Page 36 of Cinderella Is Faking It

Damn him.

It would basically be a crime to let him walk away with those. I mean, it would have been inhumane to deprive Tab and Defne of the chance to try the famous cake bars. At least that’s what I told myself when I opened the door wider. “Fine. God. You’re annoying.”

He stopped in the doorframe, close enough for me to inhale his rich, fresh scent. Something about the way he looked down at me, when I couldn’t see his eyes behind those glasses, made my insides clench up. “Am I getting under your skin, sweetheart?”

“No,” I grinned up at him, “but if I’m ever single again, do you think I could get Dr. Hunter’s number?”

Beck closed the distance between us in a flash. I barely managed to shuffle backwards, my shoulders hitting the door. Those few inches between us were reduced to a breath as he leaned down, one arm braced above me. His stubble grazed over my cheek and my inhale caught in my throat. With his voice dropped low, he rasped a single word into my ear: “No.”

An involuntary shudder rippled down my spine, but before I had time to process, Beck had stepped inside, leaving me dazed and breathless at the door.

What the hell?

I shut the door and dashed past Beck, not even looking at him because even though my friends were all caught up on the peanut curry night, I didn’t trust them not to lose their shit.

“Okay, so I may have mentioned tonight to Beck, and he’s here and he brought cake, so be nice,” I whispered, getting the words out as fast as possible. Four eyes were on me, then swung up to the person who’d stepped into the TV room behind me.

“Oh fuck, youarehotter in person,” Tabitha exclaimed, heavily implying that I had not only shown her pictures of him but also told her that he was way better looking IRL. Which I had. But he didn’t need to know that.

“That’s Tabitha,” I said, ignoring the hot blush spreading up my neck, “and that’s Defne, tonight’s guest of honor.”

“Congratulations.” Beck offered her a polite but warm smile that was so different from the cheeky grin he usually spared for me, I stared at him just to make sure he was the same person.

“How old are you again?” Tabitha narrowed her eyes at him as he placed the box of blondies on the sofa table.

“38,” he replied.

“That’s nothing,” Defne tsk-ed.

“That’s a significant gap.” Tabitha scratched her chin and picked up her phone. “How long since you made that ‘30 under 30’ list?”

“12 years,” he replied, taking a seat with plenty of space between himself and Tab.

I sprinted to the kitchen to get him a drink, too, and came back to find Tabitha asking him about the kind of women he’d dated 12 years ago.

“Stop pestering him and put on the show, would you?” I settled in between the two of them and patted his knee in consolidation.

“On it,” Defne chirped.

“Hey Del, what were you doing 12 years ago?” Tabitha asked, completely ignoring the fact that I’d told her to be nice.

“That’s irrelevant. You said nothing when I befriended my old neighbor, Mrs. Hutch. She had already buried two husbands by the time I was born.”

“You’ve never shared a bed with Mrs. Hutch.”

“You don’t know my life.” I grabbed one of the blondies from the box and put it right in front of her mouth. “Eat that.”

She scrunched up her nose but took the cake from me.

“Mrs. Hutch was kinda cute when she was young though,” Defne sighed. “Alrighty, okay, before I hit play, it’s just a teeny tiny scene in episode two. The water was really cold, and the swimsuit was very white and very wet. Tabitha you better be a real gentleman about it.”

“Me?” she scoffed, mouth full, “There’s a geriatric stranger right over there.”

Defne shrugged with a saccharine smile, then hit play. The show was some college drama about affairs and lies and possibly murder, Riverdale-levels of unrealistic, but just as addictive. The second Defne’s long black hair swooshed over the screen as she whipped it, emerging from the pool, Tabitha and I broke out in cheers loud enough for us to miss Defne’s first line of dialog. We had to rewind and watch again. Even though that was clearly our sweet little Defne on screen, it was also not.ThatDefne was a total minx, winking at her hot swim coach, shooting him a cheeky grin over her shoulder.

The second the show cut back to the main couple, Tabitha pressed rewind again.

We watched the whole scene like five times until we had dissected the way the camera panned over Defne’s curves, the way they had smudged her makeup, the way her co-star’s head tilted and every syllable from her lips.