And it washuge.
Theo hung his keys on a hook near the door before turning to her. “Here, let me take those,” he murmured, peeling the coats away from her shoulders before plucking his hat off her head. She let him, her mouth still hanging open in shock, and not even the steady sound of the water dripping from their sodden hems as he hung them on a wall-mounted rack could tear her away from the stark realization that Theo didn’t live like she did.
She thought back to all the change he’d shoved so casually into her tip jar over the weeks and months he’d been coming into the café, and suddenly everything made so much more sense. His silver watch flashed in the entryway lights, and her eyes darted down to it. It was usually the fanciest thing he ever wore.
Now she found herself wondering how much something so small could cost.
“I’ll get you a towel. You need to get warmed up, it’s too cold outside to stay wet and I don’t want you to get sick. Come on in and make yourself at home.”
“But I’ll get water all over your floors.”
Theo blinked at her, water still dripping down his own face from the gauze. “They’re tile. It’ll be fine. I wish I could’ve saved theoriginal floors on this level, but they were too damaged.” He took her hand and pulled her further inside. “Come on.”
Oh. She’d thought they were hand-scraped wooden planks.
Even the floors were deceptively fancy.
The foyer opened up into an open living room and chef’s kitchen with high ceilings. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed views of the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River, and industrial-style pipe bookshelves were embedded into exposed redbrick walls, all laden with a massive collection of books, movies, and vinyl records. What had to be an eighty-inch TV was mounted with speakers on the wall across from a large, comfortable-looking sectional, and a small home gym was tucked into a corner, outfitted with a recumbent bike, a Peloton slat treadmill, and a fully stocked, top-of-the-line weight rack with matching bench.
Everything looked relatively new, freshly renovated, and impeccably designed in a modern, industrial style. Original exposed beams and brick were juxtaposed with gleaming white quartz countertops and modern, matte-black fixtures, large, top-of-the-line dark stainless-steel appliances, and brand-new ceramic flooring. It was warm but chic, artistic but intentional—and not a speck of dust to be found on any surface.
It was very Theo.
He flicked lights on as they went, and a large neon sign hummed into life on a wall near the kitchen. The wordsSullivan Hot Rodsglowed in classic yellow text around a turquoise vintage car bounded in a red-orange circle, all crafted with neon light. But before she could get a better look at it, Theo tugged her up two flights of stairs, around a corner, and into a bathroom on the third floor.
“Here,” he said softly, grabbing a fluffy white towel out of a cabinet and wrapping it around her shoulders. “Actually, do you just want to take a hot shower? Let me get you some dry clothes, I’ll be right back.”
Audrey pulled the towel closer around her neck. Everything in Theo’s house was neat and pristine, aside from the trail of wet footprints they’d just dripped all over his floors. It felt like she’d violated his space by tracking them into his gleaming white bathroom. But he was right: she was freezing, and she bent down to unlace her boots and rip off the tights clinging to her legs. She let them drop with a wet splatter into the sink and braced herself for the tile floors to be achingly cold against her bare feet. But when her soles touched them, they were warm and radiating heat.
She was still busy staring down at the floor in surprise when Theo emerged from the darkness beyond the bathroom, a stack of clothes held in his hands and away from his body so he wouldn’t get them wet.
He put them on the counter and grinned from beneath the layers of sopping wet gauze. “Sorry these won’t exactly fit, but I grabbed things with drawstrings. You might have to roll up the waist on the pants a couple of times, though.”
A few stray drops of water fell from his eyelashes onto the floor, and Audrey stepped over to him. “Do you need help out of that?” she asked, grazing a curious hand against his cheek. “You promised I could unravel you later, and I’ve been waiting all night.”
Theo chuckled and bent down. “I was just going to peel it off myself, but all right. There should be a safety pin up there somewhere holding it all together.”
He had to practically fold himself in half for her to be able to reach, but when she finally saw the pin glinting in the lights of the bathroom, Audrey began unspooling the lengths of the soaked cotton. Bit by bit, his hair came into view, then his face. As the gauze fell away, Theo gradually straightened and watched her quietly.
When his scarred right cheek was revealed, she laughed.
It was smeared now, but the red, angry length of the scar on hisface had been filled in with black paint and crossed with periodic slashes. Theo grinned crookedly at her, his soaked waves curling around his neck and cheeks.
“I was originally going to try for Frankenstein’s monster—you know, the Boris Karloff version? But the paint on the papier-mâché headpiece I made didn’t dry in time for me to actually wear it.” He pointed up at his head. “I’m glad that didn’t work out now. It might have been even messier with the rain.” He ripped the last of the gauze away from his neck and tossed it into the sink next to her tights with a loudthwap.
“Were you going to actually show your face publicly tonight?”
His crooked grin softened as he gazed at her. “I might’ve, yeah. It’s been a pretty long time since I have.” Theo lifted a hand toward his scar, his fingers twitching slightly, as though he didn’t quite want to touch it. “Well, I thought about it, anyway,” he said with a sigh. “I probably would’ve chickened out in the end, but it was kind of nice to see it covered. Made it feel less real. I could imagine that it was just like Halloween last year and that nothing had ever happened to me at all. That it was always just…paint.”
The rest of his grin faded, and he rolled his lips together while he looked at Audrey. “Hey. You’re shivering.” Theo ran his hands along her arms and wiped some of the dripping water away from her face with the corner of the towel. “Get warmed up and I’ll make us something hot to drink. Do you want tea or hot chocolate?” He dug in the cabinet and placed two more towels onto a metal rack near the massive glass-doored shower before turning a dial on the wall. Audrey peered around him and noticed there was more than one showerhead in there.
She’d never seen a shower that fancy before.
It made her feel weird.
“I-I’m going to get makeup all over your towels.”
“I don’t care. It’s fine.” He gave her an odd look before bendingto search for something in another cabinet. “Don’t worry about it, they’re just towels. That’s what they’re for.”
