Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7 — BOOK I

 

Our Front Doors Face the Same Sky

 

(Late First Semester, 1999)

 

The sunset spilled gold across the harbour, catching the sails of the Opera House in the distance like a dream made of glass and memory.

 

From the balconies of their neighbouring homes in Vaucluse, Geoffrey Douglas and Embong Awan leaned against the railings, each sipping from a glass of chilled Ribena, watching the sea roll out toward Shark Island.

 

They had discovered it only two days ago—that they lived beside each other.

 

Not just the same suburb.

 

Literally next door.

 

Separated by a low garden wall and a hibiscus hedge.

 

Geoffrey still couldn’t quite get over it.

 

“All those months,” he muttered, shaking his head, “and we were right here.”

 

Embong chuckled, tilting his glass slightly.

 

“You know what that means, right? This was a cosmic prank. The universe was like—you need each other, lah, but let’s make it awkwardly slow.”

 

“Or maybe it was waiting,” Geoffrey said quietly. “For me to be ready.”

 

Below them, boats glided past like pieces of someone else’s story. The sun slipped lower, and the sky deepened into ink brushed with fire.

 

They fell silent—not from awkwardness, but the kind of quiet that says: you’re safe here.

 

After a moment, Embong leaned sideways against the glass railing and grinned.

 

“You know, we should do something with this,” he said. “Living next door. Waterfront view. Iconic skyline.”

 

Geoffrey raised an eyebrow.

 

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

 

“We start a podcast,” Embong said, completely serious.

 

Geoffrey stared at him.

 

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

 

“Two Boys, One Harbour,” Embong continued. “Episode one: Why Is the Opera House Just a Fancy Durian?”

 

Geoffrey burst out laughing.

 

“We’d get banned by Tourism Australia in a week.”

 

The sliding door behind Geoffrey opened.

 

Elaine stepped out, balancing a plate of spring rolls—Rina’s homemade recipe, passed over the fence barely an hour earlier.

 

“Embong, darling,” she called gently, “come join us for dinner. Rina says you haven’t eaten anything green all day.”

 

Embong turned, mock-offended.

 

“Elaine, the green bits in M&M’s do count, okay?”

 

Elaine rolled her eyes fondly and disappeared back inside.

 

The air settled again.

 

“Seriously though,” Embong said, quieter now, “I never thought I’d have something like this. A view. A best mate. A life that actually feels good.”

 

Geoffrey nodded.

 

“Back in LA, I had views too,” he said after a moment. “But they felt… far away. Fake, somehow. Here—”

 

He gestured toward the skyline, the wind, the open water.

 

“—here, it’s like the world finally stopped running from me.”

 

Embong watched him, then lifted his glass and tapped it gently against Geoffrey’s.

 

“To harbour boys.”

 

“To second chances,” Geoffrey replied.

 

They drank.

 

After a while, they drifted back indoors, the evening loosening into ordinary movements—doors sliding shut, bags set down, lights flicked on without ceremony.

 

Embong unpacked later than he meant to. His bag lay open on the bed, half-forgotten until habit drew his hands through it.

 

That was when he found the socks.

 

Folded neatly—too neatly to be accidental. Clean. Paired. Placed right at the top, where they would be seen without searching.

 

Not his.

 

Geoffrey’s.

 

There was no note. No explanation offered or required.

 

Embong refolded them once, carefully, and put them back exactly where they had been.

 

He wore them the next morning.

 

A little later—after dinner, after the dishes had been cleared and the houses thinned into smaller pockets of sound—Geoffrey found Embong again, this time leaning against the shared garden wall.

 

“So,” Geoffrey said casually, “Kak Hijau’s boyfriend.”

 

Embong smiled faintly.

 

“Lachlan.”

 

“This is the one who survived the interview process?”

 

“Kak Hijau didn’t go easy on him,” Embong said, matter-of-fact.
“He said something cheeky. She pushed back. He didn’t sulk or disappear.

 

That’s how you know he was worth keeping.”

 

Geoffrey smiled. “Guess that runs in the family.”

 

Embong glanced at him.

 

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe we just don’t keep people who can’t listen.”

 

Geoffrey hesitated, then asked, “So… how did they actually meet?”

 

Embong exhaled, amused. “ICQ.”

 

Geoffrey blinked. “You’re kidding.”

 

“I’m not.”

 

Embong mentioned it once, without emphasis. He had tried rugby when he was thirteen, because it was what the school offered first and what most boys were expected to attempt. He learned the drills, followed instructions, did not mind the cold or the contact. But when the season ended, he did not return. Soccer asked for something different—patience, endurance, an awareness of space rather than force—and by the following year it had become routine. He did not frame it as a decision at all. It was simply where he kept turning up, week after week, until it carried him all the way through to his final year.

 

The ICQ Chatroom

 

The chatroom was noisy in the way only early internet spaces could be—handles blinking in and out, conversations overlapping, jokes half-finished before another arrived.

 

Lachlan had been talking to one of Hijau’s university friends when he decided to be clever.

 

So, he typed, am I about to be educated by a room full of Asian women who all get better marks than me?

 

There was a pause.

 

Then Hijau replied.

 

That depends, she wrote, on whether you’re asking to learn or asking to be annoying.

 

A few laughing emojis appeared from the others.

 

Lachlan didn’t retreat.

 

Both, he admitted. But I’m trying to improve.

 

Hijau answered without hesitation.

 

Good. Step one is not assuming we all think the same. Step two is realising we already know more about you than you think.

 

What do you know? he asked.

 

That you talk too much, she typed, and that you probably think confidence counts as charm.

 

The chat lit up again.

 

Lachlan laughed—actually laughed—and typed back:

 

Fair. For the record, I also listen. Sometimes.

 

Then listen now, Hijau replied. If you’re going to joke about people, make sure you can take it when they joke back.

 

Deal, he wrote. I deserved that.

 

From there, the conversation shifted.

 

Less posturing.
More curiosity.
Questions asked and answered properly.

 

The banter remained, but it learned its limits.

 

Later, when someone introduced Lachlan to Hijau privately, he sent a simple message.

 

Thanks for not letting me get away with that.

 

Hijau replied:

 

You’re welcome. Try again tomorrow.

 

He did.

 

Embong finished the story without embellishment.

 

“He listened,” he said. “That was the point.”

 

Geoffrey nodded. He understood that kind of test.

 

As the first stars blinked into the darkening sky, a ferry curved into view from Circular Quay, its lights threading a slow promise across the water.

 

And for the first time either of them could remember, neither boy felt like a stranger in his own life.

 

They weren’t just next-door neighbours anymore.

 

They were home.

 

Together.

 

Much later, Geoffrey would come across a line in translation—simple, almost self-evident.

 

O humanity! Indeed, We created you from a male and a female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may get to know one another.

 

He thought of two houses beside the same stretch of water, of voices that learned to listen, of how little belonging had ever had to do with sameness.

 

The words felt less like revelation than recognition.

 

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