12
The night he left Theo’s house, Auggie walked until he was sure Theo wasn’t following him. He didn’t know if he wanted Theo to follow, which was part of the problem. But his hand was killing him, so he called an Uber and went to the hospital. He told the nurse in the emergency room that it had been a dare. They gave him two stitches and antibiotics, and they sent him home. The calls and messages from Theo kept rolling in, and when he got to the apartment, he told Orlando that he didn’t want to see Theo no matter what. Then he locked himself in his room.
When Theo knocked, Auggie heard the tone of the conversation—Orlando apologetic but unyielding, Theo’s voice frayed. He almost went out there, Theo sounded so bad. But then he remembered everything else, and he pulled the pillow over his head. His hand was throbbing under the painkillers they’d given him, but not too badly, and somehow, a long time after Theo stopped yelling, Auggie fell asleep.
When he woke the next day, the pain in his hand was worse, but otherwise, he felt…nothing. The days turned into weeks. At first, Auggie thought he was fine. It seemed, in a weird way, like confirmation. The fight had been terrible, of course, and he didn’t feel good about what he’d done, knowing how badly it would affect Theo and then being proven right. But the fact that the aftermath had been so—well, easy—seemed like proof that this separation from Theo might have been the right thing. Maybe whatever Auggie had been feeling hadn’t been love. He didn’t really have much to gauge it against. Maybe it was like what had happened with Dylan, that abusive asshole—an infatuation that, once again, Auggie had fallen into so fully that he’d let it fuck with his head. Maybe there wasn’t even such a thing as love. Maybe you found someone hot or you didn’t, maybe you wanted to fuck or you didn’t, and everything else was just words. That seemed to make a lot of sense.
From there, it was easy to go back to class, easy to get back into the swing of things—no more Theo, because whatever had happened between them had felt final, and conclusive, but he had other friends, other interests. He dove into his classes, and he was surprised that, out of all of them, the one he liked the most was Social Media & Marketing, which gave him a whole new angle to think about his online presence. Until now, he’d focused on content: first, the funny videos, and then Snapchat and his frat boy life, and more recently, the gay-boyfriend-lifestyle stuff. He’d done well enough with all of them, building and maintaining his audience. But the influencer deals that he’d been hoping for—the kind of things that would turn his social media presence from a hobby into a career—had never manifested. For him, the marketing side of social media had always been the thing he was building toward, the final product—being paid to hawk goods and services to the audience he had worked so hard to cultivate. But the class opened his eyes to other possibilities, among them, the reality that a lot of companies needed smart, plugged-in people to help them plan and execute their social media marketing. If Auggie’s gut was right, those positions were where the real opportunities lay.
After a couple of weeks of being radio silent—and ignoring the worried DMs and emails from his more dedicated fans—Auggie rebooted his platform. No more boyfriend content—for obvious reasons. Instead, he went back to the funny videos and snapping his way through his morning routine. Orlando and Ethan were happy to participate, along with a few other friends he recruited. Their first video to break a hundred thousand views was, probably because of karma, the breakup one. Auggie rushed in and slammed the door, his face hidden. Orlando and Ethan and Bry, another friend, watched from the couch, making worried faces. When Auggie turned around, the audience got their first glimpse of his smeared mascara, and below, words appeared: How boys handle breakups. Then it was a montage, with clips of Auggie crying his way through a box of tissues with a glass of white wine, and Auggie getting a manicure from Ethan and Bry while Orlando refilled his glass from a bottle of white wine, and Auggie taking a bubble bath with a giant box of white wine on the tray.
When they’d finished the video, Orlando cornered Auggie and asked if he was ok. He asked again when they broke a hundred thousand views. And when Auggie asked what Orlando was talking about—both times—Orlando’s thick, dark brows drew together, and Auggie only felt more confused.
It was the second week of March when Auggie was walking across campus. A warm front had moved in, and for the first time all year, it felt like spring—the air warm and sweet with things coming back to life, the sky purple and curling like a crocus at the end of the day, everyone on campus in shorts and t-shirts because, of course, you had to take advantage of the nice weather. It was Missouri, and in a day or two, they might be below freezing again. It was pure chance that Auggie glanced over as he was passing Tether-Marfitt, the building where he’d first had class with Theo, and spotted one of Theo’s office mates—the guy named Beta, who had, on multiple occasions, tried to lure them into a threesome. He was wearing a lambswool coat that had to be astronomically expensive and was smoking just below the NO SMOKING sign. He looked about as douchey as anyone had ever looked. Without really thinking about it, Auggie snapped a picture and grinned as he opened a message to send it to Theo.
He stopped. And then he started to cry. It came out of nowhere, a flood crashing down on him as the dam broke, and he barely had time to stagger inside and lock himself in a men’s room stall before he started gagging and hyperventilating. He cried until he made himself sick, which was ok because he was already on the toilet. A couple of people rapped on the door and asked if he was all right, and that only made him cry harder.
But eventually, he could only cry so much. He washed his face at the sink, which didn’t help at all, and patted himself dry with paper towels. He took deep breaths. Burn victims, he had heard, didn’t feel anything if the burn was bad enough. The nerves got damaged in the worst burns. They didn’t feel any pain at all. And now, after weeks and weeks, he realized he wasn’t fine. He could sense, now, how vast the hurt was. He thought he might die from it.
He found an empty classroom and sat with his back to the door. Then he took out his phone. He called Fer.
“What’s up, ass lint?”
“Fer.” It didn’t even sound like a word, let alone a name. He tried again: “Fer.”
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
The tears threatened to come again, and his throat was tight. “I think—” A sob choked him. “I think I really fucked up.”
Sounds that suggested movement came from the other end of the call, and then Fer spoke with the same quiet, firm tone he’d used when Auggie had gone hysterical after he jumped on a board out in the scrap pile and gotten a nail through the sole of his foot, the same tone he’d used nights when their mom came home drunk, when seeing that other person inside her body was terrifying to Auggie, the same tone he’d used when Auggie had gotten in that first, horrible car accident. “Take a breath.”
Auggie breathed deeply until he wasn’t about to fall apart.
“What happened?” Fer asked.
Squeezing his eyes shut as the tears came, Auggie managed to speak without falling apart. He tried to think of how to start, if it was even possible to get back to the beginning of this, and settled for, “His name is Theo.”
Fer was silent a moment. “Ok.”
“And I’m going to tell you some stuff that’s going to make you, like, super mad, so please don’t yell at me or—or whatever because I need you right now, ok? I just—I just can’t right now, ok?”
“Ok.”
Again, Auggie scrambled for what to say first, but he knew the part that was going to put Fer into murder mode, and he finally decided to start with that. “He’s ten years older than me.”
On the other end of the call, Fer breathed heavily several times. The silence prickled. And then Fer blew out a breath, and in what was clearly a strained attempt at normalcy, asked, “So, what? Does he have a huge dong or something?”
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