Page 1 of Masks and Mishaps

One

ESSIE

“Yourboyfriendisgoingto kill me.”

The comment is surprising and yet predictable all at once. This isn’t the first time someone has uttered those words to me—and in this exact order—but I still freeze with my club soda halfway to my mouth.I don’t have a boyfriend.

A coarse exhalation is the only movement I can manage at first. Luckily, faint, discordant pop music streams from the bar’s speakers and drowns out my breath’s audible waver.

I don’t have a boyfriend.

I don’t have a boyfriend, so I have to get my shit together.

My next movement is an inhalation. Cleansing. Easy. Another exhalation.I’m completely fine.

I look down. The fizzing bubbles surrounding the lemon wedge in my cocktail glass glimmer under the dim, saffron lighting, popping, tingling, tickling with acid. The tiny bubbles slip through the gaps in the ice and escape to the surface.

I’m completely fine.

My attention drifts from the glass in my hand to the guy across the worn high-top table. The pinch of Alec’s brow is a gash of fear marring his typically composed good looks. If he hadn’t saidyour boyfriend, the dilation of his pupils alone would make me assume the four horsemen of the apocalypse were meandering behind me.

But I know what—who, rather—Alec is looking at, and it’s not the four horsemen.

No, it’s something far more chaotic than the apocalypse.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” is my simple response, and the words come out steady—if I do say so myself. Iamcompletely fine. I bring my drink to my mouth and sip, watching him while pursing my lips around the thin black cocktail straws in the most fuckable way I know.

…It’s a waste. Alec’s fear-struck eyes remain fixated over my shoulder, and at least three minutes have passed since he looked at my tits, which doesn’t bode well for tomorrow night.

He swallows, making his adam’s apple bob in his thick neck. “Are you sure you don’t? Because there’s this guy in the corner booth—”

“Ignore him,” I interject without turning around. I know exactly who’s in the corner booth.

“But he’s staring at me—”

“You’re hot. Maybe he appreciates it—”

“It’s a murdery stare. Murdery as fuck.”

“Please ignore him. For me?”

“I value my life.”

“He’s not going to hurt you.”

“Are you sure?”

I’m about to say no, but I hesitate.

I don’t have a boyfriend, but I do have a Dalton.

I know that Dalton—again, not my boyfriend—likely hasn’t taken his eyes off Alec since we sat at this table twenty minutes ago.

I mean, I don’tthinkhe’ll kill him. Then again, predicting Dalton Cavendish’s movements is more difficult than predicting the stock market—and sometimes just as expensive.

Like this one time, Dalton’s lifelong best friend, Lander, ate the last of Dalton’s graham crackers while our friends were all watching a game at Dalton’s apartment. Two weeks later, on Lander’s birthday, Dalton drank the last of a three-thousand-dollar bottle of whiskey Lander had safeguarded in a locked cabinet. He grinned the entire time, and when he was finished, he waved the empty bottle over his head like he caught the bouquet over a tangle of elbowing bridesmaids and announced, “That was for my grahams, Lander.”

Three thousand dollars. Over graham crackers.

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