11. Vincent
VINCENT
The drive to the restaurant is a peaceful quiet.
There's nothing tense about why we aren't talking.
It's like we can just both sit and enjoy the silence together.
It's not a long drive to the restaurant, probably less than ten minutes, and before I know it, we're sitting down at a table in the window, with a beautiful view of not only the hilly landscape, but of spectators and people walking past to ogle at us, I suppose.
That's always been the intention of this public publicity stunt, hasn't it?
“Hi guys, my name is Sophia,” a short, black haired woman says to us, breaking the silence. “I will be your waitress tonight. Can I get you started with anything?”
We both ask for a beer, which I suppose isn't great to have at a fancy restaurant, but they've got it on the menu, so fuck if I'm not gonna have one.
“Okay, no worries. I will be back with that shortly, and in the meantime, you can have a look over the menus,” Sophia says with a flick of her hair, leaving us to it.
We don’t say anything as we both open our menus to look at what’s on over.
I feel comfortable in the silence, but also as if I don’t know what to say.
A mix of nerves and a sense of joy sits in my gut, and I don’t even know if the butterflies will settle enough for me to eat.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a man move closer with a camera.
This is the moment we’ve been waiting for, I guess.
Trying to not make it too obvious, I reach my hand across the table and hold his in mine. I pick up my beer and clink it against his.
“Cheers to our official first date,” Tate says with a cheeky grin.
I chuckle nervously as I take a sip, and he gives my hand a light squeeze.
“Why haven't you been home yet?” I ask.
“I still haven't been able to talk to my dad,” he murmurs, taking another sip of his beer.
“But I thought we were doing all of this,” I say, waving a hand between us. “So that it was real enough for you to talk to your dad.”
“Yeah, well,” he avoids eye contact, and I can tell there's something he's keeping from me.
Well?
“Well?” I repeat aloud.
“Here are your starters,” Sophia says, naturally arriving with the worst timing, placing down a garlic bread and Arancini balls.
I’m still stuck on the well.
Like really. Do they train waiters on how to appear and interrupt important conversations?
“I'll be back soon with your mains,” she says with a grin before walking away.
“I didn’t think we ordered entrees?” I ask Tate.
“Um, nope,” he grins. “But, you know, they're here, and my favourite thing, so I'm not gonna not eat them,” he says, picking up a piece of garlic bread in one hand and an Arancini ball in the other.
“What did you mean earlier?” I ask, trying to get him back to the well of it all.
Clearly an avoidance tactic, Tate all but stuffs the whole Arancini ball into his mouth and attempting to follow it immediately with the garlic bread.
“Seriously, you need to slow down or you’ll choke,” I scold, picking up a piece of garlic bread myself.
Two seconds later, Tate still unable to talk, and just after I take a bite, Sophia is back.
“I am so sorry. I've just realised that these were actually meant for the table over there,” she says, pointing to a more secluded table towards the back of the restaurant.
“But as you didn't order them and that we've incorrectly delivered them to your table, we'll comp them for you today.
Um, So you won't be charged.” Sophia says with a blush.
She apologises again, asking if we need any more drinks before leaving us with another promise to be back with our mains shortly.
“Oh, that's really good service,” Tate says, happily eating his slice of garlic bread.
“Holy shit,” I say, finally catching a glimpse of the patrons at the table this food was meant for.
“What?” says Tate, looking a bit alarmed.
“That's… oh my god, that's Tom. That's Tom from Fly By,” I stutter out, sure my eyes a bulging in awe.
“What? Who?” Tate asks, turning his head to get a look.
“Are you serious?” Rolling my eyes. “You don't know who, you don't know who Fly By are?”
“I know who Fly By are. But like, who's Tom?”
“Oh my god,” I groan, “Tom's the second youngest. He's the bass player.”
“Oh, was he the one that was really popular in the media not long ago because he got married?”
“Yep, to an American. And, um, to a man. It took the whole world by surprise.”
“Oh,” says Tate. “Do you want to go say hi?”
“Oh, shit, we shouldn't do that. We shouldn't interrupt their date.”
“Maybe we can see how it goes and tell the waitress to send them something on us, and as we technically got their starter,” Tate says, and I can’t help but beam at him.
“What a great idea. Maybe we can send them, like, a bottle of wine or something? That's not creepy, right?” I ask.
“Nah, I don’t think so. It’s not weird. Besides, they are much more famous than I will ever be,” says Tate. “They're probably used to having fans notice them out in public all the time, are you sure you don’t want to go and say hi?”
