Page 93 of Faking Cinderella
Hence me bending over backward to make Felice happy.
Because I wasn’t going to be one of those twatwaffle men who took a partner for granted. I was going to be one of those men my mom taught me to be—before she fell for Xavier’s bullshit—who meant it when he saidpartner.
One of those men who celebrated my partner’s success.
One of those men who respected what she built and pulled my share of the weight at home and treated her like the intelligent, amazing woman that she was.
Because she was.
Felice was intelligent and independent and funny and driven, and I was so fucking in love with finding someone like her who said she loved me back that I missed all of the warning signs that lingered in the background for years.
And now here I am again, with what can only be described as a crush on an even more successful woman, who’s keeping secrets but kisses like some kind of angelic vixen and who does small things like the dishes and making popcorn that you’d think someone who could afford household staff wouldn’t do herself.
Wouldn’t even know how to do.
I grew up in the Technique Group offices.
Stories about the rich and famous and the outrageous things they did, along with the outrageously simple things they often couldn’t or didn’t do themselves, were part of my childhood too.
I cue up the sitcom I’ve been watching late at night—some goofball thing about a haunted manor where one of the owners can see ghosts—but I don’t start it yet.
I should.
I should start without her, distract myself with falling into the plot, and not put myself in a position to entertain any fantasies whatsoever about Margot Merriweather-Brown.
But I can’t help myself.
When she’s talking to her brothers, she lights up. She compliments her fellow housekeepers’ hair and asks the retreat center visitors how their projects are coming and if the mountain air has been good for their creativity.
She’s right.
She’s not just a robot.
But that doesn’t mean she’s the right not-just-a-robot for me.
Even if I want her to sit a little closer when she arrives on the couch with fresh-popped cinnamon-sugar popcorn, napkins, and the reusable water bottle I didn’t realize I left in the kitchen.
And even if I want to slip my arm around her shoulders.
Tug her next to me.
Smell her hair.
Tangle my fingers in it.
Kiss her until I can’t breathe.
All because she’s done the bare minimum to be a kind human being.
More than the bare minimum, my conscience whispers.
I hit play on the episode and watch out of the corner of my eye as she reaches into the popcorn bowl, resisting every urge to touch her to the point that I wait until her hand is gone before I sample a bite myself.
And fuck me.
I teeter on the edge of losing all control as I grab another handful of cinnamon-sugar popcorn.
It’s exactly the kind that takes me back to childhood.
