Chapter Four #3
Just when she was beginning to wonder if he’d get the hint, he finally did.
Theo lifted his arm and wrapped it around her, pressing her into his left side.
Audrey snuggled closer, burrowing into his soft sweater, and she lost all track of the story.
She was far too distracted by the way his large hand trailed softly along her arm, his fingertips gently caressing the cardigan she wore.
His cologne reminded her of cedarwood and juniper, and it mixed with the lingering aroma of dry leaves and sunshine from the park.
He was warm, absolutely radiating heat in the cold theater, and she closed her eyes for a moment and allowed herself to melt into him.
She’d always wanted someone to hold her close like this.
No one ever really had.
Audrey looked up at him, and when she did, he glanced back down at her, apparently acutely aware of every one of her movements.
She took the opportunity to do what she’d been planning since the park: she held up the popcorn bucket to him and gave it a tempting shake.
His eye rested on it for a moment before it scanned the scattered theater crowd, his gaze skipping across the faces of the people closest to them. None of them paid him any mind.
So wonder of all wonders, Theo Sullivan lifted his right hand—and finally removed his mask.
His fingers trembled as they tugged the black elastic loop free of his left ear and let it hang from the right one, fully freeing his mouth.
Audrey could hardly contain herself at the sight of his lips in the flashing light from the film.
It was the longest look she’d had of them thus far, and she beamed victoriously at him as she offered him the popcorn again.
That smile only grew larger once his shaking fingers tentatively scooped up a few buttery popcorn kernels and the man actually consumed something.
He peered down at her out of the corner of his eye again with a huff, and she knew he was steadfastly refusing to show her the right side of his face. There was no way he’d turn and look at her head-on.
But that was all right. She’d make do with his profile for now, especially once his mouth finally cracked into half a crooked grin as he gazed at her.
My god, what a smile.
His eye slowly crinkled, and at last she could see part of what the mask had long been hiding.
Audrey had thought him handsome when she only knew a quarter of his face and the briefest flash of the rest of it. Now that she had an extended look at half, her attraction to him only increased exponentially.
Her heart thundered in her chest at the slow blooming of that lopsided grin across the part of himself he’d decided to show to her.
Two dark moles dotted the side of his large, distinguished nose, and Audrey had to suppress the urge to run a finger down its perfect slope, if only to finally trace the curves of it, to try to read him the same way she’d wanted to interpret the tiny scars dotting the landscape of his hands under her fingertips.
But the light of the smile flashing across his face was short-lived.
As soon as it was wide enough to stretch up and across his cheeks, he winced and shuddered forward slightly, closing his eye as though he were in sudden pain.
But that too was gone in a flash, and he pressed his lips together in a softer, smaller smile before grabbing more popcorn.
He turned his attention back to the film, crunching contentedly on their shared snack, and the spell was broken.
Audrey tried to turn back to the movie.
She did her best to focus on Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart, she really did.
But it was hard when someone so much sweeter and so much more interesting still had her attention.
Especially since his fingers were still gently caressing her sleeve, his strong arm still pressing her into his side, and his warmth still sending sparks skipping all across her skin and straight into her heart.
“Bogart is hot, isn’t he? The way you could tell how much Ilsa wanted to leave her husband for him? I mean, I would too.” Theo held her hand as they walked out of the theater, gesticulating wildly with the other while they discussed the film. It was the most animated she’d ever seen him.
“I can’t believe you’re commenting on how attractive another man is.”
“Well, I appreciate how smooth he is in this—and in every movie, really. I’m secure enough in my masculinity to admit when someone else is attractive.
Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Gregory Peck, Cary Grant?
” He ticked the list off on his fingers.
“You can’t beat old Hollywood charm. And game recognizes game,” he added smugly.
“I’m not sure you actually have any game to recognize.”
He stopped in his tracks and stared at her before scoffing as if affronted.
He shook his head and dropped her hand, then immediately changed directions and started walking the other way, abandoning her on the sidewalk.
