He stumbled over his words, stuttered, forgot what he wanted to order even though it was the same goddamn thing every time, felt fuzzy in his head and unsteady on his feet. It was like his brain and his tongue had joined forces to lock up and fuck him over and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it except keep trying.
Meanwhile, she beamed at him and remembered his name and his order for him, and while it sent warmth surging through hisbody, while he wanted to feel special, he was sure he wasn’t. She probably had a boyfriend—she was far too pretty not to. She was also good at her job and he was just another customer, even if he tipped well, but he had no idea how to talk to her and didn’t want to bother her while she was working. And even if he did, every time he went home and caught even the barest glimpse of his reflection, the warmth he carried back in his stomach with the perfect coffee she made him would suddenly leach away.
She had no idea who and what was really beneath the mask.
It didn’t seem to stop her from trying to talk to him, though.
Her smile was radiant, and she was funny and sweet. She was trying to get him to smile back, to laugh with her, he knew that. But every time he came close, his scar pulled across his face and his heart wrenched in his chest, another constant reminder of the life he’d had ripped away.
But he did start drawing again.
His dad would have laughed.
A girl, huh?
A girl got to you, Teddy?
You’re a chip off the old block after all.
(There he is.)
(That’s my boy.)
Theo wanted to draw her, to keep something of her for himself. There was no way he’d ask for a picture or take one in secret, oh god no. No, no. This was bad enough. He didn’t want to be a weirdo—or, well, more of one than he already was. But maybe if he could sketch her from memory…
He started practicing again.
He tried to draw more than a single curl of hair, and ink flowed onto the paper to sketch the lines of her face, shaky and misshapen at first.
But over the weeks, it began to change. He got better. It startedto look something like his style again. He began drawing other things, and painting too, with watercolors. They were easy to use and it didn’t matter if his hand slipped or shook. The vibrant shades of it brightened up his life a little, made it less gray, chased a fraction of the gloom away, beat back the voice in his head that said hateful things to him. At least a little.
And one day, he had an idea. He took the coffee Audrey made him and he laid a brush to paper, filling in the shadows and lowlights of his portrait of her with the art she’d made forhim. Every time he brought home her coffee he added to it, layering the fresh brew atop the old, deepening the stain, enriching the image, adding depth and dimension, just as he was getting to know her better, even if only by the tiniest of measures.
Whenever he held the portrait to his nose, he closed his eyes and could feel himself there with Audrey, the scent of coffee—ofher—overwhelming his senses and filling him with warmth.
He loved the café now.
It was another safe place added to his short but slowly growing list.
Until it wasn’t.
One year, seven months, and twenty-two days ago was a bad day.
That nasty blond woman ripped his mask off and revealed how grotesque he was to the world.
To Audrey.
She saw.
She saw him for what he really was now.
DISFIGURED.
UGLY.
MONSTER.
He didn’t leave the house for a month after his mangled facewent viral. The comments online about his appearance and the calls from reporters weren’t even the worst part of it all. They were bad, but they only confirmed the things he already thought about himself.
