Chapter Six
Six
Luckily, Violet was out at happy hour with her colleagues from the office and likely wouldn’t be home until late, so Audrey had a bit of time to tidy up their apartment in the twenty minutes between flying back through the door from the lab and when he’d promised to arrive.
She’d just shoved one of her stuffed animals under her comforter and swept the curtain over her bottom bunk closed when he knocked, and she could practically hear his hesitation through the door.
Her hair was a mess, and she tried to smooth it back into some semblance of order before lunging for the door and yanking it open.
Theo’s relief at seeing her was palpable.
“Oh thank god, I got the right apartment,” he breathed through his usual mask.
The left corner of his face brightened when she grabbed his hand and dragged him inside, locking the door behind him.
But then silence suddenly descended upon them both, and that’s when it hit her:
This was the first time they’d ever been truly alone somewhere.
There were no crowds, no coffee shop regulars, no unobtrusive lo-fi playing in the background.
Josh wasn’t there behind any sort of register, and neither was Tío, potentially bursting through the door of his food truck at any given moment.
There was no New York backdrop, no ever-present traffic noises, no other movie patrons or people packed like sardines around them on the subway.
It was just her—
—and Theo.
Audrey had never been nervous around him before.
Not once. But now? Now, seeing him towering over her and feeling his warmth radiating inside her tiny studio, butterflies fluttered in her stomach.
When she caught a whiff of his familiar woodsy scent of cedarwood and juniper, her nerves settled into her stomach in full force and the butterflies flipped over on themselves in the quiet of her apartment.
“This is my place.” Her mouth went dry. “It’s not much, but…”
His eye crinkled as he looked around with interest. He was dressed like he usually was at the coffeehouse, still wearing his hat, his mask, and his hoodie.
His satchel was draped across his chest as always, and he wore the same dark jeans and his Air Jordans.
But at least his hood was still down, and his fingers tightened around the handles of a brown paper bag he carried while his eye swept along her belongings, landing and lingering first on the art and photos they’d tacked up on their walls, and then on their meager collection of books and movies.
His hand holding the brown paper bag trembled, and his throat bobbed as he shifted on his feet.
But the crinkles around his eyes deepened when he turned back to look at her. “I like it! It’s really nice.”
“Thanks.” She beamed anxiously up at him. “Do you want to—”
“Oh! Oh yeah, uh…do you mind if I use your oven?” He held up the bag and waggled it enticingly. “You’re hungry, right?”
“I’m starving, actually. But Theo—”
He’d already turned toward her kitchenette.
Her studio was so small it only took him two or three of his long strides to reach it, and he was busy cranking up the temperature of her tiny oven in the corner.
“I hope you like this. You don’t have any food allergies or sensitivities, do you?
” He paused as he rummaged around in the bag and started removing aluminum to-go containers before suddenly paling.
“Oh shit, I should have checked sooner, I’m so sorry.
Gluten and dairy are fine, right? Well, you did have cheese when we had the tacos, though, and I guess the cookies had gluten and nuts, so I thought—”
“It’s fine, I don’t have any allergies and I’ll eat almost anything, I’m a human garbage disposal. But Theo—”
“Thank god.” He sighed in relief and put the containers in the oven, closing the door carefully and setting a timer on his phone. “I just really wanted to make sure that—”
“THEO.” Audrey stepped forward and put both hands on his chest. He stilled at her touch, except for his hand. It was shaking harder than it usually did, and his heartbeat…
She stared at her hands.
His heart was racing beneath her palms.
Her eyes trailed up along his throat. He swallowed anxiously, and when she finally reached his eyes, the one she could see looked terrified.
Oh.
So he was nervous too.
“Come here.” She took his hands in hers and guided him over to the couch. “Sit.”
He did as he was told, trembling while he untangled himself from the strap of his satchel still slung across his chest. He placed it on the ground and sat, his gaze darting frantically all over her face while she lowered herself onto the cushion next to him.
He looked almost comically large on their loveseat.
“You didn’t greet me when I let you in.”
“I know.” He closed his eye. “I panicked when I saw you.”
