“He was broke anyway,” Augustus said, leaning his forehead against your shoulder. He wanted to shake you around until you stopped lamenting about your ex, but he knew that wasn’t what you needed. “And he drives a Prius. He’s a fuckin’ loser.”

Your ex didn’t deserve you. Augustus didn’t think anyone did, honestly.

The first time you dated someone was in high school. Dramatically, and in private, he’d thought his world was ending. Augustus had spent elementary and middle school at your side, never allowing anyone else close. His mother called him a ‘chihuahua nipping at your heels’. He hadn’t realized one day you’d want a person other than him.

Dramatically, and again in private, he’d cheered when you and your high school lover broke up. Surely that was the end of that. Everything would go back to normal.

College, unfortunately, provided you even more people to date. Augustus never said anything when you did. He never approved of any of them, never liked them, wasn’t supportive of the relationships, but he didn’t want to tell you what to do. Sometimes he’d distance himself from you—like this last boyfriend you had. Augustus had, for his own sake, stopped hanging around you as much. It made him sick seeing you with someone else.

But you were happy, and he wanted that for you. He hadn’t predicted the breakup happening this early. You seemed happy with your now ex, what’d happened? Augustus almost wanted to ask, but he held his tongue. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

When he was younger he was convinced it was the two of you against the world. The oldest he got, the more he realized that wouldn’t be happening. If you had any feelings for him, surely you would’ve said something already. Augustus could live his life as some childhood friend. He’d always dreamed of marrying you, of waking up by your side, but he realized none of that was going to happen.

He’d live with that too.

“C’mon, I’m being serious,” he said. “You’ll find someone who’ll treat you a hell of a lot better than him.”