“And I wish every day I could go back to that moment and take the memory of my face away from you.”
He’d whispered it quietly before withdrawing his hand and going back to his sketch, his gaze darting up periodically to study her eyes, but refusing to linger on her expression.
The pain in his own broke her heart.
“Theo—”
“When I look in the mirror, the face I see staring back at me isn’t mine. It doesn’t belong to me. It’s something—someone—else.” He shook his head. “The face you saw when that woman ripped my mask off? That’s a stranger’s face. I don’t know that man. I don’t know yet if I wantyouto know that man.” He tapped at the mask with his left hand. “When I wear this, I can almost forget that I don’t have my own face anymore.” Theo screwed the cap back onto the pen and tucked it back into his bag before reaching for a tin of watercolor pencils next. “At least until I take it off and catch sight of myself again.” He opened it up and chose a color, shading parts of whatever drawing he was making with it before switching to another.
“What happened?” Audrey picked idly at the blue cookie bag, tearing at the edges of it. The breeze picked up some of the tendrilsof hair that had escaped from her messy bun and whirled them around her face, sending cool shivers skittering down her spine and dry leaves curling around her boots. “Was it some sort of accident?”
Theo paused his shading and stared at her quietly before leaning over and tucking some of the stray hair behind her ear, carefully smoothing it back down against the side of her head. “I’ll tell you some other time, sweetheart.”
“You know I’ll listen, right? And that you can tell me anything? You don’t have to wait or hold back.”
His eye softened on her face, his calloused fingertips grazing briefly beneath her chin as he pulled his hand back. “I know. I already know you’re kind—I figured that out a long time ago. But I only want today to be filled with good, happy things. And it’s not a happy story.”
He asked her next about where she was from, and she told him about growing up in Florida with a bunch of foster families until she finally landed with Gladys Kane, who loved her like her own daughter, even if she couldn’t adopt her. Audrey had been one of her many charges, but none of them wanted for love and attention while they were under Gladys’s roof, and she lived there during high school until she got into her engineering program at NYU and came to New York.
Theo colored his drawing while he listened, alternating between using his pencils and his fountain pen, and after a while, he took out a paintbrush and a tiny jar with a screw top. He poured some water into the jar from his mug and skated the brush across the page after tucking a sheet of blotting paper behind it, working the water carefully into parts of the piece. Audrey slowly ate the other two cookies until she was stuffed, mopping the crumbs off the blue parchment paper with her fingertips and licking them clean with relish while they talked.
He told her all about growing up in New York. His mother wasa lawyer from a rich family with houses in the Hamptons who’d fallen in love with a mechanic, and he was their only child. They fought frequently, and his mother was almost never around—until his parents finally got a divorce when he was eight. She got primary custody and Theo moved with her into one of the properties her family owned on the Upper East Side, where he was shepherded to private schools by nannies and got the best education his mother could provide. Weekends were spent with his dad at the apartment above the old auto shop he owned in Brooklyn, the borough where he and Audrey both lived now.
Theo replaced the lid on the jar with his dirtied water and snapped his case of pencils shut. “All right, are you ready?” His eyebrow quirked up with intrigue, and Audrey bit her lip to hide a grin.
“Show me.”
“Still not my best work, mind you, so don’t judge too harshly. But—” He turned his sketchbook around and tapped the page. “I told you I like to draw what I think is beautiful.”
It was a portrait of her, with her head tilted back and eyes closed after she’d taken that first heavenly bite of cookie. The sun shimmered in her brown hair and scattered golden highlights through the loose, windswept strands. Dark sweeps of her lashes curved across her chilled, rosy cheeks, and the autumnal fire of the park’s trees blazed behind her, contrasting with the green of the baggy cardigan she wore over her long-sleeved shirt and plaid skirt. He’d even managed to capture the swath of tiny freckles dancing across her cheeks.
She looked happy.
No, it was more than that.
She lookedradiant.
Her heart pounded as she took the sketchbook from him and held it reverently in her hands.
“You’re beautiful, Audrey,” he murmured, his eye never leavingher face as he gazed down at her from beneath long, dark lashes of his own. “I mean that.”
“Thank you, Theo.”
“I genuinely don’t know why you’re going out with me.”
“I think the answer is pretty obvious, given everything you’ve handed me so far today. And—” She leaned over and did something she knew might scare him, but she could hardly help herself. She set the sketchbook back onto his lap and very gently cupped his right cheek to press her lips just beneath the only eye he ever let her see.
He straightened on the bench where they sat, startled and blinking at her, and what she could see of his expression made her laugh. Red crept up to the tips of his ears poking through his dark hair again, and she rubbed the right one fondly before pulling away and letting him compose himself.
“You’re going to give me that too, right?” she asked, pointing to the drawing.
Theo reached into his bag and pulled out another sheet of blotting paper, laying it carefully over the freshly watercolored portrait. “Absolutely not. Did you think this was for you?” He snorted. “This was forme. I already got you cookies and flowers.” He lifted a hand. “And speaking of the cookies…”
He swept his thumb along the corner of her mouth, and Audrey spotted a streak of chocolate trailing along its pad when he pulled it away. Theo lifted his mask slightly and popped his thumb into his mouth, licking it clean with an amused huff. She caught the barest glimpse of those plush pink lips of his, their edges tilted up in amusement before he lowered his mask back down again.
“You’re right: I missed out. Should’ve taken you up on your offer to share.”
That made her laugh even harder, and he clapped his sketchbook shut and secured it with elastic before packing up his things and standing, extending a hand to help her off of the bench.
