Chapter Eight #2
She shook her head, the corners of her mouth twitching as she tried to hide another smile.
“No, I guess your dress isn’t shiny enough for that,” he mused. “I feel like I should know this. Are you—grayscale? Monochrome? You look like a palette of some kind.”
“No, but you’re not far off.”
Theo shook his head. “Well, you’re beautiful, is what you are. But I don’t think I get the costume.”
Her dress was made of hundreds of paint chips cut into individual strips and safety pinned all over it in neat, overlapping rows.
Violet had tried to convince her to wear heels to complete the look, but there was no way she’d make the trek across the city to campus in them.
She was like a baby giraffe in anything higher than two inches as it was, subways and sidewalks and street grates aside, so she’d opted for a pair of thick gray tights and her (very practical) well-worn Docs instead.
Audrey grinned at him as they made their way downstairs.
“I’m Fifty Shades of Grey.” In truth, there were far more than fifty shades, but the point got across.
She’d found enough paint chips to turn the gray dress she wore underneath into something reminiscent of a flapper costume but made out of paper.
Every strip hung and swished under her coat as she moved, not unlike beaded fringe but a lot lighter.
“Aha!” Theo slapped his forehead. “God, I should have gotten that. I’m a sham of an artist.”
“To be fair, it’s a book-slash-movie that started out as Twilight fanfic.”
“I should have at least guessed the film version.” Theo straightened his hat again with his free hand to reveal both eyes, and Audrey found them evenly crinkled.
“Very clever, Miss Adams. Where’d you find so many different gray paint chips?
They’d never let me walk out of a store with that many for free. ”
That was the one question she was hoping he wouldn’t ask.
Her cheeks burned again beneath the silver highlighter.
“Uh…I, um…” She shut the door to her building behind her and pursed her lips.
Theo stopped in his tracks, looking down at her with a wary expression.
He’d noticed her hesitation. “I…sometimes go dumpster diving on the Upper East Side.” The burn deepened and intensified.
“I found a whole box of them a few weeks ago. I guess someone redid their apartment and their designer finally trashed their paint options, maybe once the project was finished.”
“Dumpster diving?” She didn’t need to see his entire face to know how deeply concerned he suddenly was under all that gauze. “Isn’t that dangerous?” His frown intensified.
Oh no.
“So…do you need food? Are you hungry? Because if that’s the case, I’ll feed you, I’ll buy you groceries, I really don’t mind.
You know that, right? Your tips can’t go that far, I know they don’t.
I don’t know how you’re getting by as it is with inflation and the costs of living here, and if you’re not getting enough to eat, I—I don’t like that, Audrey, I don’t like that at all, that isn’t—” He was clearly getting more and more upset the more he thought about it, and he scratched anxiously at the back of his head through the gauze.
“Or is there something else that’s wrong? Are you doing that because—”
She cut him off before he worried himself further. “It’s a sustainability thing.” She patted his arm reassuringly and kept walking toward the subway. “I’m okay, Theo. I’m not starving.”
The look he gave her was incredulous. “You’d tell me if you were, right? If you were struggling?”
She wouldn’t, actually.
“Sure.”
Her answer had been too quick. Maybe a little too bright.
“I don’t believe you.” His eyes narrowed. “You were right yesterday—you are a terrible liar.”
She sighed and reached up to rub her face, but stopped herself at the last second before she ruined her makeup. “All right, fine. No, I wouldn’t have told you, but I’m okay. I’m getting by about as well as any of my friends are.”
Theo’s mouth shifted beneath the gauze, and without warning, he tugged her beneath the awning of a closed shop before putting his hands on her shoulders and running them along her arms. His right hand stopped at her neck, and he looked at it for a second before yanking the glove off and replacing it.
His fingers were scorching against her skin, and she shivered at the contact, her gasp curling white in front of her silvered lips.
His eyes searched her own in the weak light filtering beneath the awning. “Audrey,” Theo finally murmured, his thumb gently caressing the side of her neck. “I’m serious. I don’t want you hurting, especially not when it’s something I can fix. You’re too precious for that—too good.”
“But it’s not your—”
He drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and Audrey quieted.
“I can bear my pain, but I can’t bear yours,” he finally murmured. When he looked away, she finally understood.
