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Auggie had to hide his grin by pulling up his shirt.
Jem whispered something to Tean that made the vet turn an intense red.
“How saggy?” Emery asked. Laughter broke up the room again, and Emery scowled. “It’s a legitimate question.”
“This is the best I could do,” John-Henry said as he came into the room. He held out four tennis balls, a baseball, and a couple of softballs. “I didn’t know how many you needed.”
“You’re overestimating my abilities,” Theo said, but he took the tennis balls and moved to the center of the room. He gave Auggie an unreadable look, and then the balls began to fly. There was a wobble at first, an unsteadiness that Auggie could track even as the balls spun through the air. And then Theo seemed to find his rhythm, and when he spoke, his voice was surprisingly easy. “Jem, do you mind?”
“I got you,” Jem said, scrambling over to the sofa. He watched Theo’s rhythm, and then, with a smoothness that made Auggie think of all those cards turning over one by one, he pitched the baseball to Theo. Theo caught it, and the baseball went into the rotation. After a moment, he said, “Ok.”
Jem sent one of the softballs toward him, and Theo added that to the mix. Then, when Theo prompted him again, he tossed him the final softball. The balls whirred through the air. Theo’s face was a mask of concentration, but also of what Auggie would have called pleasure. Auggie’s eyes stung, and the intense need to cry came over him. He blinked rapidly and took deep breaths. The other guys, he was aware distantly, were applauding.
The quality of the applause changed, and North muttered something that sounded impressed, and Auggie had to wipe his eyes to see what was going on. Theo had changed the pattern, and now the balls wove in a pattern overhead, and all Auggie could do was stare. He’d never seen this before—juggling, sure, which Lana loved. But never this complicated. Never this…good.
“Ready?” Theo asked.
A startled look crossed Jem’s face, but he stood. “Yep.”
The balls started to move between them, faster and faster. And then Shaw was on his feet, saying, “Can I try? Can I?”
Laughing—when was the last time Theo had really laughed, Auggie wondered—Theo said, “Get ready.”
Jem must have known what to do because the balls slowed, and then one of them flew in Shaw’s direction, and to Auggie’s—and probably everyone’s—surprise, he caught it and sent it flying again. They found their rhythm, the three of them trading little comments in their own private world.
Pushing John-Henry forward, Emery said, “John wants to play with you boys, but he’s too shy to ask.”
John-Henry grinned, a blush bright in his cheeks, shooting a half-amused, half-embarrassed look back at his husband, but he didn’t object.
“Coming your way,” Theo said.
When John-Henry caught the ball, he burst out laughing, and Auggie watched the years drop away.
As the four continued juggling, shouting out warnings and heads-ups, joking, trying to impress each other—Jem, in particular, had a tendency for trying to show off, and more than once it meant he almost lost control of a ball or missed the next one. Auggie scooted back until he bumped up against the recliner; he glanced back and caught North giving him an amused look before turning his attention back to the jugglers. Tean moved next to them, and then Auggie was surprised to see Emery take a seat on the sofa.
“He learned how to juggle for baseball,” Emery said. “His coach said it would improve his fielding.”
John-Henry’s gaze remained fixed on the balls, but a startled look crossed his face.
“Come on,” Emery said with what almost sounded like amusement. “You can’t be that surprised.”
For an instant, John-Henry spared him a look, and the force of the love in it staggered Auggie. Then Jem called out wordlessly, and John-Henry’s attention whipped back to catch the next ball before it fell.
Auggie was so caught up in what he’d seen in John-Henry’s face that he almost missed North saying, “Shaw tried out for—”
“No,” Shaw said, voice rising in protest, “no, no, no!”
“—and got rejected by a circus the summer after junior year.”
“No, I—God damn it!” He fumbled a ball, and Theo swept out a hand to send it spinning back into the rotation. “North!”
“They told him he made the other performers uncomfortable.”
Auggie laughed, and he was shocked to hear a quiet chuckle from Tean. When he glanced over, the vet was smiling as he watched Jem. Then his eyes cut to Auggie, and for a moment, it seemed that Tean hesitated. Then he blurted, “Jem lets the girls catch him when he does tricks for them.”
“Traitor!” Jem called. “They legit catch me. I would never—mother of God!” That last bit came as John-Henry sent a ball wide and Jem scrambled to catch it.
Auggie knew how Theo had learned to juggle. He had known since the first time he’d seen him do it to entertain Lana. The empty hours in a logging trailer. The empty years of Theo’s life, as Auggie thought of them, although he’d never put it to himself in exactly those words before. When Theo had been lost, adrift. A time, Auggie knew, that he wouldn’t want Auggie telling everyone about.
