Yet a Stranger (The First Quarto #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,56

The gun. And Auggie. Auggie. And the gun.

He left the shower, the water still running, and went back to the kitchen. He got a White Rascal from the fridge and drank it over the sink, water puddling around him. The house felt cold now, and a part of his mind recognized that it was because he was naked and wet, but even that barely registered. When he’d finished the first can, he crushed it against the counter and got another. Through the glass set in the back door, he could see the line of oaks at the edge of the property, the gnarled limbs, the still-green leaves, the network of branches and twigs. Behind it all was the blue of the September sky. Yes, he thought. Think about that. Twig, branch, tree. Blue sky. He crushed the beer and went back to the shower.

Warming the water by degrees, he felt better. The beer was already rounding off the edges. He could look at the whole thing from a few steps back. He ran the bar of soap across his chest, noticed the way it glided until it got to the chest hair. And then he thought about those little hairs sprouting on Auggie, which was a reminder that Auggie was, when you got to the bottom of it, still a kid. And maybe that was why Theo had come unmoored. Auggie was young. Auggie was just so damn young. And he still loved life, still didn’t understand all the ways it came at you, again and again, until it broke you. He still smiled without even thinking about it. He said what he thought, without layers of self-protection, without the extra decade of social conditioning that would make him rethink, reword, rephrase. He still saw the future like the Serengeti, wide and untrammeled, pick your path, when really it was a rut in the ground that just got deeper, year after year, until you were shooting down a ravine and couldn’t turn back.

Theo hammered the water off. He dried himself with a towel. He had a third beer.

And—he was realizing now, with the help of that third beer—Luke. He mustn’t forget about Luke. That explained why Theo had reacted so strongly today. He had seen Auggie in danger, and he had spent so much of his life trying to keep Luke safe, and Luke had died. So it made sense that Theo would react. It made sense that he would feel a terror so vast that he was close to shitting himself.

Except, a little voice said. Except you’ve seen Auggie in danger before. And it scared you—when the guy tried to kidnap him at the Frozen King, and it felt like someone had knocked the wind out of you. When Jessica slashed at him with a knife, and you knew it was better to die than to let him get hurt. You’ve seen him in danger, you’ve seen him hurt, you’ve seen it all already, and you didn’t react like this.

Still drying himself with the towel, Theo made his way upstairs, a fourth beer in one hand. His nipples were hard. His balls ached. His face felt too warm, and he let the towel drop and finished the stairs naked.

Who could explain why the brain did anything, he wanted to know. In the mirror over the dresser he had shared with Ian, he asked himself: who can explain one fucking thing about how the brain works? Can somebody tell you why you wake up every day next to the same man, year after year, and then he’s dead and you keep waking up and for an instant, you don’t remember that he’s gone? You roll over to bitch at him about stealing the covers, or to tell him it’s his turn to get up with Lana, or just to see his face, and then you remember.

Dropping onto the bed, Theo stared up at the ceiling, the cracked plaster, the nail pops, the signs that the house was shifting, that everything was shifting.

Who could tell you why you woke up one morning, one totally normal morning, just another day, and you’re already reaching for your phone to text him, because he makes you laugh, because you saw something that reminded you of one of his goofy videos, because you can hear his voice in the words? Who could tell you anything about yourself? And if nobody could tell you something like that, if nobody could tell you anything about why you