambrose grinned and slipped into the flat. He dumped an overnight bag on the floor and padded curiously down the hall towards the kitchen and living area. "Wow. This place is amazing. Oooh! A cat !"

"Oh, no," Liam said as Ambrose darted forward. "Don't touch him! He's?—"

"He's what?" Ambrose asked, turning around. Tobermory was cradled in his arms, his eyes half-closed, and Liam thought he could hear him purring . Which was one of the signs of the apocalypse, probably. "What's his name?"

"Tobermory," Liam said.

"Oooh!" Ambrose scritched Tobermory under the chin. "Saki!"

"What?"

"The story by Saki," Ambrose said. "About a cat called Tobermory that learns to talk and threatens to reveal everyone's secrets."

"Neve named him," Liam said. "I think it was after the Womble."

"That's cool too," Ambrose said cheerfully. He scritched Tobermory under the chin, and the cat writhed happily. Definitely a sign of the apocalypse, then. Ambrose wandered around the flat, stopping at the balcony doors. "Oh, fuck right off!" he exclaimed.

"What?" Liam hurried over, worried that the cat had shown his true arsehole nature, but instead he found Ambrose staring out at the harbour.

"You have fucking water views!"

"Oh!" Liam flushed. He genuinely sometimes forgot that not everyone had views of the harbour, or that other people had to have roommates and pay rent and eat ramen. He knew that it made him privileged, and he worried that his privilege automatically made him a bad person. It was usually about then that Kelly told him to pull his head out of his arse, that having money didn't make him a bad person, but if he felt so guilty about it, he could pay for lunch, and also, she'd like a couple of bottles of Connelly wine from the cartons that his parents always dropped off when they came to visit. "Yeah. It's, um, nice. You can see the bridge from the roof." He sidled over to the sink and dumped the potato masher. "I'd offer to take you up there, but Bridget's gonna be here any minute and she's frankly terrifying if there's even a hint of being late somewhere. If Orhan has to circle the block more than once, she'll go ballistic."

"Good to know," Ambrose said, tapping the side of his nose with the hand not occupied with the cat. "I'll make sure to dawdle this weekend."

Right on cue, Liam's phone buzzed.

"That's her now," he said, checking his screen. "Ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Ambrose said, and planted a kiss right on Tobermory's nose before setting him down on the couch. "Let's roll, boyfriend. "

And Liam's heart absolutely did not skip a beat when Ambrose said that.

It was only a couple of hours to the Hunter Valley, but it felt like they spent that long getting out of Sydney traffic. Ambrose sat in the front with Orhan—"I get carsick otherwise!"—leaving Liam in the backseat with Bridget and Balian. Balian was fifteen months old, and the most relaxed baby Liam had ever met. He obviously got that from Orhan's side of the family.

Bridget didn't seem too put out by being relegated to the back. Ambrose seemed a little put out that she wasn't put out, so Liam figured he was laying the groundwork early for being a dick, but more of a subtle dick than usual. Orhan gave him the side eye when he leaned forward and changed the playlist without asking, and Liam felt a twinge of second-hand embarrassment that he wasn't sure could even be called that, since it rolled off Ambrose without any effect at all. But Orhan was way too nice to tell Ambrose to pull his head in, and even Bridget wasn't crazy enough to insist someone prone to carsickness should sit in the back. Ambrose was going to have to up his game to get them to dislike him, and Liam wondered exactly what he had planned, and how excruciating this next couple of hours was going to be.

Except it wasn't. Once Ambrose got his front seat and his music of choice, he settled in comfortably for the drive.

They were just passing through Cowan when Ambrose's phone chimed.

"Sorry," he said, and leaned towards the passenger window to answer it in a low tone. "Hi, Mum." He listened for a moment. "No, I can't this weekend. I have a thing. Yeah, rehearsing for the play."

