Chapter 1

University was finally over,and I felt a mixture of emotions. I was glad to see the back of some of it, and yet, I was still anxious about coming home. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to come home. That had always been the plan, but a year ago, knowing university was ending, being jobless, boyfriend-less, and back in my teenage bedroom was not what I had had in mind.

We hadn’t been back in town more than a handful of hours, but on our way home from the train station, we bumped into some friends from high school who asked us out with them. Annie thought it was a fab idea, but I just wanted to get my head down and lick my wounds over heading back to my childhood bedroom for a while.

Annie was, of course, going to be fine. She had landed a job after only her second interview. Going home and staying with her father, Richard, wasn’t going to be something that lasted. Annie would be off flat-hunting and building her own life in no time. I, on the other hand, wasn’t fairing as well.

“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. We’ll drop our bags at my house and head right back out again!”

She took one look at my face and sighed.

“Oh, don’t give me that look. It’s our first night home. We’ve graduated with first-class honours, and the future is ours for the taking, Liam!” She elbowed me as if to drive her point home.

I shook my head in defeat. How could I burst her bubble of joy? “Fine. But I’m not getting shitfaced, and you shouldn’t either.”

Annie laughed. “Mate, if anyone is getting shitfaced tonight, it should definitely be you after the six months you’ve had.”

She was right. When I had announced my plan to go home to my ‘up for anything’ boyfriend, he informed me I’d stumbled upon the one thing he actually wasn’t up for. He also made it very clear it wasn’t moving to my hometown that didn’t interest him, it was the idea of any kind of future with me after university. I was his ‘gay while in college phase’; his words, not mine. He was heading off with a girl he’d met while on his placement to travel the world and see what happened.

If I thought about it and was honest with myself, he did me a favour. He had always been a bit of a selfish dickhead and was more into his own ‘enlightenment’ than any kind of relationship on equal terms with me. He wanted a mother-cum-housewife figure at his beck and call. I was never going to fit that bill for him.

But the idea that it was his choice to break up and not mine. Ugh.

Annie nudged me again, snapping me out of my momentary cruise down bad breakup lane.

“Fuck it,” I said. “Right, let’s get wasted. You’re absolutely right.”

Her smile widened, and we plotted outfits, where we would end up, and how we would get there.

* * *

It wasa little after one in the morning when we finally got back to Annie’s childhood home. Admittedly, I was nowhere near as drunk as she was, a point she illustrated beautifully when she missed the edge of the path up to her front door and ended up on her arse in her dad’s well-tended flower bed.

“Sssshhhh!” She giggled as I tried to pull her out of the blue and white daisy bush she had landed in.

“Don’t you shhhh me, dickhead. I’m not the one with my bum in the flowers,” I loudly whispered back at her, laughing.

“Dad will hear you!” She giggled.

“Dad already has,” came a rich baritone voice from beside me as he hopped over the flowers, put his arms under his daughter’s armpits, and helped me heave her back to her feet.

“Oops. Sorry, Dad,” she whispered sheepishly, a drunken grin across her face.

I bit back a snicker and looked wide-eyed between her and Rich.

He rolled his eyes and shook his head as he smiled. “Come on, you drunken duo. Into the house with the pair of you.”

I tried to focus on Annie, but there was something about the tone in Rich’s voice that had given me goosebumps. I wasn’t sure if it was the playfulness, the strength, or that he was telling me what to do, but something in it had sparked… something.

Rich helped us both in and up the stairs.

“I can take it from here.” I smiled shyly, suddenly very conscious of my compromised appearance and the spark of attraction I felt for my best friend’s father.

Rich nodded. “I’ll be in the kitchen. Feel free to come down and get bottles of water and painkillers for the morning. I’m assuming you’re not heading home to your mum’s at this point?”

I bobbed my head in agreement. “Thanks.”

Rich laughed with a smirk. “No worries.” He said nothing else and left to go back downstairs.

I wrestled Annie out of her clothes and into bed. She hugged me and told me I was ‘the bestest friend in the world’ before passing out against her pillow and snoring softly.

I wasn’t convinced she should be saying that as I thought about my reaction to Rich out in the front garden. Feeling a pang of guilt about it, I shook my head as if to erase the thought and headed down to the kitchen.