Maybe it won’t kill me to cut loose and let the old, fun Marlowe out from her daily grind. Because, while my life is full of love, it’s also pretty heavy on the drudgery and worry and that relentless grind of putting one foot in front of the other.

I force a smile at myself.

Looks like Cinders is going to the ball.

I just hope Prince Charming behaves himself.

CHAPTER 9

Brendan

When that Camille person told me it was customary to kick the next round of the interview process off over dinner, I was like yep, nope.

Hard fucking pass.

Sit-down meals are still my least favourite thing in the world. For years and years before my diagnosis—which didn’t happen until I was fifteen—family dinner was an excruciating hour where I had to exert unbelievable mental effort to glue my arse to my chair when my entire nervous system was literally screaming at me to spring up and jump around the room.

I can still remember how scratchy the seat of the chairs at our dining table felt in the summer or after games when I was wearing shorts.

If mealtimes were excruciating for me, they were equally painful for my parents, who were constantly stressed out by my inability to sit still. I inevitably caved to my impulses to get rid of all that nervous energy and jumped up, so I could spin or walk around and around and around the table or—the thing that pissed my parents off the most—bent myself over the backs of whatever fucking Chippendale chairs they had so I could lift my feet off and swing back and forth.

And, just as inevitably, Mum and Dad would go fucking nuclear. I’ll admit that, twenty years or more on from my diagnosis, I’m still smug AF that they had to eat humble pie after the psychiatrist explained to them that forcing me to resist my body’s impulse to move and expend energy was both unhealthy and cruel. They felt terrible about it, of course, but I still haven’t quite forgiven them for the yelling and the shaming and the punishments when I couldn’t “behave” at the dinner table like my brother and sister.

So no, I’m not partial to sit-down meals these days, funnily enough. No amount of meds can get me over that lifelong trauma. I have enough work dinners to attend, thanks very much. I have no intention of ruining a perfectly good evening of sexy negotiations by sticking my arse down at a dinner table, no matter how attractive the view across from me.