Page 29 of Beautifully Deranged

"A hundred bucks."

I laugh, a real one this time. First of the night. "You’re on." I tilt my glass his way. "You go first."

He scrubs a hand over his jaw and lets out a long breath. "Girlfriend of five years rejected my proposal."

I let out a low whistle. "Damn. That sucks."

"Cheers to heartbreak and bad decisions."

I pull out a crumpled bill and slide it his way without a word.

His lips twitch. "You're not even gonna try to top that?"

"The man I love told me I was nothing more than convenient sex."

He stares at the bill, then at me, before pushing the money back across the bar. "Keep it."

I do.

He's... attractive. Sharp features, clean lines, the whole brooding Wall Street fantasy. Under better circumstances, if Mikhail weren’t burned into the back of my brain like some kind of brand... well. I might've shown him a good time. Still might.

"Alright, enough with the sad vibes," he says. "What do you do?"

"I’m a painter."

He perks up. "Yeah? You any good?"

Instead of answering, I reach into my bag. My fingers find my sketchbook, the one I always carry with me. "You wanna see?"

He leans back, lazy grin on his face. "You planning to draw me?"

"I was thinking about it."

He shakes his head, chuckling like I’m the weirdest part of his night, but he doesn’t stop me. Pencil hits paper. The noise of the bar fades. It's just him, the page, and my hand moving on instinct. The slump in his shoulders, the way his tie hangs all wrong, the bruise-colored shadows under his eyes, it’s all there, waiting to be captured.

"You’re really serious about this, huh?"

"You asked if I was good. Let’s see if I am."

The pencil keeps going, dancing through lines and soft shading. My favorite part: when something starts to feel real. "So," I say, voice lighter now, "what do you do when you're not turning yourself into whiskey soup?"

"Finance. Investments. The kind of job that makes people assume I cry in my Tesla and have the personality of an A4 sheet of paper."

I grin without looking up. "Do you?"

"What, cry?"

"No. Have a personality."

He snorts. "It’s... questionable."

"You seem like you might have a personality buried in there somewhere," I say, pencil still moving.

He huffs, amused. "And what makes you the expert?"

I tap my temple, giving him a look. "I'm an artist. Comes with the job. We notice stuff."

"Oh yeah? So what do you see when you look at me?"

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