Audrey yelped and ran after him but easily caught up, grabbing his hand again and whirling him back around to face her.
She wouldn’t have been able to do that if he hadn’t wanted her to, of course.
He was far too large, and the playful crinkles around his eye betrayed any sort of pretense at guile.
Which proved her point exactly.
“I’m very sorry, Theo,” she said, struggling to keep a straight face. “I meant to say that you have tons of game. Scads of it. You’re dripping with charm and charisma—just as much as, if not more than, Humphrey Bogart himself.”
“That’s better.” He threaded his fingers through hers again and adjusted his bag over his shoulder with an indignant snort. “But you owe me some more compliments to make up for that dig.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
It was dark when they’d gotten out of the movie and the streetlights had already popped on, joining the millions of lights twinkling across the expansive Manhattan skyline.
Despite the steady stream of snacks he’d been feeding her all day, Theo still insisted on treating her to dinner too, and even though she wasn’t sure she could fit one more thing in her stomach after those Levain cookies and half the tub of popcorn, she went along with it.
He had to have been starving, and she was far too curious to see what he might have up his sleeve at this point to tell him no.
They wound their way through the streets, continuing to discuss the movie at length.
He really, really loved film, and he filled her in on all of the historical context of the movie, how it was received, how it fit in with the backdrop of World War II, why it became so important even though it wasn’t exactly a blockbuster hit at the time it released.
Audrey completely lost track of where they were wandering, but Theo seemed to know exactly where he was going, and she let him lead the way.
But more than anything, she was really enjoying how much he’d started to come out of his shell today.
When she’d first schemed to take him out of the café, she was resigned to the fact that he was so skittish, she might not actually succeed in coaxing him out of his own head for long.
She’d been fully prepared to take a walk and then call it a day to head home the second he’d gotten overwhelmed.
She’d been prepared to take things incredibly slowly with Theo.
But instead, they’d met up in the park nearly five hours ago now—and she found herself never wanting it to end.
It was already the best date she’d ever been on.
Theo guided them to a street just off one of the main thoroughfares where the bright lights of a food truck cut through the growing darkness.
A long line of people waiting for dinner wrapped around the block and music blared into the night.
But when Audrey made to join the throng at the end of the line, Theo shook his head and squeezed her hand.
“Nope. I have an in,” he shouted through his mask over the noise of the crowd. “A backdoor contact.”
She trotted behind him as he wound through the long line of people, eventually leading her around the back of the blazing orange food truck with an enormous matching neon sign mounted onto the top of it, emblazoned with stylized text that read Y Tu Birria También and featured a glowing icon of an orange taco.
Theo knocked twice, waited, knocked four times, waited once more, and then knocked twice again before stepping back.
The metal door swung open, and a short, squat man stood in the lights.
His face brightened when he saw Theo, and he guffawed and extended a hand, pounding his fist together with Theo’s before they did some sort of intricate handshake so fast, Audrey could hardly catch all the movements.
“Hey, papí!” said the man, taking a handkerchief out from a pocket and wiping the sweat from his shiny brow.
He looked to be about in his fifties or sixties, with copious silver threads running through what little of his once-dark hair remained on the sides of his head.
The rest of his bald dome was so shiny, it reflected the light spilling through the door from inside the truck.
“Damn, you’re looking good tonight. You got a—ah.
” His eyes fell on Audrey, and he grinned even wider and patted his round belly.
“Ah, I see. You didn’t come to shoot the shit with me now, did you, Teddy?
Totally fair, man. You want the hookup?”
“You’ve got the best birria in the city, Tío.
If I was gonna call in a favor on a busy Saturday night, it was going to be for a good reason.
” Theo stepped back and put his arm around Audrey’s waist. She glanced down at his hand resting featherlight against her side and raised an eyebrow, unable to suppress a smile this time.
Someone had gotten more comfortable after all.
“You got it, mijo. Hang here for a few minutes. You want some margs with that too?”