Drawing Him Closer
by Art Artisan
It started with an accident.
Nate was walking his usual shortcut through the university’s botanical gardens, sketchpad tucked under his arm, headphones in, not expecting anything new. That was until the young man—Teddy—crossed his path barefoot. Not in a rushed, forgetful way. But deliberate, as if his soles belonged to the earth.
Theodore “Teddy” Roth was beautiful. Slim build, tall, wearing a loose cream shirt and black jeans, and he was barefoot, as I’ve said. His walk was unhurried and unselfconscious. His presence seemed to slow time.
Nate’s gaze was drawn to the curve of his jawline, the contrast between the sharp structure and the softness of his expression. Wind tousled the stranger’s dark hair just enough to give him a dreamlike quality, like a painting half-finished. The young man’s eyes—deep-set, clear, and striking—glanced toward Nate for the briefest moment. Not flirtatiously. Not knowingly. Just a moment shared with the ease of two souls crossing paths.
His bare feet were streaked with dust and dew from the grass. Long toes. Calloused pads. And Nate couldn’t stop admiring his gate. There was just something about it—confident, unbothered—struck his.
Nathaniel “Nate” Hollander had studied bodies before, for his figure drawing class, but this was different. Teddy’s feet weren’t anatomical—they were symbolic. They carried stories in cracked skin and faint tan lines. He couldn't stop looking.
He saw him often after that. Teddy always wandered without shoes—through puddles, over gravel, even inside the art building. His professors didn’t seem to mind. He claimed it was grounding, he overheard once. Nate pretended to sketch the columns near him, when really he was trying to trace the curvature of his heel from memory later that night.
Nate began drawing Teddy’s feet obsessively. Pages of them. Sometimes angelic, surrounded by celestial ribbons; sometimes monstrous, dragging shadows behind. He wondered if he’d ever ask why his portfolio reeked of barefoot motifs. But he never did. He smiled at his once—that quiet, dimpled kind of smile—and he nearly dropped his sketchbook.
He never told him.
But on the final day of the semester, when the art class hosted its open exhibition, Nate placed one framed sketch in the center of the room. It was surreal: Teddy’s feet hovering above a cityscape, vines curling around his ankles like he was some unknowable deity. And in the corner, hidden in small cursive, it read:
“You walked across my mind like a prayer I never said aloud.”
Teddy lingered at that drawing longer than any other. He stared, tilting his head, one barefoot still tapping unconsciously against the tiled floor.
He never connected it. But Nate didn’t need him to.
Some kinds of affection bloom best when kept secret. Like a footprint left behind in morning dew—gone quickly, but never quite forgotten.