He knew what it was to suffer. The thought of her feeling any version of what he must have felt at one point had scared him. It was written in his eyes.
Audrey lifted a hand and tilted his head to make him look at her again.
Someday, she’d have him shed the shrouds he wore.
Someday, she’d have him free of the hurt he harbored.
“I’m okay. I’ve been taking care of myself for a really long time. I’m used to being on my own. You don’t have to worry that much about me.”
“Yes, I do. Because someone should. And I want to.”
The force of that statement ripped through her. Violet worried about her, and Josh did sometimes too. Gladys did when Audrey lived with her once upon a time. But it wasn’t the same.
“I want it to be me who cares for you, Audrey.” His eyes were pleading. “So promise me,” he whispered. “Please.”
He was begging her to let him in.
“All right, Theo. I promise.”
She nudged away some of the gauze concealing his mouth, revealing those plush pink lips again. When she ran her thumb across one of them, they parted with a sharp inhale.
“I miss these,” she whispered. She tried to let her hand fall away, but Theo’s shot up to catch it. He turned it over and pulled her palm to his lips, his eyes never leaving hers—until they briefly dipped to her mouth.
She’d forgotten how dark they could be.
How heated.
How intense.
His lips lingered on her skin for as long as his eyes lingered on hers, and Audrey’s breath stilled.
Her heart was pounding so fast, she could hear it in her ears, a constant, low thrum quickening with every shallow breath shuddering across her lungs.
Theo suddenly seemed so tall, so wide. Sometimes she forgot when they were at the café, sitting across from each other at the table with their coffee.
She forgot how long his legs really were.
She forgot how, despite the tremor in his hand, his forearms were corded with thick, hard muscle, how broad and strong his back was.
She forgot how he radiated heat until he’d fully wrapped her in his arms. She forgot how he smelled warm and woodsy, like fresh cedarwood and pine, juniper and bergamot, and she forgot how bright and alive and vibrant he tasted whenever he kissed her.
But she couldn’t forget now.
Audrey’s mouth went dry.
She swallowed.
Theo’s eyes dipped down to her throat, and then next to her trembling hands. When did they start shaking? She hadn’t noticed.
He wrapped his own around the one he held and pressed it to his chest, leaning forward and closing his eyes as he touched his forehead to hers.
He didn’t need to say anything.
His heart was racing just as fast.
Theo drew in several deep breaths before finally opening his eyes. “I’ll let you unravel me later,” he whispered. And then, a pained laugh. “God knows I already have, sweetheart.”
He drew back with a shake of his head. But the next look he gave her shot molten heat straight through her core.
“I hope you know how hard it is not to ruin that pretty makeup of yours before we even get to the party.”
His voice had dropped so low, it was almost a growl.
A promise, in and of itself.
Audrey wasn’t entirely sure how they made it out of that alcove and onto the train, but they managed it in the end.
She told Theo all about the secret dumpster diving activist group she was a part of while they rode to campus, and how they documented corporate waste around town on anonymous social media accounts.
“It’s a little bit of a financial thing, because we do keep a lot of what we find if we can use or resell it, but we also give a lot away, especially when it comes to food.
We try to feed as many unhoused people as we can, and corporations and grocery stores toss out perfectly good food every day—the café included. ”
“Is it illegal? Doing the dumpster diving?” he asked. The look he gave her was pointed, but not at all accusing. He’d leaned forward and was studying her intensely.
Audrey wavered. “Uh…well, it’s questionable at best. It’s not illegal unless you’re trespassing. And…sometimes we are. I hope you don’t judge me for that.”
“Ha!” He barked a laugh. “Me? Judge you for that? Not at all. I’ve done my fair share of questionable things. I was only curious.”
That floored her. “What?!”
“And I think it’s extremely sexy of you, by the way. The whole civil disobedience thing.” His eyes glittered with mischief. “Very hot.”
She was still stuck on the first part of what he’d said. “What on earth could you have done wrong?”
Theo Sullivan? Painfully shy and anxious, deeply romantic artist, a lawbreaker?
It was unfathomable.
Theo laughed again at her expression. No embarrassed huff, no bashful chuckle—a thorough guffaw, eyes closed and head thrown back. The crinkles around them were the deepest she’d ever seen, and a wave of warmth washed over her as she looked at him.
What she would have given to see him unwrapped and fully unbound in that moment.