“No, no, it's okay. It's okay. I don’t need to do that,” I say, and it sounds like I am trying to convince myself of that, just as much as I am trying to convince Tate.
“I just mean, like, it's just cool to be able to see them.
I don't need to actually meet them or anything,” I say, turning back to the food.
Tate clears his throat, “I gonna go to the bathroom, and I’ll ask the waitress about that wine on the way.”
Distractedly, I wave him off, not really paying attention to where he goes.
Lost in my head thinking about all the times I looked up to them when their story broke a few years ago.
There weren’t that many gay icons around, and to find one so open and popular, it gave me hope that when I came out it wouldn’t impact my career.
Too bad I stopped playing before I came out publicly. It's been a few minutes when I look up, trying to figure out where Tate has gone.
Dread simmers in my gut as I notice that not only is he across the room, not next to where the toilets are, but he's talking to Tom and Jules from Fly By.
“What the fuck is he doing?” I mutter to myself.
Tate meets my eyes and waves. And then... waves me over. I shake my head, saying no, I am not doing this, and not only does Tate laugh, but so do Jules and Tom.
Oh fuck no.
A waitress conveniently walks past Tate at that time, and he says something to her. Before he starts walking back in my direction, those fierce blue eyes locked on mine the whole time.
“What are you doing,” I hiss the moment he is close enough to hear me. “What did you say to them?”
“Oh, I just told them how much of a big fan my boyfriend was,” Tate says with a smirk.
“Why would you do that?” I say in a panic as he sits back down across from me.
“So that you can go and meet them,” he says like it’s a statement. A normal thing that people like me do.
“No, no, I'm not doing that,” if I was standing, I would have stamped my foot with how serious I was about not going to do that.
“Too bad,” Tate says.
Glancing back around, my eyes widen as I notice that the waitress has not only added and is bringing over another table to us, but Tom and Jules standing very close behind me now. I bolt upright, listening to a chuckling Tate behind me.
“Is it alright if we join you?” Jules says, his American accent thick, if my memory serves me correct, he's from Vegas.
“Not at all, not at all,” Tate says, staring at me with my mouth open in shock, unable to speak.
“Well, I'm Julian, but you can call me Jules,” he says, putting a hand out for me to shake. I take it numbly, but trying to give him a professional shake, but I'm sure I fail.
“Um, uh, Vincent,” I say, tripping over my name.
“Nice to meet you,” Jules says with a wide grin. “This is my husband, Tom.”
“Um, yeah, yeah, I know, I know who you are,” I say, again fumbling my words.
“Nice to meet you,” Tom says, also shaking my hand.
Holy fuck.
Tom is touching me.
I don't understand how this has happened. I look at Tate with my eyes wide.
“What did you do?” I whisper as we all take our seats again.
This time, Tate sits next to me as Tom sits across from me, and Jules sits across from Tate.
“You'd think that he doesn't spend time around famous professional football players every day,” Tate says. “With him being all gobsmacked like that.”
I want to laugh. I want to be in on the joke, but I just I can't.
“You're important, babe,” I say, patting a hand against Tate’s. “But not like Fly By.”
Tom chuckles, and I see a glimmer in his eye. “It's not often that I'm the one who's recognised out and about,” he says. “Not when I'm alone, at least.”
“Oh, it's been happening more and more often when you're with me,” Jules says, giving him a wink.
“What are you guys doing in Orlo?” Tate asks.
“This is where I grew up,” Tom tells us. I knew a lot about the band, but I didn’t know that!
“Really?” I ask, eager to learn as much as I can about the band’s history from him.
“Yeah. We all kinda moved towards the Goldie once we hit it, but Mum and Dad are still out here, and we like to get away into the country every now and again. We’ve done a bit of a country tour over the last few months.”
“A second honey moon of sorts,” Jules adds in. “Seeing as the first was really just being on tour, which was with the WHOLE family and lost of drama,” he says with a light hearted eye roll. “This time we wanted to get away, just the two of us.”
“And I wanted to show Julian the parts of Australia he hasn’t gotten to see yet.”
I'm bewildered that this is my life, that this is happening, that I'm having dinner with someone as famous as Tom from Fly By.
“I know it must have been rough for you guys in the media with everything that's gone on with your wedding,” I say, following on the from the conversation of the tour.
“Yeah, it was a bit rough, but, you know, you do the things you have to do to make public relations happy,” says Jules, with a slight smirk.