Chapter Eleven #2
“My art? You’ve seen some of it. It’s around.” He gestured absently upstairs.
“The red paintings?” He nodded, and Audrey turned back to the shelves, carefully tugging one of the vintage vinyl albums out to examine it—an old Fleetwood Mac one from the seventies.
He had virtually no knickknacks, nothing he might have really needed to dust, and none of it was glass.
“Those are really cool, but didn’t you say glass was your medium?
I thought you’d have some of it on display or something. I’d like to see it.”
He looked up at her sharply. “I did say that, yes. But if you want to get very technical about it, you could say I’m actually a mixed-media artist. I primarily work with glass, but I incorporate…other stuff too. And I have a more traditional design business on the side.”
“Then where is all of it?” She pushed the record back into its place until it was flush with the others again.
Theo rolled his lips together and began cracking eggs into a bowl, his right hand trembling while his left held the bowl steady.
He frowned and held it up to the light for inspection, but deemed it safe from stray pieces of shell before continuing.
“I don’t keep a lot of it here. It’d get too cluttered, and uh…
no, I just don’t keep most of my stuff here.
” He shook his head. “Some of it is down in the studio, though.”
“Will you show me today?”
He shook his head even more emphatically this time. “No. That’s not a space for guests. It’s awful, and I’d want to make sure everything was…everything was safe before you went down there. I haven’t worked in a while, and I’ve left it a horrible mess from the, uh…the last time I tried.”
His neck went red again, and he concentrated on whisking the batter together while Audrey continued to poke around on his shelves.
He’d put music on again, something slow and contemporary and shoegazey this morning, streamed from his phone to the retro record console, which was apparently modern and doubled as a Bluetooth speaker.
There were a bunch of books and records, most of which were vintage, and a truly impressive array of Blu-ray and 4K movies on his shelves.
“Where did you get all these vinyls?”
“They were my dad’s collection. He used to make me listen to them while we worked in the shop together, and whenever he put one on, we played a game where I had to guess the year of the album.
He called it part of my ‘essential musical education.’ ” Theo shook his head as he added more flour to the batter and stirred it in.
“He was insistent about it. Wanted his son to have taste, he said.”
She hummed. “Well, sounds like he succeeded.”
“I suppose so. At least, I hope so.”
Audrey turned her attention back to his collection, but on a second glance, one thing stood out.
Nestled at the very bottom corner on the shelf all on its own was a jet-black motorcycle helmet, sleek and cool and expensive-looking, like most of the other things in Theo’s brownstone.
She bent down and picked it up, turning it over in her hands.
It was exceedingly heavy, but it didn’t look out of the ordinary.
“Do you have a motorcycle?” she asked, and the sounds of whisking from the kitchen abruptly stopped. “Because if you do, that’s really hot. Can we ride it sometime? Or do you—”
“No!”
She wasn’t sure how he was able to move so fast with such a pronounced limp, but Theo was behind her all of a sudden, his face as white as a sheet.
“Uh, I—I do, yeah, but I don’t ride it anymore.
” He held his hands out and waited for her to pass the helmet to him.
“I’ll just take that, and…put it in its place.
Which is definitely not on that shelf.” When she didn’t immediately hand it over, he plucked it gently away from her with both hands and hurried down the hall behind the staircase, waddling into a dark room she hadn’t gone in yet before emerging a minute later, breathing heavily and running a hand through his hair.
It flopped luxuriously around his ears, and Audrey pursed her lips with a growing frown.
He went back to making pancakes in the kitchen, and she stalked over to him, watching him closely. “I think you owe me a secret. You didn’t confess one last night. And I did.”
Theo had been spooning batter onto the heated griddle, the bacon and scrambled eggs ready and waiting nearby. “Roo doesn’t count?” He gave her a sheepish grin and some of the color returned to his cheeks.
“No. Roo doesn’t count.”
“All right.” He blew out a deep breath and tapped the spatula anxiously on the counter. “So, well…I have a trust fund. In case you didn’t gather that.” The color in his cheeks deepened.
“You’re a nepo baby?”
“Oh god, please don’t put it like that.” Theo covered his face with one massive hand.
