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 theart. 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, Iama 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. Idon’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. “Ohgod. 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 shegave 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—”
“Yes.” He held up his hands in surrender. “She was the one who asked me out first.” She didn’t think his face could burn any hotter than it had earlier in the bedroom, but it did now. “I don’t have a good track record of confidence with women, especially at the early stages. The long story short is that we were together for two years. I was planning on proposing and then Diego found out she was cheating on me.” He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head at her. “Sometimes it’s really handy having an investigative journalist as your best friend, I won’t lie. He’s both annoying and nosy as hell, but that occasionally works out in my favor.”
“He’s protective?”
“He’s a pain in the ass.” Theo flipped the pancakes bitterly and moved the bacon to a stack of paper towels. “But he saved me a whole lot more heartache and suffering than if I’d have gone through with an engagement, and I’m thankful for that.”
“What was she like?” Maybe Audrey shouldn’t be prying about Theo’s ex like this, but now that they’d come this far, she wanted to know.
He paused, the tongs suspended in midair. They trembled in his hand, and his face grew dark. But it softened again when he met her eyes.
“She wasn’t like you at all,” he finally muttered, clicking thetongs bitterly as he fussed with the bacon. “She was a mistake, was what she was. She’s a curator now at a large gallery. The art world’s incestuous, and I never should have gotten involved with her in the first place. In the end, breaking up was an enormous relief.”
Audrey didn’t press him further.
Theo poured eggs onto the bacon grease and cooked them quickly before turning off the griddle and opening up a miniature sliding door built into his cabinets. It was an appliance garage, and when Audrey saw what was inside, she gasped.
“OH MY GOD, THEO. You have one of these and you come into the café every day?Why?!”
It was a jet-black Diletta Bello espresso machine and a matching grinder, a premium at-home version of what she had at the coffeehouse.