“Why?” She covered his right hand with her own in an attempt to calm him.
“You’re overwhelmingly gorgeous,” he muttered. “I don’t know why you like me.”
Audrey looked down at the ratty leggings and oversized sweatshirt she hadn’t had time to change out of before he’d gotten there, but he kept talking before she could contradict him.
“I missed you. And—”
“And?”
“And I really want to kiss you, but—b-but…I—”
When he lifted his hand to the elastic loop of the mask curving around his right ear, she held her breath. His fingers hovered there for a moment, grasping at the air, but still he hesitated. Her heart dropped.
Theo still didn’t want her to see his face.
Did he still not fully trust her?
Or was it just that he hated it that much?
“Do you want me to help you?” she murmured. He shook his head. “You don’t have to take it off if you don’t want to.” She rubbed his arm. “If you’re not ready, it’s okay. I’ll wait.”
It seemed like something he needed to hear.
And she would wait. She would, as much as she was impatient to rip the mask from his face and kiss him senseless, just like he’d done to her the other night.
But that wouldn’t be the right thing to do.
Jeopardizing the progress they’d made together was the last thing she wanted.
Theo grimaced. “No, I want to take it off myself. I’m tired of it too. I’m so tired of it, Audrey.”
But still he hesitated.
She leaned forward and lifted a hand to gently pluck his baseball cap away from his head. Theo’s eye snapped open and he watched her place it next to her on the couch. His breathing quickened, but he didn’t say anything. He hadn’t stopped her. And then it was her turn to wait and watch.
Only the rapid rise and fall of his chest betrayed how scared he was just now.
But his eye never strayed from hers.
His hand shook when he gripped the left elastic loop between uncertain, reticent fingers, and Theo finally lifted it over his large ear. He peeled the mask away from his mouth and cheeks, slowly sweeping it from one side to the other.
Bit by bit, his face gradually came into view, the pale, dotted expanse of his skin breaking through the black mask like the light of the moon and the stars shining through the clouds at night.
The lips that had kissed her so well, so thoroughly, so passionately on her stoop not even a week ago were finally fully revealed, and Audrey’s own heart raced at the sight of them.
They were beautiful, just as wide and plush and soft as she remembered.
Pinker than she’d imagined, and parted now as he panted slightly for air, his chest fluttering anxiously.
But as soon as she saw his mouth in the soft golden glow of the fairy lights strung up around her apartment, her awareness of the scar followed.
It had been nearly two months since she’d caught a glimpse of it on that horrible day, wicked and jagged and torn, still held together with hundreds of black stitches pulling his skin painfully taut with the swelling and puckering at the edges of it.
But looking at it now, it was clear that the wound had healed quite a bit.
It was no longer so angry, or so red, or so deep.
All the rest of the sutures were gone, and they’d been replaced with a thick, clear film running the length of his cheek.
But even though it was obviously healing well, it was still devastatingly extensive.
The scar coursed all the way down the side of his face and dipped along his neck like a long bolt of lightning crackling through the sky, disappearing beneath his hoodie and running up into the dark hair still covering his right eye.
Theo let the mask drop onto her coffee table.
He waited while she looked at him, deep apprehension flickering at the edges of his expression, barely contained and tenuously controlled. He looked like he might break if she uttered a single word.
Only one piece of the puzzle remained now.
Audrey cupped his right cheek, softly sweeping her thumb across the skin next to his ear. She lifted her other hand and combed his hair away from his right eye with her fingertips, pushing his luxuriously thick, dark waves back and away to reveal his entire face to her for the very first time.
At long last, she could see him.
The wound cut across his eye too, slicing beneath it and slashing deep through his eyebrow.
The skin around it was still slightly swollen and a little discolored, either from the trauma or from its more recent repair.
It had been a narrow miss for his eye, and while he couldn’t seem to open the right one as well or as fully as his left, both of them rested on her now, anxious and unable to look away.
His beautiful lips formed soundless words, not quite pressing together, the air not quite making it all the way through his throat, and he closed his eyes and swallowed again.