Page 97 of Cinderella Is Faking It

Del straightened, eyes wandering over the rest of the pictures on the wall. “Is this you?” She pointed at a picture of me on a boat when I was around 24. One of the last additions my grandmother put up.

“Yes.”

“You were around my age in this, weren’t you?”

“A little younger, but not far off.”

“I would have never gone out with you at that age.”

“No?”

“If this was your dating app picture, I’d expect you to tell me about your media start-up, your podcast and Elon Musk’s latest ‘stroke of genius’ within the first 5 messages.” She giggled to herself, tapping the glass of the frame. “But now I know what Tabitha meant when she said you look like you fuck.”

“I do what?”

“This guy looks like he sleeps with women.” Del grinned and patted the frame like the head of a puppy, then turned to me and pointed her finger up and down my body. “But all grown-up? This guy looks like he fucks.”

“I feel like I should give Tabitha a call.”

“Defne agrees with her. Apparently, it’s a thing.”

“How attached are you to your friends?”

“How attached are you to your genitals?”

“Fair enough.”

We finished the tour of the house with a quick glance into the kitchen, just big enough for one counter with all the essential appliances and a small table with four mismatched chairs. The backdoor led from the kitchen to the back porch. There was still a whole lot of beach between the house and the waterfront, but at least the ocean was in view. It would be even closer for the morning high tide.

I’d thought Del’s presence was intoxicating when we were cooped up in my library, but that turned out to be nothing against Del on a beach. She kicked her shoes off after a few steps off the patio, started running - and I had no chance of keeping up for the rest of the afternoon. She charged into the ocean and ran back out squealing when a wave chased after her. She collected a dozen identical shells and gave each one a name, placing them in my palms - and I learned the hard way, after dropping Wallabee in the water, that she would mourn the loss of a single shell for at least 15 minutes. So I pocketed them all. She told me about not being diagnosed with anxiety until she was 21, and autistic at 22, because her father had been convinced overthinking every minuscule detail was normal. Turned out, he was also autistic and had anxiety. And she told me about adopting her cat shortly afterwards as emotional support - only to be given the least affectionate, grumpy cat in the world, who hissed at her if she tried to pet him.

We bought snacks and drinks in town and sat on the porch swing, and I told her about going to boarding school in England for two years, and the year I studied in France and started writing poetry, convinced that would get me laid. I told her about my father micro-managing every aspect of his life, but not giving a shit about his sons until they were 16, old enough to have a ‘sensible’ conversation with.

She asked to try a drag from the Cohiba I’d brought but dissolved into a coughing fit and chugged her grape juice like cheap beer to chase the taste. Chocolate and coffee according to cigar lovers. Wet leather and moldy driftwood according to her.

She spent 20 minutes in the bathroom brushing her teeth when the juice didn’t help.

“Not a bad first date,” she sighed and dropped into the pillows face-down. She wore the soft Afghan blanket from the living room around her shoulders, covering the short, silky nightgown that had given me half a heart attack five minutes earlier.

I eyed the heap of crochet, skin and blonde hair in bed next to me. This was good. Not how I’d expected it to go, but everything considered, there could be worse things than spending the rest of my life with a girl whose company I actually enjoyed. “Are you still alive, Blondie?”

She made a non-committal sound.

“I need to ask you something,” I said, trying to get a rise out of her. She just turned her head, blinking at me through a curtain of blonde hair. “The wedding dress shop?”

She groaned and rolled over, folding herself into the Afghan like a burrito, glowering at me. “What?”

“Anything you want to tell me?”

“I needed a dress for High Tea, and I had to buy it discreetly, because it had to be fitted to hide my bruised wrists.” She rushed the words out in a tone that suggested I wasn’t the only one who had asked about those pictures. “Defne knows the owner. That’s all.”

“Defne knows the owner?”

“Yes. That’s all. Don’t worry, I’m not dragging you to the altar.”

“Del, the owner is the one who tipped off the press.”

“What?”