Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
J ack had told Harry five minutes, but it probably took twice that before Auntie Cassie went striding off towards her hotel. It took some doing to fob her off, because she was what his dad called ‘an interested soul’—which Jack had always felt was a euphemism for ‘nosy cow’. Dad was way too polite to call anyone that, though, even his own sister. One of the drawbacks of the ingrained pleasantness that went with his job.
Still, Jack eventually got Auntie Cassie on her way, and he even managed to dodge all her questions about Harry by asking about Uncle Gavin’s recent hip surgery, which meant then he had to stand there and listen to her reply, as well as look at all the photos she had of the surgical scars.
Once he’d waved her off he hurried back to the table, hoping like hell Harry was still talking to him, and found him doggedly eating his duck, gaze fixed on his plate. Jack’s own plate sat there cooling, like an accusation.
It wasn’t Jack’s finest hour—he was the first to admit that.
“I’m sorry,” he said, slipping into his chair. “I couldn’t introduce you. If I did, she would have joined us until we were finished eating, and the next thing we would have ended up back at the hotel with Uncle Gavin and gotten stuck there all night while she grilled you. She’s relentless like that.” It wasn’t the whole truth—which was that Jack had panicked—but it wasn’t entirely a lie either.
Harry showed him a faint smile.
“And the whole wedding thing too.” Jack waved his hand. “She would have asked why I wasn’t bringing you, and…well, that’d be a whole mess.”
“Yeah.” Harry dug his fork into his duck. “I know. It’s fine, honestly.”
It definitely wasn’t fine, but Harry was at least willing to pretend it was, and Jack was profoundly grateful for that. Jack wasn’t sure he would have been as forgiving, which just showed, once again, that Harry was a better boyfriend than Jack deserved. Maybe they could still rescue the evening, and this could turn into one of those cute first-date disaster stories people told.
Except Jack had no idea what to say next.
He was saved by their waiter approaching. “Is everything all right with your meal?” he asked, eyeing Jack’s plate.
“Oh no, it’s fine,” Jack assured him, “but could we, um get some drinks to celebrate? It’s our first official date.”
Out of the corner of his eye Jack saw Harry straighten in his chair.
“Oh, lovely!” the waiter said warmly. “How about a cocktail? Today’s special is a delicious strawberry?—”
“No!” Jack and Harry exclaimed in unison.
At the waiter’s startled look, Jack said firmly, “My boyfriend is allergic.” When he glanced across the table, Harry’s mouth was pulled up in a smile that looked much more genuine than his earlier one.
Okay, so maybe this was salvageable. Jack wanted it to be salvageable. They’d had a good time at the museum—well, as good a time as anyone could have while looking at old synthesizers—and their meal had started off so well with the kiss. That was the date Jack wanted to get back to, not this one where Harry was clearly uncomfortable.
The waiter brought them two sidecars, and Harry sipped at his carefully. Jack liked the way his expression went from dubiously wrinkle-nosed to pleasantly surprised. He sipped his own drink and raised his eyebrows at Harry. “Good?”
“Yeah,” Harry said. “The orange goes with the duck. That’s a thing, right, duck and orange?”
“It is a thing,” Jack said. “My mum tried to make it once for a Sunday roast. Total disaster. I don’t know where she got the recipe from or if she was winging it, but it involved orange Aeroplane jelly.” He shuddered at the memory. “After that, she stuck to roast lamb.”
“You’re a good cook,” Harry said. “Did your mum teach you?”
Jack breathed easier at the question. This was good. This was what dates were meant to be like. And Harry seemed genuinely interested. Jack guessed he wanted to move past the whole debacle too.
“Actually, a mate of mine convinced me to take Home Ec in high school with him. He said it would be a great way to meet girls. He was right, too.” He let out a soft laugh. “It was about then that I realised that I didn’t want to date them. I did enjoy the cooking, though.”
Harry chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “When I was in high school, I kept wondering if I’d wake up one morning and get it. You know, boys, girls, both, that whole thing. I never did though.” A flush stained his cheeks. “Until you rocked up.”
Jesus. And just like that Jack had to adjust the linen napkin on his lap. He’d been told before that he was hot—he’d also been told that guys loved him, but it was usually in the middle of sex, so he didn’t put too much stock in it—but with Harry it meant so much more. Harry hadn’t even said he was hot, just that, whatever Jack was, he was the one who’d…and Jack didn’t know where to go from there.
Flipped a switch? Something like that.
And he didn’t ever want to be arrogant about that, because it wasn’t some special power or something he had over Harry. It was a gift. It was something Harry was sharing with him, and Jack didn’t know exactly how it worked, but that didn’t matter. Harry was precious, and somehow the universe had decided that they worked together. He didn’t want to fuck it up, but for every time Harry opened up to him and showed him a part of himself that he’d never showed anyone else, there was a night like tonight, when Jack was afraid they were taking too many missteps.