Bridget exchanged a curious look with Liam, and Liam wasn't sure how to feel. Because of course Ambrose hadn't told his mother he was dating people for money. Who would tell their mother that? But he was obviously lying to her, and it didn't look good. And Liam probably should have felt better that it didn't look good, because that was the whole point of Ambrose coming this weekend, except Liam didn't think this was a part of Ambrose's script. This was exactly what it appeared to be—a guy lying to his mother about being in a play, when Liam knew for a fact that Ambrose hadn't been cast in anything at all, because Ambrose had told him so. Unless Ambrose had been lying to Liam? And Liam didn't know why he would do that.

"No," Ambrose said. "I don't know where you put it. I didn't take it, Mum. No, Isadora didn't either. Yes, I'm sure. I'll help you look next week, okay? Okay. Bye." He ended the call and stared fixedly out the window.

Bridget's look was questioning now, and Liam didn't know how to respond to it. He didn't know a damn thing about Ambrose's mother, but the tension in his voice when he'd spoken to her hadn't sounded good.

"Everything okay?" Bridget asked finally, her tone light.

"Yep," Ambrose said, and seemed to shake himself awake. "It's all good." He twisted around in his seat. "How's your thrush?"

Bridget blinked and laughed. "You're lucky I didn't tell you the full story."

"The full story?" Ambrose asked, his eyes widening in anticipation.

"So, Mum thought she was going to get a pregnancy announcement, right?" Bridget asked. "What she doesn't know is that we are trying for another one. And we went at it hard, didn't we, Orhan? That's how things got so aggravated down there in the first place."

"I almost put my back out," Orhan said, "but you don't see me telling the whole world."

"‘Almost' isn't a sex injury, Orhan. You can't brag about an ‘almost'."

"This family is crazy, Ambrose," Orhan said. "You're lucky you got one of the rare ones with a filter."

"It's a good thing he has one, because I sure as hell don't," Ambrose said with a laugh.

"But in answer to your question," Bridget said brightly, "my thrush is all cleared up, and things are just fantastic downstairs right now. There's a party in my pants and my handsome husband's invited."

"They are fantastic," Orhan agreed. "And spending a weekend at the winery is the best kind of dirty weekend, because not only is it beautiful there, but Fi takes the baby and leaves us alone, because she says couples need private time."

Liam rolled his eyes and reached over to pat Balian gently on the hand. "I'll pay for your future therapy, mate."

Balian blew a spit bubble, and Liam eased his phone out of his pocket and texted Ambrose.

I bet nobody's ever said this before, but I think you might need to be a bigger dick.

Ambrose glanced at his phone with a frown when it pinged, but then his lips quirked up in a smile, and he typed rapid-fire. Liam's screen lit up.

You're right. Nobody's ever said that.

It was followed by a string of eggplant emojis.

The rain hit about twenty minutes outside of Cowan. It was heavy enough that the day felt more like night, and Orhan had to turn on the headlights and turn the wipers up to full speed.

"Can we stop somewhere soon?" Ambrose asked, peering through the windscreen at the deluge. "I need to take a leak."

Liam checked his phone. They'd been in the car for less than an hour.

"Oh, sure," Orhan said. "We'll stop at the next servo."

"Servo," Ambrose said. "You speak really good English. Not just English, but Aussie, you know? Like you were born here."

Orhan's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "That's because I was. I'm from Newcastle."

"Oh, cool," Ambrose said breezily. "But where are you really from? Because you're not from Ireland, not with that complexion."

Liam cringed. Beside him, Bridget sat up straighter, her face as stormy as the weather.

"My parents emigrated from Turkey," Orhan said through clenched teeth.

"Oh, cool!" Ambrose said again. "You guys have great bread. The delight, though? Not a fan. It's just wet jelly that tastes the way old ladies smell. It should be called Turkish Disappointment. Sorry to sling off at your culture, mate. It probably tastes okay if you grew up not knowing anything else. And the bread's great, so it's nice that your country has made at least one contribution to world cuisine, you know?"

A vein pulsed in Orhan's temple, and Liam could have sworn he heard the grinding of teeth. He wanted to shrink back into his seat and disappear. Ambrose was being awful , but Liam had asked him to be. And nothing was going to make Orhan, and Bridget, hate him faster than this demonstration of casual racism. Liam hated it.

