Auggie kept going.
“If you walk out that door, I’m not taking you back. Good luck finding someone else to deal with your fuckups. Nobody is going to want you. Nobody is going to want a kid who hides behind a screen, who doesn’t have a single real thing in his whole life. You are going to fucking regret this!” The last was delivered in a choked scream.
The cement of the steps was cold and pitted under Auggie’s bare feet. In the parking lot, broken pieces of asphalt made him stumble. He slumped against the Civic, tried keys blindly until he managed to get the door open, and dropped inside. He shouldn’t drive. He shouldn’t drive.
But this had been his whole life, thinking someone cared about him, turning around to find that there wasn’t anything inside him for them to care about. People liked the cardboard cut-out. It wasn’t even that they disliked the real him; the problem was that there wasn’t anything but the cardboard.
He buckled the seatbelt. Then, patches of blackness, the sensation of speed. A dark highway. Trees. Humidity hanging in the branches, sparkling like gemstones when the headlights swung across them. The Missouri air, thick and damp, whipping through the window. The smell of hot electronics. The smell of mud, animal dung. An open field. A wide turn.
Space. The sensation of flying, and then a shuddering series of thuds and scrapes. Something was cutting into his shoulder. I’m upside down, he thought, and he turned off the car.
At first, the Civic’s door wouldn’t budge. Auggie had to unbelt himself and stand on the ceiling, bracing himself to force it open. For the first inch, the door scraped away a layer of grass and soil, and then it was clear of the ground and opened easily. Auggie stumbled out into the field. His foot came down in something soft. The stink of shit came up to him.
He walked.
He stood on the porch of a small brick house, leaning against the bell.
When the door flew open, Theo was in boxers and a tee, his face white. “Cart, I—” He stopped. “Holy shit. What happened to you?”
In his mind, Auggie said, Theo, I’m really sorry for troubling you like this, especially after I ruined your whole life, but I’m on a really bad trip, and I think I’m going to fall down now.
What came out of his mouth was a lot of drool and a moan.
Theo caught him before he hit the floor, and then he helped Auggie stagger inside. “What the fuck—” Then Theo’s breath came in sharply. “What did he do to you?”
Auggie couldn’t string words together. He tried to get to the couch, but Theo steered him toward the back of the house. “Um, not quite yet. You’re covered in shit—sorry, but it’s the truth—and that couch is new. Well, new to me, anyway. Let’s clean you up. Then we’ll get you to bed.”
In the bathroom, Theo helped him out of the jeans, and then he used a washcloth. The rough warmth felt good. Theo’s hands were rough and warm too. He touched Auggie’s face, and that didn’t feel good. Auggie tried to pull away.
“No, you’ve got glass here. I don’t even want to know how that happened. For that matter, I don’t want to know where the Civic is. Hold still.” Auggie tried to pull away again. “August Paul Lopez, hold still. Ok, I’ve got it. Good job. You did really well. The rest of these are just little cuts, but I’m going to clean them up.” When he’d finished, he repeated, “Good job. You were great. Let’s get you to bed.”
It had been a long time since someone had told Auggie he was good—someone who wasn’t talking about a video or a skit or his cheekbones. He started to cry.
“Ok, we can do some crying too,” Theo said, grunting as he got an arm around Auggie and helped him up. “Jesus God, how much muscle have you put on in the last few months? You’ve got to help me out here a little, Auggie. Ok. Yep, keep going, just like that.”
The steps were a challenge; in the end, Theo hoisted him over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The sheets were cool and crisp and smelled like Gain. Theo sat on the bed next to him, massaging his shoulder, and then he stood and tucked Auggie in.
Auggie tried to say, Don’t go. He wasn’t sure how much of it Theo understood, but it must have been enough because Theo sighed and walked around the bed and stretched out on the other side. He turned off the lamp, and then the room was dark.
It wasn’t quite sleep. It wasn’t quite waking. Whatever else had been in the molly—it could have been cut with anything from strychnine to drain cleaner—it fucked Auggie up. Flashes of the macramé mandala. A whiff of incense. The cold pressure between his legs.
When Theo moved, Auggie didn’t realize what was happening until he was tucked under one of Theo’s arms.
Then it was sleep, and the dream was one dream: the way Theo held his head when he laughed, and what his hair looked like when the sun was behind him, and happiness carrying Auggie up like someone had dialed back gravity. He came awake as it was happening.
“So help me God,” Theo muttered, “if you just peed my bed—oh.”
Auggie managed to blink his eyes open. He was surprised to see Theo’s face was red as he peeled back the bedding. Then Theo sighed.
“’thappened?”
If anything, Theo’s face got redder. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I’ll clean us both up, and you go back to sleep.”
“Made a mess.”
“You surely fucking did.”
He sighed again and left. When he came back with a towel and another washcloth, he helped Auggie out of the sticky underwear, ran the washcloth briskly up and down and then between his legs, and laid the towel over the wet bedding. Auggie was cold and shivering. When Theo pulled the bedding back over both of them, Auggie wrapped himself around the older man. His t-shirt smelled clean; the muscles of his thigh felt good between Auggie’s legs.
“Sorry,” Auggie mumbled into his chest.
From a long way off, Theo laughed. “I’m not going to lie.” He stroked Auggie’s hair. “It’s a nice ego boost.”
Auggie woke again, briefly, near dawn. Theo was dressing in the dark.
“Theo?”
“I’ll be back in half an hour. I just need to take care of one thing.” He straightened; Auggie could feel the weight of his gaze through the shadows. “Will you be ok?”
“Yeah.”
“Half an hour.”
When Auggie woke again, Theo was next to him in bed. Sun came in through the windows. On top of the quilt, Theo’s hands were visible, his knuckles freshly split and scabbing in the morning light. He ran his hand down Theo’s arm and laced their fingers together.
22
Theo was sitting on the couch, papers spread around him, when Auggie came downstairs. He was wrapped in the sheet. Late morning sun climbed the far wall. Through the cracked windows came the smell of dew-soaked earth and grass.
“Morning,” Theo said. He was aware again of his hands aching pleasantly; on one split knuckle, he’d resorted to a butterfly bandage, which was already coming loose.