Chapter seven

Poppy

Instead of giving Theo the option to see me or not, I stood outside Marked, working up the courage to open the door. I typically visited him after the shop closed. On the few occasions I’d stopped by while Max and Theo were working, the buzz of the tattoo gun had made my head spin. I let out a shaky breath, gripped the door handle, and yanked it open so hard the bell overhead had a hissy fit.

Max walked from the back room and smiled at me. “Morning, Poppy. Thought you were my one o’clock.”

“Definitely not,”

I said, relieved the shop was quiet apart from the classic rock blasting through the speakers. “Is Theo here?”

“Upstairs. He’s not scheduled until two.”

“Oh.”

I shifted back and forth, my combat boots squeaking against the waxed floor. “Sorry to bother you.”

I turned to go, but Max stopped me.

“He’s up. I heard him moving around before I started the music. Come on to the back and knock on his door.”

“He isn’t expecting me.”

And I was taking him not working as a sign I shouldn’t ambush him, even to apologize for letting slip that he’d been evicted. He’d bolted from Church right after I blabbed and hadn’t read any of my texts since. “I’ll just talk to him later.”

“Please,”

Max said, with a hint of desperation in his voice. “I’ve wanted to check on him since I got here.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “So, you’re aware of the shit storm you started?”

Max nodded.

“Did you know he had a panic attack on Thursday?”

Max banged his fist on the counter before gripping his forehead. “Damn it.”

The guy looked genuinely torn up, and I felt like a bitch. Yet again, I’d opened my big mouth and said something Theo probably wanted to keep to himself, or at least from Max. “Forget I said anything,”

I mumbled. “Just forget I stopped by.”

“Oh no,”

Max said, locking eyes with me. “Either you’re knocking on his door or I am. And if I do, I’m giving him hell for not telling me he had another panic attack.”

“Like he’d have told you. You’re the reason he had it.”

“I know,”

Max said, dropping his head.

He looked exhausted, defeated. I wondered if he’d been second guessing himself ever since he evicted Theo. I know I’d be if I were him. Let’s be honest, if I were him, I’d have let Theo stay until the walls fell down in his crappy apartment. But I knew Max only wanted the best for Theo. “Fine. I’ll knock on his door. But if he doesn’t answer, I’m out of here. Either way, you’re not mentioning the panic attack to him. Deal?”

“This way,”

Max said, motioning me toward the back like I hadn’t been to Theo’s place dozens of times before.

He walked me to the door that opened to the staircase leading to Theo’s apartment but turned and went to the front room before I had a chance to knock. I rapped just loud enough I could look Max in the eyes and say I tried. A couple moments later, the door swung open.

My stomach bottomed out like I was downhill on the world’s tallest roller coaster.

Theo stood at the door in nothing but a pair of dark, paint-splattered jeans. Almost his entire torso was covered in colorful ink, his body a work of art, both from the tattoos he’d added and the carved muscles beneath them. My eyes traveled down his sculpted chest and abs to his bare feet. I didn’t have a foot fetish, but damn. I could stare at Theo’s all day.

He cleared his throat, and my eyes snapped up.

“Sorry.”

For telling everyone you were being evicted. For showing up unannounced. For ogling your feet like a perve when you clearly don’t find me attractive.

“Um, just a sec.”

Then he shut the freaking door in my face, confirming my status as a pathetic simp. I considered leaving, but Theo quickly returned wearing a t-shirt, his feet still enticingly bare.

“I thought you were Max,”

he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Sorry I answered the door like that.”

“You’re fine. I mean, it’s fine. You’re fine too.”

I needed to leave.

“I’m using oils.”

He might as well have spoken in Greek. Was he dousing the apartment in essential oils for the new guy? Cooking breakfast? It didn’t smell like pancakes or sandal wood or however else people use oil in their homes.

“Want to see it?”

“Sure.”

I had no clue what it was, but I lifted my chin high and walked past him up the stairs all the same.

Even with his bed shoved against the wall, Theo’s studio apartment was cramped. Cramped but tidy. All his books and art supplies were stacked neatly in the built-in bookcase. The old plaid couch and laminate coffee table had seen better days, but there wasn’t a speck of dust or dirty sock in sight. The two-burner stove sparkled. The chipped Formica counter was cleared of everything except a palette loaded with paint. Oil paint. Because, duh, he’s a painter, wearing paint-splattered jeans. A canvas sat on the easel in the corner, the back facing the room.

Instead of walking three steps around to see it, I froze. Theo stopped beside me and waited.

“Do you often paint without a shirt on?”

Because that was the most awkward question I could possibly ask.

He shrugged. “Sometimes. I was working out before, so I just changed from my shorts.”

And now I was imagining him naked and sweaty. “I’m not sure I could sculpt topless, even if the shed didn’t have windows.”

Because if I had to see Theo half naked, I might as well attempt to make him as hot and bothered as me.

He nodded and pressed his lips in a hard line. Yep. Not even a flirty comeback. Every time Theo ignored an opportunity I lobbed at him to leave the friend zone, he chipped away at my self-esteem. It’d become harder to pretend like it didn’t bother me.

It was time to switch topics to something we could comfortably discuss, like art. Unfortunately, my brain and mouth failed to communicate. “Yeah, I don’t think sculpting topless would work for me, especially not with plaster and chisels.”

“Yeah,”

he said, gripping the back of his neck. The movement made the muscles on his arms flex. “That could be dangerous.”

