The Waitress

Coming home to roost

The Tom that came back to the Gold Coast two week's later wasn't the same one who had left.

Liam picked this new Tom and his agent Marc up from the Brisbane Airport and he knew without being told, that something had changed.

Summer was over.

Tom looked gaunt and hardly engaged in conversation as they made the now familiar drive down the M1 that Sunday morning. He looked out the window, eye contact at a minimum, words even less.

This was not the same man who left.

This was not the man he'd traveled the world with.

This was a shell, a husk. Someone beaten down by life.

He wondered what had gone down.

It must be serious if Marc was here, his presence smelled strongly of damage control. A storm was about to hit – a media storm. There had been some rumours but Tom was a celebrity, there were always rumours. However, this seemed to confirm they were true and Liam had the overwhelming urge to put himself into brace position to prepare for the plane crash that was about to occur. To bend over and kiss his arse goodbye.

And he couldn't really make himself care.

Not really.

The man on the other side of the car looking out the other window to him wore a familiar look – very similar to the one he himself had been seeing in the mirror since Emma left – only worse. He wondered again what had happened, though he would never ask, it wasn't his place. And if he didn't know he couldn't accidentally tell the one person he knew had clearance to know. You know?

He couldn't accidentally let it slip to Mels - the one person who this Tom looked like he'd need. Not that she was talking to him. Not that she wanted anything to do with him. And not that Liam himself was actually having any meaningful dialogue with said beautiful blonde Australian.

She'd returned Tom's presents last trip and although there had been nothing romantic between them (though he wasn't naïve to think they hadn't done some sort of horizontal polka) she had looked as heartbroken as Liam felt and Tom now looked.

And that's why Liam had his own reasons for not engaging in eye-contact with Tom.

There had been a kiss.

A late night thing. Two friends sitting around a lounge room watching Paytv – Foxtel, drinking – neither having to work the next morning. Mells staying over with the boys because she was working nights and well, it bubbled over. One too many, a bit of mutual shoulder crying and, for Liam, the most inappropriate kiss in the history of inappropriate kisses.

And yet.............

He had rung Emma the next day. Broken their radio silence just a week in. Tried not to think about Mell's lips on his, his arms around her, he body pressed against him.

Shit.

He didn't want to be attracted to Melody again.

He couldn't.

Though it had never really stopped.

But he was trying.

Trying with Emma and now he hadn't really looked at her since the kiss.

They hadn't really talked.

They were practicing avoidance and that was fine, that was good. That was, in this case, acceptable friend and probable, occasional lover of my boss behavior. It was good.