Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
“ I don’t have a boyfriend.”
It hurt more than Harry had expected when he’d heard Jack telling his mum that—a deep, dull ache—but he got it. He knew Jack couldn’t exactly tell his family he was dating Mia’s evil ex.
His behaviour last night at the restaurant, while understandable, had stung. Sure, they’d managed to rescue the date, and there had been handjobs and cuddles, but still. Jack had brushed him off. Harry might be new to dating, but he was pretty sure one of the basic building blocks of a relationship was admitting you were in one.
And he wanted to be in a relationship with Jack, more than anything. Jack made him feel things, want things, that he never had before, and Harry figured that was pretty fucking special. The question was, did Jack feel the same, or would he step away when it all got too hard?
Then Jack said, “ I don’t have a boyfriend .” And just when Harry was telling himself that was okay, he said, “ He’s nobody .”
The words hit him like a slap to the face and all the breath was pulled out of Harry’s body, as if a giant hand had grabbed his heart and squeezed.
Anger and embarrassment swirled through him, and he couldn’t hold back a shocked noise. Jack spun and stared, eyes wide and anxious.
Harry bolted.
He scrambled back up the stairs, as if distance could save him from further heartbreak. He stopped at the door to Jack’s room— their room. Except it wasn’t, was it? There wasn’t really a them at all, not if Jack wasn’t even prepared to admit that Harry existed. And okay, maybe Harry had been starry-eyed and na?ve, but he’d thought—he’d thought that Jack would at least admit to dating someone. He didn’t have to name names. Harry would have been happy to be a just somebody , but not a nobody .
A burst of fury overtook him, and he angrily tugged on his jeans and a shirt, then dragged armload after armload of clothing out of the wardrobe, movements as rapid as his pulse. When Jack appeared at the door and opened his mouth, Harry cut him off without a second thought and retreated to his own room.
He hid in there, waiting— hoping —that Jack would come after him. Not that Harry wanted to talk to him, and he ignored it when Jack did call out, but that didn’t mean that a tiny, hopeful part of him didn’t want to hear a knock at his door, a further plea to come out, some indication that Jack cared.
But Jack never came.
Instead, Harry heard the roar of the ute engine bursting into life, telling him Jack had left. Harry threw himself onto his bed, flat on his back, blinking back tears. God, how pathetic was he? He was a grown man, yet here he was hiding in his bedroom like a love-sick teenager in some vampire movie.
“He’s nobody.”
The words continued to echo through his skull—taunting and cruel. Harry had to wonder—how long before he was good enough, important enough, for Jack to step up? Or was he meant to just wait while Jack twisted the truth time and again, making what they had into something less and expecting Harry to play along?
He just—Harry couldn’t do this. He wasn’t built like Jack or Tris or almost anyone he knew. Casual didn’t exist for him. Maybe this would be easier if it did, if he and Jack could just write this thing between them off as an experiment that didn’t work. But the thought of seeing Jack every day, of going back to being just roommates, made Harry’s stomach twist and his chest tighten.
He just wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do next.
His phone chimed in his pocket, and he scrambled for it. His heart leapt for a split second with the hope that it was Jack, saying he was on his way home, only to plummet again when it was just a text from one of his uni friends asking if he had the notes from last week’s class.
Fuck uni. He wasn’t going in today. He wasn’t staying here either, waiting for Jack to come home. He was better than that. He’d go and stay at Ambrose’s, and if and when Jack had anything to say for himself, he could damn well drag his arse across town and grovel.
He scrubbed the heel of his hand against damp eyes and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. It made him feel slightly less pitiful. He took a deep breath and walked to his wardrobe, eyes flitting between a suitcase and a battered duffel that had been here when he moved in.
The suitcase seemed too depressingly final, so he grabbed the duffel. It smelt of stale weed when he unzipped it but was otherwise clean and serviceable. He grabbed clothes and underwear out of his drawers and stuffed them into the bag haphazardly, then added the items from his floordrobe that were still clean enough to be wearable.
He had to stop and take a breath when he went to the bathroom to pack his toiletries and saw his and Jack’s toothbrushes nestled up cosily together in a glass with their shared tube of toothpaste, but he pushed past it and grabbed what he needed.
He shoved his deodorant, toothbrush and body wash into the bag and zipped it. Then he pulled out his phone and fired off a text to Ambrose.
