I was on the cusp of a full-on pity party.
Nobody needed to see that.
* * *
I stared at my face in the bathroom mirror. For the first time in I couldn’t remember how long I’d decided to wear mascara, and I regretted that decision now. A raccoon’s face stared back at me from the mirror, eyes ringed with smears of black makeup and cheeks splotchy with tears.
It made me feel like an even bigger idiot than I had when I’d run in here to hide ten minutes earlier. Which was saying a lot.
A quiet knock on the bathroom door startled me out of my self-pity.
“Cassie? Are you in there?” Frederick’s voice. It was low and full of concern. A gentle, reassuring warmth flooded me at the sound of it.
“No.” Without thinking, I scrubbed away my tears with the back of my hand. It came away streaked with black.
“I just spoke with someone who said she saw you rush in here. I’m concerned. May I come in?”
“I said I’m not in here.”
A quiet huff of a laugh. “Clearly you are.”
I shut my eyes and leaned my forehead against the door separating us. The smooth wood felt refreshingly cool against my flushed skin. “I am such an idiot.”
“You are not.”
“You have to say that.” Fresh tears pricked behind my closed eyelids. “You don’t know how to ride the El by yourself and you’ll be stuck here at this party forever if you aren’t nice to me.”
Another quiet laugh, then more firmly, “Move away from the door, Cassie. I’m worried about you. I’d like to come in.”
His slightly authoritative tone flipped some sort of switch inside of me. “Okay,” I said, sniffling.
He stepped inside the small bathroom—all six feet two inches of him, broad-shouldered and beautiful—before quietly closing the door behind him. All of a sudden I was reminded of just how small this space really was.
He seemed to notice it the same instant I did, his eyes widening as they darted over the shower stall behind me, the toilet, the sink. But then he saw my face, and the mess I’d made of it—and then his attention was all on me.
“Who did this to you?” His voice was low, but urgent. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.” I tried to turn away from him, but he grabbed hold of my arm, keeping me in place. I shivered, the chill from his touch burning its way through the fabric of my shirt and creating a stark contrast with the rush of warmth I suddenly felt everywhere else. “I’m a failure, is all.”
“You are not a failure,” he said firmly. “Anyone who made you feel like one will have me to deal with.”
I smiled a little at the idea of Frederick threatening anyone at all. He might be an undead creature of the night—but as undead creatures of the night went, he was a marshmallow.
I sniffled. “That person, unfortunately, is me.”
“You?”
“Yeah.” I closed my eyes. “I submitted a piece I’ve been working on for weeks to an art exhibition. I was really excited about it, but I just found out it’s been rejected.”
“Oh, Cassie,” Frederick said, his tone laced with sympathy. “I am so sorry.” His hand was still on my arm. His touch was grounding. I hoped he wouldn’t pull it back anytime soon. “Is that all?”
I sighed. “I’m such a fuckup, Frederick.”
“People are rejected from things all the time, Cassie.” He paused, thinking. “In a way, I was rejected from the entire past century.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not the same thing.”
“You’re right. What I did was worse.”
“How is it worse?”
His eyes twinkled. “I drank something Reginald offered me at a party. Like an idiot. Talk about being a fuckup.”
I hiccup-laughed a little in spite of myself. Hearing Frederick use modern slang was like seeing a toddler with a fake mustache. He smiled at my reaction, clearly pleased with himself.
And then, all at once, his expression grew serious. “If anyone fucked up here, Cassie, it was the committee that refused to accept a visionary artist into the exhibition.”
I blinked at him, stunned at the intensity of his praise.
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I never say things I don’t mean.”
Before I could decide how to respond to that, Frederick pulled a square of fabric from the front pocket of his jeans. Muttering something under his breath I couldn’t make out, he turned on the faucet and ran the fabric beneath it.
“What are you doing?”
“No one seems to carry handkerchiefs anymore,” he mused. “It’s a pity. They work so much better than the thin paper tissues used nowadays. Now close your eyes.”
He turned to face me with a look of quiet concentration. His eyes flicked to mine. Or, more specifically, to the mess of black eye makeup smeared beneath them.
Embarrassment flooded me. “Frederick, you don’t have to—”
“Close your eyes, Cassie.” His tone brooked no opposition, his stern insistence touching some raw, primal part of me that was helpless to do anything but obey.
His free hand cupped my cheek, gently tilting my face upward so he could look at me more clearly. Suddenly, it felt like all my nerve endings centered right where he touched me.
My eyes slid closed of their own accord.
“What is this black substance you have used to paint your face?” His voice was quiet, curious, as he tenderly wiped away the remnants of my mascara with his handkerchief. His face was so close to mine I could feel each of his shallow exhalations of breath on my skin. “I’ve not seen this sort of cosmetic before.”
My mouth went dry. “It’s . . . called mascara.”
“Mascara.” He said the word with obvious distaste, but I only dimly registered it. It was hard for me to focus on much of anything at all but the gentle swipes of his fingers beneath my eyes and the press of his free hand to my cheek. All the oxygen seemed to have vanished from the too-small room. My heart was thundering in my ears.
“It’s vile,” he added.
“I like mascara.”
“Why?” His handkerchief dipped into the corner of my right eye, where the smudges were the worst. He leaned in even closer—probably to give himself a better view of what he was doing. He smelled like red wine and the fabric softener he used on his clothing. My lungs seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.