Page 1 of The Masked King

1

ENZO

“Same again?”

The bartender takes my glass and reaches for the bottle of brandy before I give him the nod. I don’t even have to remind him it’s on the rocks. He’s been adding doubles to my check all evening.

He slides a fresh glass back across the counter towards me, and I down it in one.

It stopped touching the sides a long while ago. Twelve months ago, to be exact. When Demi Payne walked out of my apartment and didn’t come back. Didn’t kiss me goodbye. Didn’t even pack her toothbrush or the vibrator in the top drawer of her nightstand or the oversized hoodie she always wrapped herself up in when we spent the night on the rooftop watching the stars and singing old 80s songs out of tune.

The images of us in my head barely crack a smile these days. Like old black and white photographs, they’ve been erased by twelve months of thumbing through them trying to find the moment it all went wrong. Fifty-two weeks of crumpling them in my hand and straightening them out again to see her smile. More days than I care to count of⁠—

“Do you think she realizes how lucky she is?” The question jolts me out of my reverie and back into the arena of too-loud laughter and voices jostling for attention.

The speaker is attractive, blonde, her wild curls clearly on a lifelong mission to never be tamed. Her eyeliner is smudged, her smile is wide and genuine, her flannel shirt open to reveal a white tank, the outfit thrown together almost as an afterthought, giving her the look of an adventurer fresh in from her travels.

My initial reaction is that she smells like Demi.

But she isn’t her.

No one else ever will be, and this is the reason why I’m at least a dozen shots down and still stone-cold sober.

As pick-up lines go, it’s one of the more original ones I’ve ever heard. Maybe I’ll store it for later. Maybe.

“Sorry, I’m not interested.” Because, sure, the brandy might not be hitting the dull zone, but it’s gone straight through the asshole check-in and is waving its passport at me like it just got released from jail.

She shrugs. “I’m not selling anything.”

She doesn’t come any closer. She doesn’t allow her arm to touch mine or give me a sideways glance to see if I’m checking her out or tuck her wayward hair behind her ear. She keeps her gaze fixed on the bartender who finishes serving a customer and comes straight over.

I swallow the rest of my brandy. I’m not ready to leave, but I’m not ready to get drawn into a conversation I’ll forget the instant I step outside either.

I sigh. Seriously. I let out a fucking sigh as the liquor goes down, like a homeless guy sleeping in a cardboard box who has nothing else to live for.

She hears it too. “Whatever he’s drinking, Andy,” she says to the bartender, “I’ll have the opposite.”

Two things hit me at the same time.

One: she knows his name. I’ve been sitting here for a couple hours, and I never even glanced at his gold name badge, but she strolls in and they’re on first-name terms.

Two: drinks have opposites.

Like night and day, I guess, or hot and cold.

I’m struggling to think of more elaborate opposites because my brain cells are a little woozier than I gave them credit for. And because my lips are curving upward into a small smile as Andy the bartender prepares a rainbow-colored cocktail for the woman on the bar stool next to me, complete with a paper umbrella, a twisted lemon slice, and colored sugar around the rim.

Then I hear it. The name. Someone says, “Demi,” somewhere else in the bar, and I can’t help it, I’m craning my neck trying to find her even though I know there are other Demis in the world, and no shit, my stomach drops like a fucking aircraft with engine failure when I don’t see her.

Andy places another double brandy on the rocks in front of me.

“Cheers.” The woman raises her glass in the air and sips her cocktail through a paper straw.

I don’t return the toast. The asshole in my head is still watching me from the security gate, his smile a little less sure of itself now. I stare at the amber liquid, listen to the ice splitting, and try to remember a time when I felt less like myself.

I can’t.

“You came straight from the studio.” Andy’s smile travels directly to his eyes and produces the kind of crinkles that will linger in old age, as he leans across the counter and touches the woman’s chin. “Paint.”