Okay if I crash at your place for a couple of days?
He pulled on his shoes and hitched the bag up on one shoulder while he waited for a reply. He was pretty certain it would be okay, the asking a formality, and sure enough, he got a text back within a minute.
Sure. What happened? Did you and Jack fight?
Harry wasn’t sure what to say to that. Because they hadn’t really fought, had they? Not exactly. They hadn’t even talked, because Jack had left before they could sort anything out, his job more important.
A tiny voice whispered that Harry was being unfair, that he was the one who’d said he didn’t want to talk, and Jack was just respecting his wishes, like he’d done this whole time. But a louder voice, the one that belonged to the part of Harry that was hurting, drowned it out, insisting that if his relationship with Harry really meant anything, surely Jack would have chucked a sickie. Obviously, he didn’t think Harry was worth doing that for.
He stared at his phone for a moment longer before replying.
I’ll tell you when I get there.
He trudged down the stairs to find Tris sprawled across the couch in his kimono. He nodded at the bag, his eyebrows raised in silent enquiry. “I’m going to Ambrose’s. No, I don’t want to talk about it,” Harry said curtly, and headed for the door.
“Harry, wait!”
Harry paused and turned. Tris held up a finger for him to stay there before running up the stairs, his footsteps light.
Harry wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t for Tristan to reappear a minute later and thrust Harry’s peacock suit at him. “Don’t you have that lawyer’s ball thing this weekend? You’ll need this.”
Harry blinked. Tris was right. Harry’s Bad Boyfriend date on Friday was a corporate event—some woman out to prove a point to her bosses about trying to police her personal life—and he’d been planning to debut the peacock suit. Just looking at it brought a lump to his throat as he remembered buying it with Jack, and how he’d first become aware of being attracted to someone else.
It had been like being struck by lightning, so sudden and forceful that it had knocked him on his arse in the best way. Except knowing how it felt made it worse, because it turned out that Jack was the only one for him, and he’d probably never get to feel that electric thrill of attraction again.
Everyone knew lightning never struck in the same place twice .
Tristan was staring at him, concern etched on his features. “Harry?”
Harry blinked away the sudden wetness caused by someone caring about him right now and waved a hand at the suit. “I—no. I’ll find something else.”
The crease in Tristan’s brow deepened. “What exactly did Jack do? Did he cheat? Do I have to beat him up for you? I mean, I’d hire someone else to do the actual hitting, since obviously I’m too pretty for violence, but I could arrange it, if you want. I know people.”
That dragged a half-choked laugh out of Harry. Of course Tris knew people. Harry had no doubt that Tristan could have a dozen burly leather-clad men at their house with a snap of his fingers. Some of them might even be able to fight. He flapped his hand again and managed a hoarse, “Thanks, but no.”
Tris looked unconvinced, but he didn’t push. Instead, he said, “Wait here,” and darted back upstairs. When he came down, he was carrying a Coles bag with one of Harry’s many other ugly shirt-and-pant combos shoved inside, along with his orange Converse. Then he pulled out his phone and tapped the screen. “I’ve ordered you an Uber to Ambrose’s, on me,” he said. “You’re not going on the bus with that bag. It fucking reeks of weed and you’ll probably get yourself arrested, and I can’t be arsed bailing you out.”
Harry nodded gratefully and went to wait on the footpath. It didn’t take long for his ride to arrive. His driver made a few attempts at conversation, but soon got the hint when Harry gave one-word answers and left him in peace. Harry sat silently in the back and made a mental note to tell Tris to give the guy five stars, if only for being able to read a room—or a back seat. Whatever.
The car slowed to a crawl amid the snarl of early morning traffic, but Harry didn’t really mind. It gave him time to get his shit together before he had to face Ambrose. Not that Ambrose would be anything but supportive—his own relationship had hardly been plain sailing at the start—but the hurt was too raw, too new, for Harry to want to share the details.
And what would Harry tell him, anyway? That his boyfriend, who they’d agreed wouldn’t tell his family about Harry yet, hadn’t told his family about Harry yet? When he put it like that, it sounded like something one of his preschoolers would come crying to him about.
