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Before Theo got home, Auggie still had enough presence of mind to hide the surrogacy papers. Not hide. Put away. Out of sight. Because he’d just been curious, that’s all.
Then he did another circuit, the whole house, room by room. He lifted cushions from the couch. He pulled Theo’s recliner out from the corner. He opened drawers, and he took out pots and pans. A part of his brain was running one line of commentary: Lana could have moved it; Lana picks stuff up and carries it around, and it ends up in the weirdest places. Like my keys. Like my slides. Like that photo of her at Disney World. And, at the same time, another part of his brain was saying, Please let me find it, please don’t let Theo show up and find it, actually, yes, please, as long as somebody finds it. He carried with him, a leftover from that double major in English, the idea of irony as an equivocal statement. He was also aware—and here it was personal expertise talking—that he sounded batshit crazy.
The lock turned at the front of the house, and the door opened. Steps came down the hall. Theo looked tired the way he always looked after the first day of school; people who didn’t have kids (or who weren’t domestic partners, aka shacked up, aka living in sin with a teacher) forgot how significant those transitions were. Back to school in August. Back to school in January. Back to school after spring break; Theo always spent that week in March looking like he was hungover, and the kids were even worse. But he was still Theo, with the flow of strawberry-blond hair combed back, with a little more silver in his thick beard, with the gingham framing the lines of his shoulders, with quads and glutes for days. The man still knew, after all these years, how to fill out a pair of chinos.
“Are you ok?” Theo asked.
Of course. First thing. Because he was Theo.
Auggie’s laugh sounded a little raw, even to him, but he nodded. “Are you?”
“Me?”
“First day?”
Theo shook his head like the question was a gnat buzzing around him. “Where’s Lana?”
“She’s still at school. God, I’m sorry; I should have said something.”
Theo shook his head again, but his shoulders slumped, and he sank down onto the arm of the sofa.
“Sorry,” Auggie said again.
“You don’t have to be sorry, Auggie.” It took a few more seconds, though, before he uncurled his fingers and ran one hand along the back of the sofa. He got up, his stiff knee slowing him, and came across the room. Then he hugged Auggie, kissed the side of his head, and tightened his arms until Auggie made a sound he’d once heard a dog make when Fer, at eleven years old, had tried to pick it up around the middle.
“It’s got to be here, right?” Auggie asked, surprised to hear the threat of tears in his voice. “I feel like I’m going out of my mind. God, we’re going to find it, and then I’m going to feel even worse. I shouldn’t have called; you rushed home, and you were worried about Lana, and I should have waited—”
“Hey, hey, hey.” Theo loosened his grip enough to let Auggie move back. He raised his eyebrows, and after a moment, Auggie rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“If it’s here,” Auggie said, “you have to spank me.”
The arch of Theo’s eyebrows became a little more pointed.
“That’s it. That’s what’s got to happen.”
“Uh huh.”
“You can’t weasel out of it. You can’t make excuses. You can’t make up some alternate system of penalty blow jobs.”
“It’s not entirely clear to me, this whole thing that’s happening right here, but you realize that in this hypothetical situation you’ve imagined, you’re the one getting spanked, and you’re also the one telling me to be more…hard core about it?”
“Yes, Theo. I’m very well aware of it, thank you. Because the last thing I need is a candy-ass swat on the bum; I can’t do everything myself.”
Theo was quiet for what felt like a long time before he murmured, “Good God.”
Auggie grinned, but it felt like one of those water features, the kind he’d thought about getting Theo for his desk, the thinnest sheet of water catching the light as it ran over a cut of black stone. After a moment, Theo touched the corner of his mouth, and Auggie leaned into the cup of Theo’s hand.
“You’ve got backups,” Theo said.
Auggie nodded.
“And it’s all on the cloud.”
Another nod.
“And it’s an expensive laptop, but it’s not irreplaceable.”