I needed to stop embarrassing myself, or Theo wouldn’t even want to be my friend. “I’m rambling. Sorry. That’s what I came here to say. I’m sorry I told everyone about the eviction. It wasn’t my place and—”

“Hey,”

he said, placing his warm hand on my elbow. The least-sexiest part of anyone’s body, yet my stomach fluttered. “Don’t apologize.”

“But you left. And you weren’t reading my texts.”

Could I sound more desperate?

He pulled his hand from my elbow and rubbed the scruff on his face. “I didn’t want to talk to Aiden or Cal, so I turned off my phone.”

“Oh,”

I said, lacing my fingers together to keep from wrapping my arms around my waist. I needed a damn hug, and Theo obviously wasn’t offering. “Well, I’m sorry anyway.”

“I’m sorry I made you worry,”

he said, reaching for me. He pulled his hand back and motioned to the canvas. “Want to see what I’m working on?”

“Sure.”

He dragged a stool from the counter where we’d eaten several meals together and pulled it around to the canvas. He grabbed the palette and settled onto the stool he’d presumably been sitting on. Unlike me, Theo didn’t mind talking while he painted. He probably conversed with everyone he inked, so I guess it made sense. He placed the palette on his lap, grabbed two brushes from a jar on the windowsill, and started using both.

I hopped onto the stool beside him and took in his work in progress: A woman with beautiful curly black hair, her profile graceful as she stared off the canvas. Theo worked on the background on either side of her, painting first with one hand and then the other.

“I’ve never seen you work like that before,”

I said in awe. Any awkwardness I felt dissolved as I watched his alternating brushstrokes.

“I don’t usually,”

he said, using his left hand to add a swirl of rich indigo behind the woman’s head.

It took me a moment, but when I saw what he was doing, I gasped. “You’re mirroring each stroke in different colors.”

He nodded. “Most, but not all.”

“If you wanted to show how your hands are equally abled, why not make it identical?”

I’d never ask another artist a question like that mid-work, but I knew Theo had already given the process a lot of thought. He’d probably painted the entire thing in his mind before he picked up a brush, or in this case, brushes. What I wanted to ask, but didn’t, was who was the woman? It sure as hell wasn’t me. Her eyes were a rich brown, gentle and soft. The expression in them reminded me of something.

“It’s to show that no two things are the same. Even if they appear to be. Even things you’d think would be. Like coffee.”

A laugh escaped before I could stop it. Theo paused mid brushstroke and flashed me a tentative smile. I squirmed on the stool and almost tipped over when I shifted my weight too much.

Theo reached for me but stopped when he remembered the oily brushes in his hands. “You OK?”

“Yep. So, coffee?”

I couldn’t be more awkward if I tried.

He turned back to the canvas and started painting again. “Greek coffee is different from American. Thicker, stronger.”

He was talking about a beverage, but my body temperature shot up a few degrees. I nodded, a ridiculous response since he wasn’t looking at me.

“So many things you’d think would be similar, like refrigerators, aren’t. Not only what’s inside them, but the shape, the size.”

“So, the woman is living in two worlds, basically.”

“Mana,”

he said, pausing his brushstrokes to stare at the woman on the canvas.

“What’s that?”

“It’s what I call my mother.”

He set the brushes on the palette, and I instinctively reached for his hand. He didn’t take it right away, and my cheeks flamed with embarrassment before he locked his fingers with mine and started speaking again.

“I think she adapted to life here better than my father because she wasn’t willing to let one culture replace the other. Patera only spoke Greek at home because he wanted everyone to know he was fluent in English. Mana always spoke Greek with me, no matter where we were. She could make a Thanksgiving meal as easily as roasted lamb for Tsikopempti, Smoke Thursday.”

He turned from the canvas and grinned at me. “It’s like Fat Tuesday but with meat instead of pancakes.”

“Sounds delicious,”

I breathed. A day pigging out on smoked meat did sound tasty, but it was his rare, full grin that had taken my breath away.

He gave my hand a squeeze and dropped it like he’d had enough and couldn’t stomach touching me another moment. “Anyway,”

he said picking up the brushes again. “I figured painting it with both hands came the closest to what it felt like to be in both cultures simultaneously. I guess it could have been a self-portrait, but I wanted to see her face again.”

Well, go ahead and stab me in the feels. Theo had never talked about his family before, but everyone in Peace Falls knew they’d abandoned him after the trial. Rowan would have known how to sweetly talk with him about his mother and how he felt. I just sat and watched him paint, knowing whatever came out of my mouth would likely be the wrong thing.

“Thank you,”

he said quietly after a while, his eyes glued to the canvas.

“For what?”

His hands stilled, but he didn’t turn to look at me. “For always being there for me. For being you.”

“Yeah, sure,”

I said. “I can’t be anyone else. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

When he turned his head, his dark eyes flashed with anger. “Why would you ever want to?”

I shrugged, my face heating. I wasn’t about to list my flaws out loud. What if he agreed with all the reasons I’d considered for why he didn’t want me? “I’m an acquired taste,”

I said instead.

“People like you are rare, kardoula mou,”

he said, laying down his brushes again and swiveling his entire body to face me.

So were plague-riddled squirrels. Being rare wasn’t necessarily a compliment. “One of these days, I’m going to spell that close enough for Google to translate.”

“It’s how I’d say Poppy in Greek.”

He reached over and cupped my cheek, then pulled his hand back like I’d burned him. “I better get cleaned up for my first client.”

I nodded because my throat was too tight to speak. I ached for him to touch me again, but each time he pulled away hurt just a bit more.