Except, there was more to it than that. It was the way that Jack hadn’t even hesitated to deny him. Maybe, when all the other kids in Jack’s Sunday school had been learning about baby Jesus, meek and mild , Jack’s takeaway had been Saint Peter denying his friendship because he was afraid of what people would think. Even though he hadn’t grown up in the church, Harry was pretty sure that particular scripture wasn’t meant to be taken as dating advice.
Wow. Harry blinked, startled at his own cynicism. Jack might have issues with his parents knowing about Harry, but he wasn’t that much of a self-serving arsehole.
Was he?
Harry was dragged from his thoughts when the driver pulled over in front of Ambrose’s weird old building. He nodded his thanks and climbed out, dragging his duffel and pushing the button for Ambrose to buzz him up. It was still surreal to Harry that Ambrose had ended up here, a Bad Boyfriend date somehow morphing into Ambrose settling down with Liam. He guessed it just went to show that anything could happen when it came to romance.
Anything except Harry getting his own happy ending, apparently.
When he got to Ambrose and Liam’s fancy building, he buzzed and Ambrose let him in. He didn’t take the elevator—it was old, and in one of those cages that had to be manually pulled shut, and Harry had always been slightly freaked out by it. He took the stairs instead, dragging his feet because wallowing in his own misery felt better than having to explain everything to Ambrose. He had the feeling it’d sound even dumber out loud than it did in his head.
Ambrose met him at the door. “Are you okay, Harry?”
Harry dumped his bags on the floor and shuffled into the sunlit living area. He wanted to faceplant on the couch, but Tobermory the cat was already stretched out there, so he had to settle for sitting on the floor instead, tugging at the knotty strings of the weird lumpy rug under the coffee table.
“Do you want a drink?” Ambrose asked him.
Tobermory yowled.
“Not you. Harry.”
“I want a Coke spider,” Harry said.
Ambrose blinked at him. “Um… I think we have creaming soda. How about a creaming soda spider?”
“Okay.”
Harry stared out of the open balcony doors. The day was bright and sunny, and the breeze that came in off the harbour was cool. This place was nothing like Harry’s dingy sharehouse, but he liked his house. He liked that it was old and decrepit and held together with nothing but the force of habit. He liked that it was the worst house on the street, and he liked the way the neighbours’ mouths made unhappy shapes when they looked at it, like it was a black hole sucking in their property values. He liked that there was graffiti on the living room wall that had been there for at least forty years. But mostly he liked that he lived there with Jack, and they slept together in a sagging bed and drifted off to sleep at night staring at the mottled patterns of mildew on the ceiling.
Ambrose set a fizzing creaming soda spider down on the coffee table and passed him a spoon. Then he sat down next to Harry. “So, on the Harry Sugar Scale of Emergencies, I’d say this is at least an eight.”
Harry scooped some ice cream out and ate it. “Maybe a nine.”
“I’ve got some Tim Tams in the cupboard.”
Harry frowned at his spider. “I just don’t get it.” He jabbed the lump of ice cream down with his spoon, making the drink fizz some more. “Why couldn’t it have been you that I liked?”
Ambrose’s face did something complicated. “Well, I think the ship’s sailed on that, sorry mate.”
“Yeah, I know. Just, you get me, you know?”
The corners of Ambrose’s mouth curled up. “Harry, you’re my best mate and I love you, but you have always been a mystery wrapped inside an enigma wrapped inside an iron curtain or whatever.”
“Isn’t it a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma? And isn’t it Russia?”
“Not the point.” Ambrose waved his hand. “I tried to kiss you once, remember? And you laughed.”
“That was because you were joking!”
Ambrose’s face did that complicated thing again.
“Oh.” Harry blinked at him. “You weren’t joking?”
“I wasn’t joking.” Ambrose snorted, his eyes twinkling. “So I’m just going to take this awkward moment here”—he pinched at the air—“and hide it away with all the things we’re never going to talk about again.” He tucked his fingers under the edge of the rug briefly. “I’ll call it Ambrose’s Hurt Ego Depository. There aren’t a lot of things in there, but ouch !” He grabbed his heart and gave a theatrical swoon. “The pain !”
Harry huffed out a laugh. “Idiot.”
“Guilty.” Ambrose’s grin faded, and he nudged Harry with his knee. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“He said I was nobody,” Harry said, and shoved more ice cream in his mouth. Spiders always sounded like a better idea in theory than they were in practice. In practice they were sort of gross. It seemed safer to concentrate on that right now than the sudden heat in his eyes that warned him tears were building. “On the phone to his mum, he said I was nobody.”
