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Auggie was crying. He wiped his eyes with his arm, and in a tiny, choked voice, he said, “I’m sorry.”
And then he was gone.
27
Auggie had a good cry, if there was such a thing, in the hall bathroom. He almost made the mistake of going to the master bath, but then he had a vision of Theo coming after him, of being trapped in there. Of course, he could be trapped in here too, but this seemed less awful in comparison. Not their room. Not their bedroom.
But when he’d sobbed himself out and cleaned himself up, when he was drying his face with a towel and checking himself out, red eyed, in the mirror, he didn’t hear anything. No creaking floorboards. No footsteps. Nothing that suggested Theo was even still in the house. He might have left, Auggie realized. An Uber. Or walking. The old joke, the one that still had a sting for Auggie, no matter how many times he and Fer and Chuy had tried to laugh it away, was the one about going out for a pack of smokes. He wouldn’t leave Lana, Auggie told the face in the mirror. And the face said back, No, but he would leave you.
That threatened to bring on a fresh wave of tears, but Auggie blotted his eyes and let himself out of the bathroom. He made his way to the kitchen and found a beer, and he carried it out to the deck. Summer clamped down on him, but after being trapped in the claustrophobic stinking ruin of the house, the sticky, slow breeze felt like heaven. It smelled like the creek, and like the silver maples lining the banks, and like moss and green things that were growing. He opened the can and took a drink, and the beer was crisp and cold, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had anything to eat or drink.
Ok, he thought. Damage control. His relationship experience was limited pretty much to Theo, and although they’d fought over the years—a few times, terribly—the bad fights, the really bad ones, were long in the past. And anyway, this one felt different, somehow. The look on Theo’s face. He’d been so pale. So unresponsive. Like he hadn’t been Theo anymore, but someone else. Or like Auggie hadn’t been Auggie. That was probably it; he’d been staring at Auggie, not recognizing him.
Because, of course, for Theo, this was a betrayal. For Theo, for whom all the world’s fears were bound up in their most terrifying form in one little girl, all his guilt and all his pain and all his loss captured in one tiny body, for Auggie to try to make it happen all over again—that was a betrayal. Perhaps the ultimate betrayal. And Auggie had known that, maybe, at some level. Known the fear. Learned, more recently, the guilt. But not until he’d seen Theo’s face today had he fully understood what this meant.
With Dylan, a treacherous part of his brain said, there was always a way back.
Auggie wanted to shut down that line of thinking, but it was tempting. Dylan, his only other real relationship—if you could even call it that—had been domineering and abusive, controlling, threatening, had loved to play mind-fuck games. But he’d also reinforced something that Auggie had learned from his mother growing up: it was easier, in the long run, to manage people. To make sure they got what they wanted, or enough of it anyway, to keep them happy. To tell Mom she looked pretty. To talk about her next role, or the next role she was dreaming of, anyway. To put on little shows and performances for her and her friends. To appear like a magic trick when she wanted to show him off for the latest man. More importantly, to be absent when she wanted him to be absent.
With Dylan, it had been more of the same, only more intense. To say what Dylan said. To change whatever he was thinking as soon as Dylan changed, and never mention the change again. Auggie was wrong, and Dylan was right, and if he said it long enough and loud enough, there was always a way to patch things up.
You were right, Auggie thought. That’s how he’d start. If Theo would ever listen to him. If Auggie didn’t come home one day to find the locks changed and everything he owned on the lawn. No, no. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, that’s how he’d start. You were right.
Behind him, the slider murmured along its track. Auggie didn’t look back, but it was like someone had drawn a wire between his shoulder blades. Steps moved across the deck. Then they stopped, still a good way behind him.
“I know you’re not ready to talk to me,” Theo said, “but I wanted you to know that I’m ready to apologize whenever you’re ready to…deal with me.” He waited a moment—not a demand, but a courtesy. Then he said, “If you’d like me to leave—it’s hot out here, Auggie. I’ll go, so you don’t have to stay outside.”
A breeze lifted. It turned the silver maples, each leaf glowing as its pale belly caught the light. Then the breeze died, and the heat crashed over Auggie like a wave again. He needed to turn around. He needed to turn around right now. He needed to say something.
Theo took a step back toward the house.
Auggie looked over his shoulder, and there was Theo. Waiting. His flow of strawberry-blond hair flattened against his skull, the sun whiting him out like a spotlight, the way he stood, one arm folded low across himself, the other hand turned in toward his thigh.
“I needed some fresh air,” Auggie said. “And a beer.”
“God,” Theo said, and so many things were packed into that one word. He gave a gruesome attempt at a smile. “You’re always so much smarter than me.”
Auggie tried words, but words were scarce, lost in the jumble of so many feelings. After a moment, when nothing came, he held out the beer.
Theo’s steps clipped across the desk. His fingers brushed Auggie’s as he took the beer, and Auggie felt the tremor in Theo’s hand. He stood there a moment, and then the can began to shake visibly, and he said, “I don’t think I can drink this without spilling it all over myself. I’m sorry.”
To Auggie’s surprise, that brought a smile. “Drink the beer, Theo. Don’t drink the beer. Toss it in the creek. I don’t care about the fucking beer.”
Theo’s answering smile was still that gruesome one, the one that made Auggie think of something twisted beyond what it could take, the whiteness of bone broken open. He rested the can on the balcony rail. And then, the words rushing out of him, he asked, “Are you afraid of me?”
This time, Auggie laughed. “Am I afraid of you?” But then he remembered his body betraying him, the desire to move back, to get away when he could see that other man rising in Theo’s face again. “No. No, I’m not afraid of you. I’m tired, and I…reacted. That’s all.”
Theo made a noise that could have meant anything. The ripple of the creek filled the air, and now, in the distance Auggie thought he heard bees. “I don’t know if this is the right time to apologize. I don’t know if you want time or space or—”
He stopped when Auggie took the beer from him and set it aside. Auggie wrapped his hand around Theo’s, so that they were holding the rail together. Theo’s hand was so much bigger that it wasn’t really fair. The dusting of red-gold hair on his knuckles caught the light.
“I am so sorry,” Theo said in a low voice.
“It’s ok.”
“I don’t—I don’t think it is.”
“It is, Theo. It will be. I knew that was going to upset you, if you found it, I mean. I understand a little better why you feel the way you do about having kids. About seeing the ones at school who aren’t being cared for, how hard that is for you.” Auggie wondered if he could say the next part because he knew it was the oldest, deepest cut Theo carried, the one that went all the way down and would never heal. But he said it because he had to say it right then, in this moment, or he might never say it later. “Because of Lana.”
