He could remember a time long ago, when it didn't stick properly – the mask, when it was awkward and uncomfortable and kept falling off when he opened his mouth to speak.

He'd hated it then, hating putting it on every morning, looking in the mirror and seeing something he barely recognised. It wasn't a nice mask either – sure it was well crafted, expensively made, beautiful even – but there was something deadly about it, something unnerving and deceiving, something barely human. But he'd worn it anyway – put it on every morning without fail – because, as much as he detested what he looked like when he wore it, he detested the face beneath even more. It was a face of weakness, a face of pain and he simply couldn't survive if he kept looking at it.

It had gotten easier. Every day the mask felt less uncomfortable, he started cutting the people who remembered his face out of his life, changed jobs – hung out with people whose faces looked just like the mask he was wearing – who couldn't tell that he was wearing one at all – and gradually he forgot he was too as the mask moulded itself to his face so tightly that he couldn't pull it off if he'd wanted to. Until it became a part of him, until he couldn't remember his face.

Then one day it cracked, not much mind you, just a tiny chip on the edge. It surprised him – he'd never realised it was that fragile – but it felt good, like perhaps he'd like to see again what was hidden underneath it. So he stayed with the cause of the crack – the man at the urinal who had talked back to him and his two friends – waiting as they chipped tiny slithers of the material, revealing the skin beneath – wanting and fearing them seeing what it would show.

He didn't notice it at first, that the girl Ted had decided was his latest soul mate had a mask just like his. Hers too – though not quite as thick – had been worn for just as long, had been stuck on so firmly that it was almost her face. But once he noticed it he had the weirdest urge to peel it off and see what it was hiding, to let her reach up carefully towards him and gently pull of his mask to reveal what no one had seen in years. But he got neither; not really. They came into each other's lives with the force of a sledgehammer, causing huge fissions along the material – leaving huge chunks of face free for everyone to see – but others they kept on – unable to sacrifice completely the comfort of a mask they'd had for years.

Eventually the mask won out – for both of them – neither of them were sure what their face would look like after all those years – not sure if they could like it, never mind someone else. But still the mask was damaged beyond repair. He tried to fix it but the new material was flimsy and translucent. She did a better job at fixing hers, but not much, he could still see through the gaps and it still crumbled a little when he touched it sometimes. He wondered again and again what she would look like without it, became determined to have another try at peeling it off.

So he tried, several times, and each time he got closer but each time she pulled away at the last minute – content to let others see her mask rather than show him her face. He didn't blame her, not really, why should she take off her mask when he too was too afraid to wipe off the final fragments that remained of his?

His mask became uglier, day by day he detested it more. It was warm and secure and comforting, and sometimes he felt it was the only thing keeping him alive when he saw her with her own mask next to someone else, but he wanted it off – for the first time since he'd put it on he needed to see his face. He needed to see hers too. The show had been splendid but it had gone on too long, he needed, he was finally ready, to face the reality.

Every masquerade must end. Theirs ended on a rooftop with rose petals and candles. When she looked up from a sheet of paper and found him down on one knee. In the end the mask didn't need to be pulled off; it just fell. And suddenly she was looking straight at his face with nothing in-between them. He had spent 15 years having one night stands yet now he was here, looking at her on this roof, fully clothed and he had never felt so naked.

But then she smiled and nodded and her mask fell off too and finally, finally, he looked at her with clear eyes. She had never been more beautiful. And with the shattered remains of their disguises on the floor he took her in his arms with the promise of a life without the need for such pretences.