“He what?” Ambrose’s voice was dangerously low.
Harry felt a thrill at Ambrose’s anger. It felt validating. The thrill didn’t last though—it was quickly overtaken by logic. “Well, it sounds worse than it is.”
Ambrose arched an eyebrow.
Harry sighed and scraped his spoon around in the glass for a moment. “You remember the Bad Boyfriend date I had at Liam’s restaurant? Where I did the tablecloth trick, and it worked ?”
Ambrose laughed. “Yeah, and it threw you so much that you tipped a glass of water into the dad’s lap!”
“That’s Jack’s dad,” Harry said. “I was on a date with Jack’s sister, Mia, and she’s getting married now and everything, which is great, but also it means that Jack can’t tell his parents we’re actually dating for real, and he can’t tell them all the Bad Boyfriend stuff with Mia was fake because, well, they’re probably not going to be happy she tricked them like that.”
“Oh, shit,” Ambrose said, which summed things up pretty well. He rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Okay, yeah. So that’s not as bad as I originally thought. I mean, on the surface it still sounds really shitty, but it’s actually a proper reason, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Harry swallowed around the lump in his throat. “It still felt bad though. Even if it’s a reason.” He turned his phone over and over in his hand. “I just need some time to get over myself, I guess.”
“Well, we’ve got plenty of creaming soda and ice cream,” Ambrose said. “And those Tim Tams. That should help.” He reached over and plucked Harry’s phone out of his grasp. “And I’ll take that.”
Harry blinked at the space where his phone had been. “But what if Jack calls?”
“Are you ready to talk to Jack right now?”
And that right there was the million-dollar question. Harry considered it, and decided that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to Jack, more that he didn’t know if he could, not without falling apart and saying things he’d regret. Fuck, this was a mess. “No,” he muttered.
“Exactly.” Ambrose said. “So give me the phone. If he calls, it’ll go to message bank and you can call him back when you’re ready. That way you won’t say something you’ll regret. Trust me on this. Now finish your spider.”
Harry forced a smile while Ambrose took his phone and put it on top of the fridge, and wondered if Jack had figured out yet what had only taken Ambrose a few weeks—that Harry in crisis mode was a Harry who needed sugar. If he hadn’t, did that mean that Ambrose would have made a better boyfriend? No, he realised suddenly. It was because until now, nothing about Jack had rated on the Harry Sugar Scale of Emergencies. Even the stuff about sex, about figuring out who he was—he hadn’t needed sugar to get through it, because he’d had Jack. Jack was his sugar.
It felt like a revelation, but he didn’t share it with Ambrose because he was sure there was a sex and sugar joke in there somewhere, and he didn’t want Ambrose to say it. It occurred to him that just like sugar, Jack was also addictive—and he was well and truly hooked .
That was what made it sting worse. He was hooked and Jack was… Jack had said he was nobody. Harry wouldn’t be able to lie like that, and a small part of him wished that Jack hadn’t been able to either.
“I know I’m not nobody,” he said, and Tobermory yowled. “And I know he doesn’t really think I’m nobody. It just hurt, that’s all.”
“Oh, man,” Ambrose said. He knocked their shoulders together. “When I was in year six, Mason Green told me that wearing my socks folded down made me look like a dick. I cried, not about the socks, but because I thought he’d been strutting his way across the playground to tell me he liked me.”
Harry snorted. “Yeah, except I’m not in grade six, am I?”
“But it’s new,” Ambrose said. “It’s all new for you, right? The rest of us, we learn the ropes in primary school. And don’t even get me started on how dramatic high school is. If Liam says something dumb, I tell him he’s a fucking idiot and we start over. And vice versa. But this is your first time Harry, for everything. So I don’t think you should be too hard on yourself for feeling hurt. Jack said a shitty thing, even if he didn’t mean it. And you’re allowed to take time to figure it out. Relationships are messy as fuck.” He gave a lopsided grin. “Welcome to the shitshow, I guess.”
“Relationships are hard.” Harry shrugged and ate another glob of ice cream. “At least the sex is good, right?”
“That’s the spirit!” Ambrose burst out laughing and Tobermory, offended, got up and left the room.