“My mom’s family is loaded and the trust is from my nana—I was her only grandchild—but I’ve never really liked using their money.
My dad came from nothing, so I’ve generally tried to make my own way, even though I recognize how much privilege I grew up with.
” He flipped the pancakes and laid out the strips of bacon to start crisping up.
“But that’s not how I bought this house, though.
That’s just what I came from, and what I’m sitting on.
” He grimaced. “And how I started my artistic practice. Getting into this sort of thing is, admittedly, very expensive. The startup costs for equipment can be staggering.”
“Then how did you get this place? It’s incredible.”
He sighed deeply again and winced. “Again: don’t tell any other artists. I’ll be labeled as a sellout, but…I sold some art for a truly insane amount of money in my early twenties. Like, a criminal amount.”
“Isn’t that the dream, though?” Audrey frowned at him. “To not starve, to hit it big?”
The red in his face deepened even further.
“Yes, it is, in some ways. Not in others. But you know how I hate attention. That’s not new.
” He gripped the spatula tightly in his hands, wrenching it so hard she wondered if he might bend it.
“I didn’t want it to be about me, the artist, I wanted it to be about the art.
And if people knew who I was, it would be too much about me.
So I sold stuff under another name, and then I invested the money.
The proceeds are what I used to buy and renovate this place.
It was a foreclosure, and I got lucky. Right timing, right-sized pile of cash, just the right amount of disrepair.
I finished renovating it almost from the studs out a few years ago. ”
His eyes were pleading. “Please just tell people I’m a designer if they ask, and don’t mention I have a place like this.
I know you don’t like lying—and are admittedly bad at it”—Audrey glared at him—“but can you just say it’s a decent apartment and not what it is?
And besides, I am a designer. That’s not a lie.
” He grabbed a plate and started piling it high with golden pancakes, shoving it in the oven to keep them warm before dropping more batter onto the griddle.
“You want me to lie about your success and diminish it?” That was the most unbelievable part.
She wanted to brag about her boyfriend, and he’d just told her not to.
“Yeah, actually. That’d be great.” She stared at him and Theo rolled his jaw again with a sigh. “Look, Audrey. I’m dead serious. I don’t bring just anyone here. Pretty much it’s my mom, my uncle, and Diego who know about this place. And now you. I like my privacy.”
“Are you that famous?”
“In some circles,” he muttered, turning back to the griddle and grabbing tongs to flip the bacon. “Speaking of, you, uh…brought up Lightm4st3r earlier. Do you think he’s cool or something?” He shot her an apprehensive look over his shoulder. “Do you like his work?”
“To be honest, I don’t know all that much about him.
It’s Violet who’s obsessed with him, and she used to show me his stuff on Instagram, but he hasn’t posted in a while, has he?
” Audrey began poking curiously around in the kitchen, looking for plates and cutlery.
If he wasn’t going to let her help him cook, she could at least help him set up.
“Do you know who he is? That’s the big question, right?
Page Six is always trying to suss out his identity. ”
Theo stared at her. “Uh…no. No, I don’t think anyone actually knows who he is. But we sometimes run in the same crowd. Some of the other artists I know talk about him a lot.”
“That’s really cool.” She found the plates and set some out next to the stove. “Does anyone know how to get in touch with him?” One of the things that drove Violet nuts was how his DMs were closed, but with that big of a following, it wasn’t surprising.
Theo bit his lip and shrugged. “Nope. Not a clue.”
He grew quiet, but Audrey’s mind had already wandered to something Theo had said earlier. “You had a girlfriend at one point, right? Diego mentioned her.”
“Oh god.” He covered his face with a hand. “Oh god. Did he talk about her?”
“Yeah, a little. Did she live here with you when you were together?”
“No,” he snapped quickly, glancing away from the wry look she gave him with a groan. “No, I broke up with her about five years ago. She never even knew I was trying to buy a place. No other woman has been here since then. I stayed very single after that. It was better that way.”
“What happened?” It was almost more shocking that Theo had even had a girlfriend before, given his general demeanor.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that!”
The thought must have shown on her face.
“But, Theo.” She leveled a serious stare at him. “Were you the way you were with me with—”