He wanted to do right by Harry in a way that he hadn’t with his past boyfriends. They were only new, but it already felt like they could be more . Jack wanted to introduce Harry to his parents, to take him on dates without having to pretend they weren’t together if family saw them, to tell everyone about the Bad Boyfriend bullshit and get it over with. And once this stupid wedding was done, he could. But right now, he had the awful suspicion that Harry, who hadn’t even had a boyfriend before and had nothing to compare him to, was starting to realise he deserved better. And he was right.
“You know what we should do?” he asked. “After the wedding, we should go away for a weekend. Like, to Byron or something.”
Harry gave him a puzzled smile. “I’m pretty sure neither of us can afford that.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “We should pack a picnic and go to Bondi. We can play spot the tourist.”
Harry grinned. “They’re all tourists at Bondi.”
“It’ll be easy, then.”
Harry laughed and took another sip of his sidecar, and just like that, they were okay again.
By the time they left the restaurant, Jack was confident that they’d successfully navigated past the speed bump of his aunt, and he was looking forward to the ride home, purely so he could kiss Harry at the bus stop at the end of it.
They sat next to each other on the bus, thighs pressed against each other, ignoring the empty seats around them. Jack felt something in his belly unfurl, loose and warm, when Harry rested his head on Jack’s shoulder. “Comfy?” he teased.
“Mmmm. The sidecar was strong,” Harry said, “but it was tasty.”
Tasty—and expensive. Jack winced internally when he thought of his bank balance after paying for dinner, but he also didn’t begrudge a single cent of it. Not when it was for Harry. He slung an arm around Harry’s shoulder. “I could find a recipe,” he said. “We could make them at home.”
Harry scrunched up his nose. “We could, but if we did, Tristan would want to join in. You know what he’s like.”
Jack nodded. Tristan had never met a cocktail he didn’t like.
Harry hesitated, then said, “I want them to be just for us. Something that reminds me of tonight.”
Warmth flooded Jack at that. Harry’s memory of their date wasn’t going to be, as Jack had feared, the spectre of his shitty behaviour, but the moment they’d bonded over a cocktail. “Okay,” he said. “Sidecars can be our special thing.”
Harry lifted his head from Jack’s shoulder long enough to beam at him, his slightly lopsided glasses making him look even cuter than normal. Jack wondered once again how he’d gotten so lucky.
“I think I’m super drunk,” Harry said. “I have bubbles in my bloodstream, and they’re popping. Is that normal?” He wrinkled his nose. “And my nose is numb.”
Jack touched the end of Harry’s nose. “You’re not much of a cocktail drinker, are you?”
“No.” Harry’s beam grew impossibly wide. “I should be, though! It’s really fun, and I’m good at it!”
They got off the bus on King Street in Newtown and held hands as they walked down to Dickson Lane. Harry hummed a tune as they walked. Then, when they’d reached the corner, he stopped and said, “Dance with me?”
“What?”
“Dance with me,” Harry said. “I haven’t had a boyfriend before, so I want to do all the romcom stuff. So dance with me?”
Jack laughed, but put his hand on Harry’s hip, gripped his hand and spun them into something that might have looked like a waltz from a distance. It was as lame as hell, and Jack would have felt like an idiot for doing it except for the way Harry laughed in delight. There probably wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to make Harry laugh like that.
They swayed on the spot for a little while longer before Harry led Jack by the hand to their house and up the pathway to the front door, then darted forward and stole a kiss. When he pulled away, his smile was wide and happy-drunk. “Gotta have a kiss at the end of our first date, right?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, and reeled him back in by the front of his shirt and kissed the hell out of him. When they parted, both slightly breathless, Jack was pleased to see that Harry’s eyes were bright and his cheeks were flushed.
They might have hit a rough spot with Aunt Cassie, but in the end, their date hadn’t been a disaster after all.
This was a fucking disaster.
Jack ran a hand down the side of his face as his mother’s voice echoed down the phone line. “Cassie said you were kissing some boy at the restaurant, in full view of the public. But when she went inside, hoping to be introduced, you shuffled her out the door without letting her meet your…friend. Is this how it is now, Jack? Keeping secrets from your family?” She obviously still hadn’t forgiven him for moving without telling her, even though it had been months ago.
Jack wasn’t sure if the clear disapproval in her voice was aimed at the kissing a guy part, the kissing a guy in public part, or the not introducing his date to Aunt Cassie part. He suspected it was a combination of all three. His parents accepted that he was gay in theory, but they’d never been confronted with the reality of it up close.
“Mum,” Jack interrupted, just to stop her talking as he scrambled out of bed, careful not to wake Harry, and slipped out of the bedroom and downstairs. It was too early for this. They’d fallen into Jack’s bed and made out for what felt like hours last night before moving onto messy, tipsy hand jobs, and it had been late when they’d finally fallen asleep.
But Aunt Cassie obviously hadn’t been able to wait to call his mum to tell her that she’d seen Jack with a mystery date, and she, in turn, hadn’t been able to wait to call Jack and see what the hell was going on. So now, at quarter past six on a Monday morning, Mum was asking questions Jack wasn’t nearly awake enough to answer. “Mum,” he repeated.
