Yet a Stranger (The First Quarto #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,52
that was only ever used by parents, the upholstery finely patterned with the Sigma Sigma emblem. He worked his way through the massive living room, where a grand piano and an enormous river-stone hearth competed with clusters of seating and flatscreen TVs. When he left through the other side of the living room, he passed the public restrooms.
No Dylan.
Not that it mattered. Not that he was looking.
He made his way downstairs. The frat had invested in a speaker system for the public areas, and a steady selection of recent music accompanied Auggie: Macklemore, Ciara, Pharrell. He could still taste some of the Milagro, even through the beer, and a stripe of heat licked its way from his collarbone to his navel. A blond girl passed him, leading her friend by the hand, and when Auggie looked over his shoulder at her, they were whispering and staring at him. The girls burst out laughing when they realized they’d been caught, and both of them blushed bright red. They ran up the stairs.
In the lower lounge, people crowded the sofas, the coffee tables, even the corners of the room. Some were small groups of guys and girls, laughing and drinking. Some were couples—swaying, dancing, kissing. Theo’s beard, when he and Auggie had kissed, had been scratchy, but in a wonderful way, rasping against Auggie’s skin until he was about to burst into flames. Auggie drank some more of the beer. He was sweating.
The basement wasn’t as easy to loop through; he had to check the rooms one by one. The study—a threesome, two girls and a guy, were making out on the table. The gym—the door locked, empty and dark on the other side of the glass. The mechanical room—the door locked, the strip under the door dark. He skipped the bathrooms, went back to the lounge, and tried the multipurpose room. A blacklight had been set up, making Auggie’s Jordans shine as a mob danced and grinded on each other. If Dylan was in there—not that it mattered—Auggie didn’t have much of a chance of finding him. He kept going.
In the game room, people were sitting around card tables, heads close together as they shouted over the music. A group of guys was playing pool. Dylan had on a white t-shirt that was so tight Auggie could see his nipples, and he was wearing blue polka-dot shorts that only came to the middle of his thighs. Seeing him in person like this was always so different than the snaps. His hair was darker in the pictures, and tonight, the curls had been given more shape and definition with some sort of product. His face seemed less perfect, although familiar because of the smirk he wore without seeming to realize it. But mostly it was his size that shocked Auggie: he was just so damn big, something that Auggie had internalized from all the hours in the gym but that still managed to surprise him. Auggie, always sensitive about his own height, felt like a kid next to Dylan, but it was more than that. Dylan was built with muscle. He was huge. And he had an adult’s definition to his body, not the rangy, stripling growth that many guys carried through most of college. He was chalking a cue, laughing, when his eyes cut to Auggie. He kept laughing, but now the smirk was there again, and he raised one eyebrow.
Auggie sat on the arm of a couch, sipped his beer, and pretended to watch the game.
It wasn’t going well for the other guys. Auggie didn’t know much about pool—in fact, he wasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t some other game that also used a pool table—but he knew a little bit about people. Six guys were playing, split across two teams, and every time Dylan or one of his friends took a shot, the other guys muttered and growled and traded looks. Dylan’s little smirk kept getting bigger. Then Auggie saw the cash neatly stacked on the edge of the table.
Auggie wasn’t looking when it happened.
“Foul,” one of the guys shouted. Auggie recognized him; his name was Trevor, and he played lacrosse with Dylan. He was the same guy who had made the comment about Auggie’s jerkoff videos at tryouts.
Dylan looked relaxed; he was almost slouching, the cue tucked up against his shoulder. But his eyes were hard. “That wasn’t a foul.”