"Oh, look!" Ambrose said, pointing. "A servo!"

Orhan pulled off the road and into the service station. He parked further away from the building that he had to, so that Ambrose had to do a dash through the rain to get inside.

Orhan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He was pissed off, and Liam felt like more of a bastard than Ambrose, because Ambrose was only being a dick because Liam had paid him.

"The fuck was that ?" Bridget huffed.

"I don't know," Liam said, guilt biting at him. "I'm sorry."

"He wasn't like that at dinner," Bridget said with a scowl. "What the hell happened between now and then?"

I paid him to be a dickhead, Liam didn't say. Instead he said, "Maybe it's just nervous babbling. He did say he doesn't have a filter, and it must be nerve-wracking, going to stay the weekend with virtual strangers."

"Hmmm," Bridget said noncommittally. "We'll see." Which Liam knew meant she was still pissed. After five minutes when there was still no sign of Ambrose, Bridget sighed and glanced at her watch. "Pull up closer, Orhan? We might as well make this our one stop." Bridget didn't believe in stopping more than once on a trip, and Orhan didn't believe in risking life and limb by asking for more than one stop, so he obediently parked closer, and they all trooped inside to use the toilets.

Liam craned his neck looking for Ambrose and saw him over near the bain-marie, looking over the selection of overwarmed pies and limp chicken strips. He hurried over. "What's taking you so long?"

Ambrose shrugged. "You said your sister doesn't like to waste time on the road." His face grew serious. "Hey, about the whole where are you from thing? It felt like it crossed a line, you know? I actually offended myself. I think I'm gonna apologise."

"Yeah, it was a bit much," Liam agreed, and ignored the relief flooding through him that Ambrose actually did have limits. It's not like Liam had any stake in which way the needle on Ambrose's moral compass pointed. It was just nice to know that his hard-earned money wasn't going to an utter arsehole, that was all.

"Okay, so I'll say sorry, and then be awful in a series of milder but equally annoying ways, yeah?" Ambrose grinned.

"That's what I'm paying you for," Liam said, and immediately regretted it when Ambrose's grin dimmed.

He went and used the toilet, then held Balian while Orhan and Bridget did the same. Ambrose was still at the counter, taking his time and browsing the chocolates, and Bridget muttered under her breath about people who had no consideration. In the end the three of them went back out to Orhan's HiLux and waited. When Ambrose came out a minute later, he was holding a tray with four coffees and he gestured with his elbows at the door. Liam leaned forward and opened it, and Ambrose scrambled in out of the rain, shaking his head and flinging drops of water everywhere like a particularly attractive Labrador.

He plopped the container of coffees on the centre console and did up his seatbelt before turning to Orhan. "Hey, um. I just wanted to apologise for that whole Turkey thing. I was kidding, but obviously it wasn't funny. It was actually rude as fuck. So, I'm sorry? And no hard feelings?" His face assembled itself into something both sincere and penitent, and he picked up the tray of coffees and waggled it. Orhan heaved out a breath.

"Yeah, we're good," he said. "It definitely wasn't funny, but we'll let it go. Apology accepted." He reached for a coffee cup.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Ambrose pulled the tray back into his lap.

"I thought you bought coffee?" Orhan asked, confusion evident.

"Yeah, for me, " Ambrose said, picking up one of the cups and licking at the foam peeking out of the hole in the lid. "I need a lot of stimulation."

"So…those are all yours then?" Bridget asked, brows furrowing.

"Yep." Ambrose took a loud slurp. "If you wanna go get yourself one, it's fine, though, I can wait. There's no rush, right?"

Bridget's voice was clipped. "It's fine. And thank you for the apology."

"Hey, I can admit when I'm wrong. I'm a big enough man." He winked. "Just ask Liam."

Even as he mentally tipped his hat to Ambrose, Liam had to resist the urge to hide his face in his hands.

Maybe this was going to be the world's longest road trip after all.