“Don’t you ‘Mum’ me. Do you or do you not have a boyfriend? And if you do, why haven’t you told us about him? Why not introduce him to Cassie? Or were you planning on bringing him to the wedding as a surprise?”
And shit, what was Jack meant to say to that? Yes, I’m dating Mia’s fake ex? Yes, but you can’t meet him? That wasn’t going to fly—he knew his mother better than that. If he admitted to there being someone, no power on earth would stop his parents from wanting to meet Harry.
And that couldn’t happen.
“I don’t have a boyfriend.” The denial was out of his mouth before he could stop it.
His mother made a disbelieving noise. “So you're saying your aunt hallucinated you kissing a boy?”
“Um.” Jack swallowed, and his heart beat faster. “No.” As he cast about for a way to get out of this, his gaze fell on a discarded shirt that he was pretty sure belonged to one of Tristan’s many, many one-night stands.
One-night stand.
In his desperation, Jack grasped at the flimsy straw with both hands, and before he could think too hard about it, he blurted out, “I’m not dating anyone. I didn’t introduce him because it was a random hook-up, okay Mum? Just some guy. He’s nobody.”
From behind him, there was a sharp intake of breath.
Jack turned on his heel to see Harry standing in the doorway wearing nothing but his boxers, face pale, with his mouth hanging open in shock. Before Jack could say anything Harry was gone, footsteps clattering up the stairs.
Fuck fuck fuck .
“Mum, I have to go,” he said, and ended the call before she could protest.
Harry was in their shared bedroom, grabbing his clothes out of the wardrobe with a violence that suggested they’d personally offended him.
“Harry—”
“Just—don’t, okay? I can’t talk to you right now.” Harry pushed past him and down the hallway to his own room, and the door shut with a slam that sounded an awful lot like an accusation.
“Harry?” Jack called down the hallway, but he didn’t follow him. He sat on his bed instead, and laughed at how ridiculous this all was, half pissed off at Harry and half pissed off at the universe. Because what? He was supposed to tell Mum the truth ? Even though that could ruin Mia’s wedding, not to mention Mia and Tate’s relationship with Mum and Dad? Because the Bad Boyfriend thing? That would maybe be funny in a decade or two, but Jack very much doubted his parents would see the amusing side of it right now. Harry couldn’t seriously think that Jack denying he was dating anyone meant anything.
He listened hopefully for the sound of Harry’s footsteps returning. He’d make it to his room and take a breath and realise how dumb this was, right? But Harry didn’t come back.
Tristan wafted down the hallway at some point, wrapped in a pink silk kimono. He leaned in Jack’s doorway for a moment and narrowed his eyes at him. “Trouble in puppy paradise?”
“Fuck off, Tris.”
Tris fucked off.
Jack’s alarm went off and he swore under his breath. Whatever was going on with Harry, he wasn’t going to have time to get it sorted out before work. Still, leaving it until tonight to talk might be a good thing. By then, Harry might have thought about it long enough to realise that it wasn’t that Jack didn’t mean what he’d said, that he’d just been covering his bases for Mia’s sake, and that it wasn’t about Harry at all. Then they’d kiss and make up, and it would all be fine.
He held onto that thought as he showered and got ready for work. He was still holding onto it as he made his lunch for the day in the kitchen and Harry still hadn’t come downstairs. Harry’s first lecture on a Monday wasn’t until ten, so it wasn’t as though Jack could wait for him to come down. Not when he was supposed to be at work—he checked his watch—five minutes ago. Shit.
He wanted to go and check on Harry before he left, but he was already late, and he wasn’t willing to risk Barry, the head mechanic, handing him his arse on a plate. In the end, with a last glance at the stairs, he grabbed his lunch and bolted out of the door.
Barry gave Jack the expected bollocking for being late but it was water off a duck’s back, with Jack’s thoughts firmly elsewhere. He apologised, then spent the rest of the day checking his phone.
There were no texts from Harry.
His finger hovered over the call button a dozen times as he debated if he should be the one to call, but in the end, he decided to wait and talk it out in person. The day crawled, but finally it was five o’clock and Jack raced out. He seemed to catch every red light on the way home, and by the time he parked he was thrumming with—impatience? Nerves? Anticipation of making up? He wasn’t sure, and wasn’t sure it mattered. The important thing was, he’d finally be able to make things right with Harry.
Except when he went inside, Harry wasn’t downstairs like he’d hoped, waiting eagerly to talk things out. He didn’t even get as far as the stairs before Tristan, sitting at the kitchen table with his arms folded over his chest, said, “Don’t bother. Harry’s not here.”
Jack’s brow scrunched in confusion. “Shouldn’t he be back from uni by now?”
“He didn’t go to uni. He packed a bag instead and went to Ambrose’s, looking for all the world like someone had shot his dog,” Tris said, face tight with disapproval. “What the fuck did you do, Jack?”