Page 58 of We Were Never Lovers
Sean felt the old sting at the thought of Jack talking about him, but the heat wasn’t in it like it used to be. Jack was over by the bar, head tilted down to listen to something Lara was saying, his dopey smile fond, hand loose on his glass of beer, the strobe lights catching his blonde hair, the bulge of his biceps under yet another white shirt, the flat abs tapering down to his worn in jeans. There were girls, and guys, darting looks over at him, checking him out, no doubt wondering if they had a shot. Jack was one of the few single guys on the team aside from the younger blokes, but even most of them had a girlfriend, an “influencer”, Jack had explained to Sean and he’d stared blankly. He remembered people selling shit online, but he wasn’t aware it’d become such a thing, that most of the guys now hooked up with these women, did shit like, ‘Ambassador to the Races’ with them. But here they all were, in tiny dresses with big tits and perfect faces, the same kind of girls looking over at Jack now.
Had Jack ever been with a girl? He knew from the night they’d spent at the carnival that Jack was into boys, but that didn’t mean anything. Plenty of footy players probably love the cock and go for the pussy because no one wants to be that guy. And even if that wasn’t entirely true anymore, not many guys carriedthe exceptional status of George and Finn, not many guys would want to bring that world of shit on themselves. From what Sean had gathered, those two only came out because Finn was outed and George wasn’t going to let his boy go through that alone. It was romantic as shit, but Sean didn’t want that, didn’t think Jack did either. But did that mean Jack was looking to settle down with a woman?
A pretty brunette went up to him, touched his arm and leaned up to say something. She needed to do it to be heard over the music, and Jack bending down to hear her was for the same reason, but the picture they painted—curled into each other, the blue of the strobe lights catching glossy hair, Jack’s polite smile, her hand moving on his bicep, long painted nails almost caressing—it hit Sean like a fist in his chest, squeezing painfully.
“I gotta head out,” he leaned over to say to Ben.
“Yeah, ya better save Jack,” Ben cackled.
Sean didn’t know what that meant. He gave Ben a blackfella handshake, then turned for the stairs that’d take him back up to the street. He’d walk. The fresh air would do him good. He wanted to belt up the stairs at a run, but his leg wouldn’t allow for that yet, so he made do with a quick hobble. He grabbed his coat from the coat check, wriggled into it as he stepped onto the street.
Cool air hit his face like a balm for his reddening cheeks. He’d only had a diet coke, so he wasn’t ruddy from booze, yet as the fresh air washed over him, he realised he was hot. Anger, he’d normally think, but it wasn’t that and he knew it. The seagulls darted from the median strip over the road to the footpath, still active even though it was past midnight, but if people were around there was always the possibility for a feed, and they weren’t the most successful scavengers for no reason.
He moved towards the markets, ducked down the side lane, huddled under the shadows from the pub awning and the foodcourt and headed for the road that’d take him past the old convict prison. He passed the long column of the staircase, the prison lit up with floodlights beneath it, the yellows and pinks and blues giving it an eerie yet weirdly cheerful vibe, as if this relic had always been a monument to tourism and not a place for enslaved men who could no longer fit inside the overburdened UK prison system two hundred years ago. As he darted around the dropped fruit from the Moreton Bay fig trees, squashed blood red on the bitumen, he heard Jack’s voice.
“Sean!”
His boots pounded on the pathway as he ran to catch up. Sean wanted to keep going, to run away, but that would be weird; he’d look like a panda bumping into another panda. He’d seen that on a nature documentary—pandas, because they ate bamboo, didn’t have the energy to get into fights, so if a panda happened upon another panda in their territory, instead of fighting, they’d bolt in opposite directions. Ben had howled with laughter at the sight of it. Sean had also thought it was funny, but he felt like it was serious too—conserving energy was important, so if you’re going to get in a fight, you better make sure it was worth it. He’d always thought the energy he’d used to fight Jack was a worthwhile deployment of that energy. But turning tail and bolting into the distance now, even not accounting for his leg and how running on bitumen in boots would fuck him up, it’d be a weird play at this turn in their not-relationship.
“Shoulda said you were leaving,” Jack panted when he caught up.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a professional athlete?” Sean asked and resumed walking.
Jack laughed, a huff of air as he caught his breath and fell into step with him. “Hey, fuck you, I just ran all the way here.”
He was an animated stretch of warmth at Sean’s side, his breathing loud above Sean’s head, his hand flying out as hetalked. “Why didn’t you grab me? I was only sticking around ‘cos you were talking to Ben.”
They wound up the road on the other side of the prison, the space dark, empty and cold under the enormous wall that lined the hill stretching up towards Jack’s house.
“You seemed pretty busy,” Sean replied. He felt Jack’s eyes on the side of his head.
“Busy? In a club?”
“Yeah, with, ya know,” Sean sucked in a pissed off breath, “with that chick.”
He expected Jack to disagree, to laugh, or, worst of all, to fob it off with a ‘not feeling it’, but he didn’t expect Jack to stop walking so Sean got a few feet ahead before he was turning back to look at him.
Jack stared up at him, the incline giving Sean the height advantage. It was dark, but Sean could see Jack’s parted lips in the shadows, his wide eyes.
“I’m gay,” Jack said in a normal volume. It was night and there was no one around, but it was still a street with houses on one side of it, it was still possible someone could be sitting on a porch in the dark smoking bongs and listening to all of this.
“Like, gold star gay,” Jack said in the same voice.
“Jesus, take out a public announcement why don’t ya,” Sean hissed at him.
Jack jogged back beside him and grabbed Sean’s hand. “I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out for you. I guess I forgot…”
At least he was walking again, but Sean couldn’t let that just hang there.
“You forgot what?” he asked, taking his hand back as they approached the main road.
“We’ve talked about all of this,” Jack said, dropping his voice. “I’ve never been with a woman.” And he said it like a kidconfiding a secret, and Sean wanted to laugh but then he caught up to what Jack was implying.
If Sean apparently knew this about Jack, then Jack knew about him. And Sean’s sexual history was not something he wanted anyone to know about, least of all Jack.
“Whaddya mean we’ve talked about this?” Sean asked, eyes fixed firmly on the traffic at the intersection, a lone pair of headlights idling slowly up the street.
“I mean, we’ve talked about what we’ve done before. And I’d never, Jesus, I’d never sleep with a woman,” he laughed, tipsy. “Can you imagine?”
