Page 118 of Cinderella Is Faking It

“We broke up. There’s not much more to tell.”

“You fucked up, didn’t you?” She raised her brows at me.

“Yes.” No point in lying. Brody would just keep poking.

“How bad?”

With her big brown eyes on me, with her mother’s family living a perfectly happy life just a few feet away, I couldn’t even pretend it wasn’t bad. That I had just gotten close to Del for the wrong reasons. The reminder of what Julian might have pulled fifteen years ago was sitting right here. I hadn’t plotted a murder - or two - but that was the only reason I was alive, and he wasn’t.

“Well, shit,” she sighed when I didn’t reply.

“Any advice?” I asked, both because she talked to Del more than I did, and because her last relationship advice had actually been sound.

“Groveling?”

“Tried that.”

“Grand romantic gesture?”

I chuckled. “Did you get that from your smutty books?”

“Judge my books all you want,” Brody jumped back to her feet and flipped me off with a big grin as she retreated back inside, “but in case you forgot, Del reads those books, too.”

“Fair point,” I sighed and added, “smart-ass.”

I wasn’t sure there was a gesture big enough to make up for what I had done - or almost done. There was no way to show Del that she had it wrong and I was the hero from her romance novels all along, because none of my intentions had been noble and just misinterpreted. Whatever we had, it had been built on lies and greed. But the most fucked up thing about the whole situation was that, even knowing the outcome, knowing how much pain I’d caused, knowing how wrong I’d been, I would do it again in a heartbeat if it gave me just another second with Del, a single smile, a single hug. That probably made me an even bigger asshole because I wasn’t even reformed. I was a fucking addict, and I’d do anything to get a fix.

“I need to make one last stop before we leave,” I told Brody Sunday afternoon when we got in the car, “and I’m going to need your help with it.”

“Cryptic much?”

“How much of Delilah’s book have you read?”

FORTY-NINE

“This is just tasteless.It’s called Underwater Sex.” I wouldn’t even have accepted the books. Just another gift, more over-the-top than that first edition of Emma he’d sent a while back. There were boxes upon boxes of them, all delivered while I was at work. Since they weighed about a bazillion pounds, sending them back would have been more expensive than just going through them and deciding which ones to keep and which ones to donate.

At least we’d made it a group project.

Tabitha whisked the Underwater Sex book out of my hands and read the back. “Oh, it’s just about how fish procreate. I expected kinkier from him.”

Defne skimmed the description over Tab’s shoulder. “Wait, did you know the male seahorse gets pregnant? Not the female one?”

“Yes,” Cordelia and Victor replied in unison, pulling all attention to them. Cordelia threw her hands up. “What? I like watching the Discovery Channel.”

“I watch her watch the Discovery Channel.” Victor shrugged.

All five of us sat between stacks of books in the second bedroom on my floor, which had become more of a reading room since I’d moved in, bed replaced by a cozy armchair.

“How many books is this?” Defne asked, pulling a large photo book on coral reefs into her lap.

“999,” I replied, waving the delivery slip. Tabitha picked that out of my hands as well.

“That’s weird,” Cordelia mused, “did they miss one?”

“It says they were paid for in the shop,” Tabitha said, dissecting the details of the order.

“Why did he go to Portland to buy you 999 books?” Defne asked.