Because for some reason, Audrey liked him. She actually liked him. She’d eventouched him.
Despite his limp. Despite his horrifying, butchered face. Despite his shyness, despite it all—
She asked him out.
She wanted him to come back to the café, to sit with her and talk with her.
He actually had a date.
It was literal years since he’d been on a date. He hadn’t been out with anyone at all since he’d broken things off with Kendra, and that was five years ago now.
It was a goddamn miracle.
Maybe God was real after all.
Maybe she’d finally decided to give Theo a break.
It was oneyear, five months, and twenty-five days since Theo decided to try to see Audrey every day.
It was one year, five months, and twenty-three days since Diego yanked Theo’s favorite hoodie off over his head without even having the propriety to unzip it first and shoved “real clothes” at him and did his hair before Theo ruined it with his black baseball cap and then spent the next thirty minutes yelling at him about it.
Diego made him get ready so early, Theo had time to go all the way to Levain and back to bring Audrey cookies, and also pick up flowers before he met her at the park.
It was one year, five months, and twenty-three days since they went for a walk, and sawCasablanca, and ate birria, and she demanded that he kiss her and she was wonderful and amazing and smelled like strawberries and honey and her lips were so, so soft and so was her hair and her skin and her taste, oh god, she’d felt and tasted soaliveand it had taken every bit of willpower inside of himto stop himself from devouring her right then and there on her stoop and it was the best day of his entire fucking life and heknew.
He knew he was a goner.
He knew he’d never met anyone like her and never would again.
He knew no one else was for him.
He knew he was already falling so deeply in love with her, he would do anything for her. Absolutelyanything.
And that feeling only grew over the following weeks.
There he is.
That’s my boy.
It was one year, five months, and seventeen days since he sort-of-voluntarily showed her his face and she called him handsome. Audrey called himhandsome, and smoothed her thumb along his scar, and kissed away the tears tumbling down his cheeks at her words and at the way she looked at him, and he realized she wasn’t lying. She really did think so.
Her touch there felt like lightning.
It shocked him to his core.
Not so bad, huh?
This whole living thing?
Good choice, kid.
I’m proud of you.
It was one year, five months, and two weeks since she stayed with him after getting drenched in the rain, and he made her hot chocolate with trembling hands and they danced poorly in front of the fire and held each other in the dark while confessing some of their deepest secrets. She fell asleep in his arms, and he slept better than he had in months with her warmth curled against him now that he wasn’t alone.
It was one year, five months, and two weeks since Audrey told him she would hold his mugs for him until he could again.
Since she said she wanted to be his girlfriend.
