“I can—”
“Theo, please.” Auggie didn’t wait for an answer before grabbing his shirt and pulling Theo toward him. Their cheeks were touching; Theo’s beard was softer than Auggie had expected. Auggie whispered again, “Please.”
“Where the fuck is he?” Barry shouted. He sounded like he was standing right next to him. “Where the fuck did that prick go? Get the fuck back here!”
Theo whispered, “This is going to be in my nightmares for the rest of my life, just so you know.”
Auggie didn’t know what he was talking about until Theo began to pump his hips, pistoning back and forth, supporting himself on his elbows, never quite making contact. His breath was hot, licking Auggie’s collar bone where the t-shirt had slid aside. He smelled like cedar and musk and hops. On Auggie’s cheek, the friction of Theo’s beard built into a blaze, and the fire spread down into his chest, between his legs. Upstairs with Samantha, he’d felt like Pinocchio, dancing on strings he’d hung for himself; this, in contrast, even with Theo faking every moment of it—this felt real.
Auggie squeezed his eyes shut. The tequila in his blood fueled the fire. He caught Theo’s rhythm, felt it in his pulse, knew that this would be what it was like if they were together for real: the confidence, the steadiness, the control. He could imagine, if they were really together, Theo’s hand on the inside of his thigh. He could imagine Theo’s hand at the small of his back, guiding. He could imagine Theo’s hand between his leg. Auggie knew could rut up right then, matching Theo’s rhythm. He could make contact. Even the tequila couldn’t convince him, though, that he wouldn’t just be fucking everything up.
“Jesus Christ,” Theo whispered. “My knee.”
“Oh, sorry,” Auggie put a hand on Theo’s shirt, the sweat-damp cotton rough against his fingertips. “You can stop. I think—I think he’s gone.”
With a groan, Theo flopped onto his back, pulling his knee to his chest, massaging it.
“Are you ok?” Auggie whispered, inching out from under the boxwood.
“Yep, great. Just don’t look at me. Maybe you shouldn’t look at me ever again.”
“Well, you saved our asses. So, um. Thank you.”
Eyes shut, Theo nodded.
“How bad is your knee?”
“My knee is royally screwed up,” Theo whispered. “I’m more worried about which circle of hell I’m going to.”
“Do you want me to call a cab?”
“No. I can—I can walk. I just fucking forgot my cane, which is so fucking stupid that I fucking deserve every fucking step I’m going to have to walk tonight.”
“I’ll call you a cab.”
“Did you get the number?”
“What? Oh. Yeah.”
“Well, call it.”
Auggie glanced around; they were alone on the Alpha Phi lawn. He placed the call and put it on speaker.
“Yeah?” It wasn’t Robert; this voice was older, raspier, probably a smoker.
“I want to talk to Robert.”
The breathing on the other end of the line altered, quickening with what sounded, to Auggie, like panic. And then the call disconnected.
Theo’s eyes were opening, wildflower blue looking black in the shadows. He shrugged and said, “Try again.”
Auggie placed the call again. It rang twelve times before going to a generic voicemail.
“Once more,” Theo said.
This time, the phone rang once before being shunted to the generic voicemail again.
“He turned it off,” Auggie whispered.
“Yeah,” Theo said. “But who the hell was that?”
16
The next morning, Theo didn’t hear the alarm go off. He woke hours later, his knee throbbing from overdoing it last night, his head throbbing because he’d come home from the party and finished off the White Rascal. Lying in bed, with a stack of Ian’s neatly folded t-shirts next to him, Theo considered puking. He remembered the feel of Auggie beneath him, the slim musculature, the smell of tequila, the smoothness of his cheek. He remembered what it had felt like to stare at the hollow of his shoulder, soft brown skin taut over bone, to have his mouth inches from Auggie’s, to feel like he was burning up in spite of the cool evening. Rolling onto his side, Theo buried his face in Ian’s tees, knocking over the pile. All he could smell, though, was laundry detergent.
Eventually, he had to get up. He took a Percocet, drank as much water as he thought he could stand, and toasted the heel of a slice of bread. The late-morning sunlight came in across the sink, picking out motes of dust in the air, highlighting tiny fuzzies that clung to the door of the oven. The Rudock kids were screaming at the top of their lungs, and Theo wondered how much a box of plastic bullets would cost. A hangover of this magnitude seemed like a reasonable excuse for riot gear.
Cart called, and Theo sent it to voicemail. Cart called again. This time, Theo let it ring until it went to voicemail on its own.
When he didn’t think he was going to puke anymore, he showered, dressed, and grabbed his cane. He made his way to the bus stop and did his daily pilgrimage to Downing. He got lucky on the return trip—the bus came on time—and he trudged home. His leg was on fire again. With every yard, Theo wondered why he had forgotten everything that was important last night: the cane, the Percocet, Ian. But that question was so messed up that Theo shoved it aside to focus on something more straightforward. They’d tracked down Robert’s phone number and gotten a stranger. What was the next move? How did they find Robert before those assholes came after Auggie again?
Lost in that question, he didn’t notice that the front door of his house had been forced until he was halfway up the steps. Theo paused, the keys hanging from one finger, and then he made a fist with the keys sticking out. He eased his weight up to the porch, wincing as the cane thumped against the wood. He examined the jamb and saw where wood had splintered around the strike plate. He listened, heard
