“Your boy know he can’t come over today?” Cart asked.
“Try again.”
“Your fucktoy.”
“Come on, Cart. You can do it.”
“Your teenybopper.”
“I know that fucking one-room schoolhouse you went to didn’t give classes beyond the third grade, but I’ve got faith in you.”
“You pretentious piece of shit,” Cart said, “I’d already finished college and the academy while you were still sucking off lumberjacks or whatever the fuck you were doing.”
Theo hid his grin.
“Now you’ve gone and ruined the whole thing,” Cart said.
“Try it one more time.”
“No, fuck you. You think you’re special cause you get to jerk off in your ivory tower now.”
“Let’s hear you talk about Auggie right, and then I’ll apologize.”
“Is your friend,” he laid his disgust on the word, “coming over today?”
“I’m sorry for the joke about school,” Theo said, “And no, he’s not. I told Auggie I was staying at your place because of the floors.”
“I bet he didn’t like that.”
“I don’t care if he likes it. But I did tell him I’d be sleeping on the couch. By myself.” Theo watched Cart over the rim of brown glass. “And all I’d be doing was sleeping.”
“Message received.”
“By myself.”
“I said message received.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Christ, you’re a cocky piece of shit,” Cart said with that huge grin. “What the fuck did Ian ever see in you?”
“He kept me around because I’m so handy.”
“Fuck,” Cart said, drawing the word out an extra ten syllables. Then he burst out laughing.
When they’d finished the floor in the kitchen, they locked up the house. At Cart’s insistence, they drove to the Mighty Street Taproom, and Cart got chicken-fried steak and Theo got a burger. They talked. They watched the Blues lose like shit. They drank a few beers.
“Did you see this?” Cart asked when the game was over. He pulled out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and held it out.
Theo took the device and watched the video load on Instagram. It had been posted by aplolz that morning, and it was the first post since Auggie had outed himself with the video that showed Theo kissing him. The video began with words on a black background: WHEN YOUR FRAT BROS FIND OUT YOU’RE GAY. What followed was a series of clips of Auggie being approached by what looked like every hot guy in Sigma Sigma, all of them asking Auggie if he could help them out with a personal problem. They cornered him in the kitchen. They followed him into the bathroom. One guy was hiding in the closet, and Theo wasn’t sure if that was irony, but he knew how smart Auggie was, and he thought it was probably intentional. The video ended with a horde of hot guys chasing Auggie down the Sigma Sigma lawn. The video had a hundred thousand views.
Theo glanced up to see a look he couldn’t parse on Cart’s face.
“What?” Theo asked.
“He looks happy, doesn’t he?” Cart said.
“Yeah,” Theo said, smiling as he started the video again. “He does.”
YET A STRANGER
Keep reading for a sneak preview of Yet a Stranger, book two of The First Quarto.
1
Auggie and Fer had been driving for three days when they reached the Sigma Sigma fraternity house, which sat on Frat Row on the south side of Wroxall College’s campus. For the last hundred miles, the Civic had been chugging and croaking, and it made a shrill, despairing noise every time they went up a hill—which in this godforsaken corner of the Midwest was about every fifty yards. Auggie was pretty sure he could smell plastic burning. It was better than the day and a half of Fer’s cheesy-tater-tot farts, though, that he’d experienced in the middle of the trip.
“Be fast, dick drip,” Fer said as he pulled into the Sigma Sigma parking lot. “Or I’m going to miss the shuttle.”
“I know.”
“So be fast.”
“I know, Fer.”
“So don’t sit there scratching your pubic lice. Get a fucking move on.”
“I hate you so much,” Auggie said as he jumped out of the car and ran toward the move-in tables set up in front of the fraternity house. It was mid-afternoon because they’d left Amarillo later that morning than they had planned, and Auggie guessed the rush of move-ins had happened that morning. A couple of guys around his age—they were sophomores too, he guessed—were lugging plastic totes toward the red-brick house, and another guy was folding bedsheets while he argued with a girl—sister? girlfriend?—at the back of a station wagon. No parents. No older brothers.
Fer laid on the horn, which was actually pretty pathetic because the Civic just kind of squeaked a few times. Then he shouted, “For fuck’s sake, imagine some dude is jackrabbiting your hole and move your ass, Augustus!”
Auggie’s face was hot as he approached the move-in tables. He found the L-R sign and felt his face get even hotter. The guy sitting there was gorgeous: big, brawny, in a tank and shorts and Adidas slides, with blond curls spilling over his forehead. He was grinning as Auggie moved forward.
“Lopez,” Auggie said.
“Hi,” the guy said, shuffling the papers. He glanced up. He had blue eyes. “Dylan.”
“No, August. But I go by Auggie.”
The guy laughed.
“Oh,” Auggie said. “Got it. Hi.”
Dylan laughed again. He had a nice laugh. He had very white teeth. When he handed over the paperwork and a key, he said, “You know everybody’s talking about you, right?”
“No, I definitely did not know that.”
“Yep,” Dylan said. “They are. I like your videos. You’re super funny.”
“Thanks. I’m always looking for people who want to be in them.”
“Nah, man,” Dylan said. “Not really my thing. It’s cool, though. I’m following you on Instagram and Snapchat. dylan_j199. Add me back.”
“Cool,” Auggie said.
“You want a tour?” Dylan glanced at the other guys manning the table,
