“And yet I somehow hear about him constantly.” She tapped her finger pensively across her lips. “Almost like how I talk about Theo.”
“Shut up, Audness,” Violet shot over her shoulder. “That’s not at all the same and you know it.”
“Oh, so youdoget it, then?” Audrey purred, taking pleasure in needling her bestie. “Are you going to admit that I can read someone like a book at first glance and I know the sweet ones when I see them?”
Violet grabbed some leftover Chinese food and opened the container, plunging chopsticks straight into the cold noodles. “Fine,fine,” she mumbled between bites. “You see the best and the worst of humanity in that damn café. When are you going to quit? You’re too good for Déjà Brew, and that coffeehouse is way too cool for half of that clientele.”
Audrey sighed and sank back onto the couch cushions. “I’ll leave it behind when I graduate and get a big-girl job. And besides, at least my boss is never around. Tim pretty much lets us do whatever we want during our shifts as long as we make good coffee and make him money. It’s not so bad.”
She turned back to the notebook and ran her fingers over the pages again. She’d already done it a thousand times this month, but maybe once more would finally unlock some information she could use. Maybe she could simply magically absorb information from it through her fingertips.
“Actually, that’s a good point,” Violet said with a jab of the chopsticks. “Where are you going to start applying for jobs? You’re not going to leave me, are you?” Violet threw herself into their ratty armchair across from her, one so well used and well-worn that it was a sight to behold but also easily the most comfortable piece of furniture either of them owned. Sometimes it wasn’t just about looks; it was something’s character that mattered most. “You can’t leave New York.”
“I don’t want to ever leave you, don’t worry. And I love New York. This city was always my dream.” Audrey turned to the last page. It was blank, just as it always was. Theo hadn’t quite filled up this notebook, which was at least half of why she wanted to get it back to him. He probably had so many more beautiful things to draw in it.
But today, she noticed something different, and she raised an eyebrow as she ran the paper between her fingers. It was thicker than it should have been compared to all the other pages. How had she never realized that before?
She rubbed the corner of the page between her thumb and forefinger. It loosened and cracked, finally coming apart to reveal that two pages had been stuck together. She turned to the actual last page in the journal and then held a hand to her mouth as she gasped.
It was a sketch of her in black ink, facing the viewer from behind the café’s register. Loose pen strokes curved and twisted in the way her hair was always falling out of her messy bun to frame her face, and she plucked absently at the real strands, perfectly replicated on the page before her—not quite straight, but not quite wavy either. Her expression was soft, the corners of her mouth only just tilted up at the beginning of the smile she usually gave Theo, and he’d somehow managed not only to faithfully capture her looks but also to infuse an added radiance all the way into her eyes, which were wide and luminous. Audrey had never seen herself portrayed in such a way. No photo had ever made her look likethis.
Was this how he saw her?
She wasbeautiful.
She’d never really thought of herself as beautiful before. She’d always assumed she was kind of plain: medium brown hair, mottled green eyes, entirely too many freckles that just sort of looked like she was perpetually flecked with stray coffee grounds. Nothing exceptional. Nothing extraordinary.
She wasn’t anything special.
Was she?
Her eyes trailed down the rest of the drawing. Everything about the coffeehouse had been lovingly and accurately rendered around her, down to their tip jar sign and the Marzocco espresso machine and the pastries in the cooler to her right. Each shape was outlined in rich black ink, but the rest of the sketch had been shaded in layers of light, flowing sepia reminiscent of watercolors.
But there was something especially odd about that paint. There was a scent to it—one she knew intimately.
When Audrey lifted the notebook to her nose, a wave of emotion washed over her and she fought back the tears pricking at her eyes.
Because it smelled like coffee.
By the timemid-October rolled around, the air was finally beginning to turn crisp and the leaves swirled around in the streets, their once-verdant color now burning in the fiery shades of autumn.
Audrey kicked some across her combat boots as she made her way home from class, relishing the dry crunch and the musty fall scent in the air. Autumn was her favorite time of the year, when flavors became spiced and warm, when you could start lighting fires to combat the tentative nip of a wilder, cooler wind, and when jack-o’-lanterns began grinning in windows out at the street.
Midterms were only a few weeks away, and Audrey was getting nervous. She was almost ready to graduate, but her senior capstone course was proving harder than she’d wanted it to be. Choosing to work on designing a more sustainable, eco-friendly industrial battery had seemed a worthwhile endeavor at the time, but she was running into roadblocks in the lab, and she wasn’t at all sure how her final project showcase was going to go in December. Failure was looking exceedingly likely, and even though that might not actually result in an F, it would still be devastating to her pride all the same. She’d worked so hard to get here.
Losing her scholarships that first year had been difficult enough.
She was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she almost missed him. But it was the unmistakable way he walked that jolted her back to reality.
She’d know that gait anywhere.
She’d been looking for it for well over a month now.
“Theo,” she gasped.
He turned a corner down the street, but it had to be him—same dark hoodie over a black ball cap, same mask worn tightly over his face, same painfully anxious waddle. Audrey took off at a sprint to try to catch him, her book bag slapping against her thigh and making her dress ride up. She yanked it down angrily and lost precious seconds, but turned the corner just in time to watch him enter an unassuming brownstone, the door still swinging shut after him.
She waited a minute and trotted up the steps. It wasn’t a residence, but a commercial building, and the frosted letters on the window read:Dr.Amelia Harper, MD, PsyD, LPC, CCTP, DBT-LBC.She did a quick Google search.
