Yet a Stranger (The First Quarto #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,1
went relatively smoothly. The Sigma Sigma house was a massive, three-story Colonial with red brick and gleaming white pillars. It was relatively new construction, with high ceilings and big windows. Auggie’s room was on the third floor. The walls were a grayish brown, and someone had clearly patched and painted over the summer because there were no nail holes or broken plaster. Twin beds took up one side of the room, and matching desks occupied the rest of the space. One wall had been given over to two closets, which was where Auggie was going to have to store all his clothes—apparently, a dresser was not part of the standard package.
“This is worse than your last place,” Fer said on their third trip upstairs.
“No, it’s way better.”
“Do you have a roommate?”
“I don’t know; if I do, he hasn’t moved anything in yet.”
“He’d better not be a fucking psycho like your last one.”
“I think that’s everything, Fer.”
Fer grunted, hands on hips, still studying the room.
“I guess you can go now,” Auggie said.
“I want to see the bathroom. Your last place, you had that private bathroom.”
“You can’t just wander around the bathroom.”
“I’m going to take a leak.”
“You can’t.”
“I can’t take a leak? Jesus, Augustus, I don’t even know if you hear yourself sometimes.”
Fer left, and Auggie considered whether or not it would be better just to die right now rather than dragging it out for the rest of the time Fer insisted on staying. Instead, he rearranged some of his luggage and the moving boxes, snapped a selfie, and pushed it out on Instagram with the caption: The eagle has landed at Bro Central. Wish me luck! He repeated the process with Snapchat—he was still feeling out the relatively new platform, but he thought it had a lot of possibility. Almost immediately, he got a snap back: it showed a quarter of Dylan’s face and his mop of blond curls, and then grass, trees, and a swatch of asphalt. Dylan was grinning, and he’d scrawled a message on top of the picture: welcome to Bro Central, little bro!
Auggie added him as a friend so fast that he almost sprained his finger.
“Private showers,” Fer reported, adjusting his junk as he came back into the room. “But it’s just curtains, so you could still get ass raped.”
“Go home, Fer. Go catch your shuttle. Go stand in the middle of the street until someone runs you over.”
Instead, Fer shut the door. “You and I are going to have a talk right now, Augustus.”
“Oh God. Hold on. I should probably record this.”
Fer pushed Auggie’s phone down and shook his head. Then he said, “Condoms.”
“What?”
Taking a foil-wrapped condom from his pocket, Fer said, “Condoms.” He pronounced each syllable distinctly, wagging the packet for emphasis. “Your fuck-up father isn’t around to give you the talk—”
“Fer, no. Please. No. Please. You already gave me the talk. You gave me the talk when I was thirteen. You used a cucumber. Please don’t make me go through this again. I’ll never earn enough money to be able to pay for the therapy I need to get over this.”
“That was the straight-Auggie talk. This is the flaming-homo-Auggie talk. I’ve been doing some research because I wanted to get this right.”
Auggie groaned.
“You’re young. You’re an ugly little fucker, but you’re still probably going to get some dick.”
“I will use a condom. I will be safe. End of discussion.”
With his free hand, Fer jabbed a finger into Auggie’s chest to punctuate each word. “Every. Dick. That. Goes. In. Your. Ass. Suits. Up. Do you understand me?”
“Suits up?”
“Rubbers up. Learn the fucking lingo, Augustus. And I’m not fucking kidding with you right now. I don’t care if he’s your little fancy man and you think you’re head over heels in love. Rubbers. Rubbers. Rubbers. I will buy you a lifetime supply if you want, but you use a rubber every fucking time. Same goes for you if you decide to stick your Vienna sausage somewhere.”
“What do I have to say so that you will leave? What do I have to do? Is it money? Do you want money?”
“Save it for your fancy boys,” Fer said. Then he wrapped Auggie in a huge hug, squeezing him tighter and tighter until Auggie grunted.
“I can’t breathe.”
“I love you. You’re basically just one really fucking annoying snipping of ball hairs, but I love you, and I want this year to be better for you. I want you to be safe, and I want you to find some stud who