The Civic squeaked again, and Fer roared, “Jesus Christ’s bloody tampon, Augustus, either go down on him or don’t, but hurry it the fuck up!”
“Maybe another time,” Auggie said.
“Hit me up.”
“Do you live here?”
“No, man. Senior. Some buds and I have a place off-campus. You should come over sometime. Hang out.”
“That’d be cool.”
“Hit me up,” Dylan said again, but this time with a lazy smile that Auggie felt low in the belly.
As Auggie jogged back to the Civic, he could hear conversation buzz to life behind him. One guy said, “Jeez, Dyl, let the kid take a breath before you bend him over,” and another guy said, “Dylan, you are such a fucking perv,” and Dylan just laughed—a low, rumbling sound.
“Did you get your complimentary scissoring?” Fer asked as he got out of the car. They had different dads, and Fer was taller, darker, and bigger—muscle that was softening as Fer spent more and more time at business lunches and meetings. The taller part, that was what irked Auggie. Of course, sometimes the bigger part was pretty fucking annoying too.
“For the millionth time,” Auggie said, “I didn’t need you to drive out here with me.”
“And let you go by yourself and give blowjobs to truckers for almost two thousand miles? Yeah, right, Augustus. Great idea.”
“And for the millionth time, I didn’t want you to drive out here with me.”
“Pay for your own fucking education then.”
“Just unload the stuff in the parking lot, and I’ll get some guys to help me carry it inside.”
Fer ignored him. He was working the biggest piece of luggage out of the trunk, grunting at the weight. “What the hell do you have in here? Your stainless-steel dildo collection?”
“Oh my God,” Auggie said, covering his face.
The unloading and moving-in process went relatively smoothly. The Sigma Sigma house was a massive, three-story Colonial with red brick and gleaming white pillars. It was relatively new construction, with high ceilings and big windows. Auggie’s room was on the third floor. The walls were a grayish brown, and someone had clearly patched and painted over the summer because there were no nail holes or broken plaster. Bunkbeds took up one corner of the room, and matching desks took up the rest of the space. One wall had been given over to two closets, which was where Auggie was going to have to store all his clothes—apparently, a dresser was not part of the standard package.
“This is worse than your last place,” Fer said on their third trip upstairs.
“No, it’s way better.”
“Do you have a roommate?”
“I don’t know; if I do, he hasn’t moved anything in yet.”
“He better not be a fucking psycho like your last one.”
“I think that’s everything, Fer.”
Fer grunted, hands on hips, still studying the room.
“I guess you can go now,” Auggie said.
“I want to see the bathroom. Your last place, you had that private bathroom.”
“You can’t just wander around the bathroom.”
“I’m going to take a leak.”
“You can’t.”
“I can’t take a leak? Jesus, Augustus, I don’t even know if you hear yourself sometimes.”
Fer left, and Auggie considered whether or not it would be better just to die right now rather than dragging it out for the rest of the time Fer insisted on staying. Instead, he rearranged some of his luggage and the moving boxes, snapped a selfie, and pushed it out on Instagram with the caption: The eagle has landed at Bro Central. Wish me luck! He repeated the process with Snapchat—he was still feeling out the relatively new platform, but he felt like it had a lot of possibility. Almost immediately, he got a snap back: it showed a quarter of Dylan’s face and mop of blond curls, and then grass, trees, and a swatch of asphalt. Dylan was grinning, and he’d scrawled a message on top of the picture: welcome to Bro Central, little bro!
Auggie added him as a friend so fast that he almost sprained his finger.
“Private showers,” Fer reported, adjusting his junk as he came back into the room. “But it’s just curtains, so you could still get ass raped.”
“Go home, Fer. Go catch your shuttle. Go stand in the middle of the street until someone runs you over.”
Instead, Fer shut the door. “You and I are going to have a talk right now, Augustus.”
“Oh God. Hold on. I should probably film this.”
Fer pushed Auggie’s phone down and shook his head. Then he said, “Condoms.”
“What?”
Taking a foil-wrapped condom from his pocket, Fer said, “Condoms.” He pronounced each syllable distinctly, wagging the packet for emphasis. “Your fuck-up father isn’t around to give you the talk—”
“Fer, no. Please. No. Please. You already gave me the talk. You gave me the talk when I was thirteen. You used a cucumber. Please don’t make me go through this again. I’ll never earn enough money to be able to pay for the therapy I need to get through this.”
“That was the straight Auggie talk. This is the flaming homo Auggie talk. I’ve been doing some research because I wanted to get this right.”
Auggie groaned.
“You’re young. You’re an ugly little fucker, but you’re still probably going to get some dick.”
“I will use a condom. I will be safe. End of discussion.”
With his free hand, Fer jabbed a finger into Auggie’s chest to punctuate each word. “Every. Dick. That. Goes. In. Your. Ass. Suits. Up. Do you understand me?”
“Suits up?”
“Rubbers up. Learn the fucking lingo, Augustus. And I’m not fucking kidding with you right now. I don’t care if he’s your little fancy man and you think you’re head over heels in love. Rubbers. Rubbers. Rubbers. I will buy you a lifetime supply if you want, but you use a rubber every fucking time. Same goes for you if you decide to stick your Vienna sausage somewhere.”
“What do I have to say so that you will leave? What do I have to do? Is it money? Do
