“My grandmother has three hundred followers.”
“And famous people are known—wait, really?”
“Well, like three hundred and eighty, which is closer to four hundred, but I said three hundred because I didn’t want you to feel bad.”
“Oh my God,” Theo said, putting his face in his hands.
“It’s ok,” Auggie said. “Let’s go look at what you’ve got in your closet.”
“No. You’re going home. Or to the library. Or hell, wherever you want to go. Anywhere but here.”
“We’ve got plenty of time to pick out something good.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She said she’d meet us at the Alpha Phi Conjunction Junction party tonight. She promised to get Robert’s contact info from her friends.”
“I’m not going to a Greek party. Why can’t she just text you the information?”
Auggie sighed, stood, and grabbed a handful of Theo’s long, strawberry-blond hair. He tugged and said, “Come on, Goldilocks. Unless you have something better to do tonight?”
“Do that again and I’ll kick your ass all the way out to the curb.”
“Besides Percocet and half a joint, I mean,” Auggie said with a grin.
Smacking Auggie’s hand loose, he said, “This is why I hated Luke too, just so you know.”
“Who’s Luke?”
“My brother. Just like you. Always acted like I didn’t have anything to do except bail him out.”
When the refrigerator’s fan cut off, a soft, tick-tick filled the silence.
“We’re going separately,” Theo said. “And we’re not talking to each other while we’re there. I’m only going to make sure you don’t get into trouble.”
Auggie raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“We go, we get the information, and we get out.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“This is to save your ass. We are not going to a party together for fun.”
“You sound very worried about the prospect of having fun.”
“For the love of God, Auggie.”
“Yeah, ok. Sure. This is to save my pathetic, scrawny ass. I get it.”
Theo scrubbed at his beard, made a face, and said to no one in particular, “I fucking hate freshmen.”
“My innocent ears,” Auggie said.
Theo made a noise that sounded a little like a scream.
14
They had hours to kill before the party, but no matter what Theo did, Auggie refused to leave. Theo said he needed to work on his thesis. Auggie asked if he could borrow a copy of King Lear to do some homework “for this asshole who keeps assigning more reading.” Theo said he needed to clean the house. Auggie offered to start in the kitchen. Theo explained about doing the laundry. Auggie suggested throwing in the polo to see if the stains would come out. Theo pulled out the big guns: it was time to cut the grass. Auggie said he’d do it.
“I won’t even get grass on your shirt,” he said, already wiggling out of it, grinning and smoothing his hair down after his head came free. “I cut the grass with my shirt off at home all the time.”
“For the love of Christ,” Theo said, “I need you to literally keep your shirt on.”
“It’s not even my shirt, it’s—”
Theo locked himself in the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and tried to figure out how he could get to the remaining half of the joint without Auggie noticing.
He decided the least problematic option was working on his thesis, so he found a copy of Lear, gave it to Auggie, and took his spot on the couch. Auggie sat at the other end, legs up on the cushion between them, his feet brushing Theo’s thigh.
“No,” Theo said. “This is my spot.”
Auggie had his tongue between his teeth as he stared at a page of Lear. “What?”
“I do my thesis work on the couch. Right here. This is my spot, this is where I work.”
“Ok.”
“Auggie.”
Auggie tore his eyes away and looked over the top of the book. “Yes, what?”
“This is my spot.”
“Oh my God,” Auggie said, and then he shifted until he seemed to find a comfortable position, his toes burrowing under Theo’s leg.
Theo stared at him. He stared at the paperback of Lear. He said, “Am I talking to myself?”
“Whoever you’re talking to,” Auggie said as he turned a page, “could both of you keep it down? I’m trying to do my homework.”
Theo considered the bathroom again: the blessed silence, the locked door. He considered finishing his thesis from the tub.
Somehow, he got to work. He’d coordinated his teaching with his research, hoping for a degree of synergy. Civ 1: Shakespeare in the World dealt with a single Shakespeare text—Lear—and translations, adaptations, and editions of it throughout the last four hundred years. Not coincidentally, Theo was trying to finish his chapter on Lear. Until he’d met Auggie Lopez, he’d considered that teaching might actually make his life easier. He grabbed the book of critical essays he’d been working on, flipped it open, and tried to disappear inside.
Auggie made that surprisingly difficult. He was only reading. But somehow, that reading seemed to require a lot of noise and energy and movement. He mumbled words under his breath. He paged back and forth. He tried reading on his side. Then his other side. Then his back again. Then his stomach. His butt was—Theo snipped that off. It was a student butt. That’s all that mattered. Auggie lay prone, his legs up, crossed at the ankle. Student butt. That’s all.
But Theo had to swallow before he swatted Auggie’s calf and said, “Get your feet out of my face, please.”
Auggie rolled onto his side, already wedging his feet under Theo’s thigh again. Then he did some more furious paging. Then he grabbed his phone and started typing. After a moment, he threw it down with a noise of disgust and did some more frantic flipping back and forth.
“Jesus God,” Theo said. “What? You didn’t get a million likes on your last video of you milking a cat or whatever it was?”
“Huh?”
“What’s the problem?”
“What does ‘With my two daughters’ dow’rs digest the third’ mean?”
Theo reached over, mindful of the heat of Auggie’s body, and folded back the book. He tapped the facing page with notes.
“I’m
