The Sunday night before spring semester began, Theo finished the Percocet with the last of the Christmas ale. It wasn’t anything serious. It wasn’t anything like an attempt. It was more like what Theo remembered with his brothers growing up. Jacob, the oldest, had been a carbon copy of their father: a lover of rules, a drawer of lines. At eleven, Jacob had been literal about the lines, once chalking a boundary down the middle of the room he had briefly shared with Theo. And although Theo couldn’t put it into words—wouldn’t be able to put it into words until he was in therapy—he had resented Jacob, resented his father, hated how easily they seemed to fit into the world they had outlined, and how Theo sensed but couldn’t name all the ways he fell outside their lines. So Theo had made a game of it, edging up to that skinny chalk stripe while Jacob read Leviticus, his big toe threatening to cross over. It always ended in a fight, usually with Theo’s ear puffy and aching, maybe his jaw throbbing, maybe a bloody nose. With the Percocet, it was like that: getting right up to the line, waiting for somebody to come along and clock him so he’d get back in place.
For the time being, Cart seemed the most likely candidate to do the clocking. The first few weeks after that day, Theo and Cart had seen each other only once, the night after Auggie was home from the hospital. They had fought—Theo wasn’t clear about what because he’d been exceptionally drunk—and after that, they had avoided each other, with Cart sending brittle messages asking if Theo was ok, and with Theo answering only when his guilt about Cart briefly overwhelmed his guilt about Auggie.
Then Auggie had left, not even glancing back from the shuttle, on an overexposed December day. The sun rode on the shuttle’s panels, gleaming so brightly that the afterimage lingered in Theo’s vision, and he had to bike home with the purple ghost of the shuttle floating ahead of him. That night had been another big fight, another one that Theo didn’t remember.
He remembered that day with Lender very clearly, but he took great pains not to remember anything after the hospital. Everything up to the hospital—the ambulance ride with Auggie, squeezing Auggie’s ankle, biting his own lip so hard that one of the paramedics made him tilt his head back and pinched his lip with gauze to check if it needed stitches—was clear. And then the emergency room, the tiny examination cubicle, the papery texture of the privacy curtain, the smell of disinfectant. Even the semi-private room where Auggie lay, stoned, in a hospital gown and sporting a woody that defied whatever narcotics the doctor had given him. Then Theo had decided he couldn’t do this anymore, not and keep himself straight at the same time, and after that the days and weeks became a blur.
After Auggie left, though, Cart came over more often. They traded blowjobs. Cart made dinner. Or he brought pizza. Or he brought booze, and he drank as much as Theo, and they fucked until both of them blacked out. One night, Cart made Theo sit on the floor between his legs, trying to work the tension from Theo’s shoulders, and Theo had blacked out with his head against Cart’s knee. He had woken up in bed, unsure of how he had gotten there—Cart couldn’t have carried him, so Theo must have walked—with Cart in the middle of a conversation that Theo belatedly realized he was part of.
“—why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” Cart was saying. “Why won’t you just tell me?”
“I don’t know,” Theo said muzzily. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Well fuck, you peckerbrained motherfucker. I can’t fix nothing!”
Theo skipped Christmas with his parents that year. He couldn’t stand the thought of dealing with them. He couldn’t stand the possibility of anything that might bring Luke or Auggie to the foreground. He spent all of Christmas with Lana—in the weeks since that day, Lana had been the only bright spot in his life, but a reminder, too, because he’d been supposed to keep her safe as well—and helped her open the toys that the OTs had recommended. He didn’t go home until she fell asleep. Cart was sitting in his truck at the curb when Theo walked down the street.
“Where were you?” Cart said in the kitchen while Theo opened a Christmas ale.
Theo took a long drink before answering, “Seeing Lana.”
“You walked?”
“I had to walk back.”
“On your fucking knee?”
“The buses had stopped.”
“And what the fuck am I? I can’t give you a fucking ride?”
Theo drained the beer. He rinsed it in the sink and pitched it into the recycling. “Seems like a lot.” Then he brushed past Cart toward the living room.
“No,” Cart said, grabbing his shoulder. “No goddamn way. What does that mean?”
“You don’t want to meet my family. You don’t want to go to my department holiday party. You don’t want me to meet your family. You don’t want me to go to your department holiday party. But now you want to pick me up after I visit my daughter, the one I had with my dead husband, my little girl who’s probably got permanent disabilities. Just seems like a lot.”
Swallowing, Cart released Theo. “You sure know how to cut up a guy, don’t you?”
“Sorry. That’s not how I meant it.”
“Sure.”
Cart rode his dick that night, Theo struggling to stay hard and, more importantly, conscious. It was the first time Cart had let him anywhere near his ass, and after Cart came, gasping, on Theo’s chest and belly, he bent forward, his flushed and sweaty face against Theo’s shoulder, his body so still that Theo drifted away again.
“—be my boyfriend,” his voice pulled Theo back, “or be boyfriends or however the fucking hell I’m supposed to say it. And I’ll—I’ll do whatever you want. I just need to take it slow. I’m scared shitless, but I’m even more scared I’ll lose you if I just stand around jerking off.”
“No,” Theo said softly, walking his fingers up Cart’s shoulder, feeling the wiry, country-boy strength there. The erection that had been so difficult to maintain a few minutes ago was suddenly there, and Theo nudged Cart with his knee, rolling Cart onto his back, Cart’s eyes widening. Theo slid into him, shushing him as Cart whimpered. “Neither of us is going anywhere. Now let me show you how good this can be.”
After that, Cart slept over more often. He was there the night before spring semester, flat on his back, one arm under the pillow. Theo’s hand was on his belly, the brown hairs over Cart’s country-boy abs tickling his palm. The Percocet was doing something different tonight. Theo hadn’t been able to get hard, but he’d asked Cart to fuck him anyway, and a white noise, like a train’s steam whistle, built in his head through the sex. It was still there now, a silent scream inside his head, making everything foggy. Tomorrow: pick up the copies of the syllabi, make sure the projector works, grab the interlibrary loan that just came in. Go back, start over: shower, make Cart oatmeal and bacon and eggs, pump up the bike’s rear tire. Go back, from the top: put an extra bar of soap in the shower for Cart, then shower, then make Cart oatmeal and bacon and eggs. He could do another year of this. On the outside, Theo thought as he slid his hand along Cart’s belly, he could do five.