Cinderella's Diary

SEVEN

I apologize for the two-week delay of the 7th installment. Real life's pressing issues had to be dealth with. Just the same, despite its distracting errors (edits after first draft is comeplete)--i hope you enjoy it. Thank you for your time in reading this...

SEVEN

            I pretended this dinner meant nothing. That my waiting for Charles in Racks of festival mall wouldn’t lead to the topic I was avoiding. And it wasn’t our kiss last week. But, right now, I wish our talk would be about that. The longer I wait for him, the longer I realized it wouldn’t be the highlight of our conversation. It most certainly had a lot to do with the latest buzz on ETC. Where I had actually seen Katherine posed as Carol Lewis—which was in truth, no one but her. It was her alias there. So, she really had managed to make a big name for herself, no surprise. The surprise, if anything wasn’t her success in modeling career but her rumored fiancé, Patrick Dela Fiente. The same man who bought me the False Prince book that I happened to enjoy so much. I couldn’t put it down. I finished the entire book in one night. So with its sequels: The Runaway King and Shadow Throne, it was an easy read since its target audience were young boys. They were easy to understand, simple words, first-person writing and not so much drama. Well, the last one though…had a bit of too melodramatic dialogues and moral teaching—I had to wrinkle my nose in disgust. What kind of male lead character rushes into the garden of his kingdom to think? That in my opinion was sort of girly. Not that I blame the author, Jennifer Nielsen was a woman. But I loved the series all together and put it next to A Game of Thrones— fantasy shelf of my book cabinet. Which reminds me…I really need to buy a new bookshelf for my ever-growing library of books; I mostly left them at home.

I’d try to distract myself. It wasn’t happening. My mind still went back to Marian’s call two days ago—when she told me that Katherine and Patrick were scouting houses and properties in her husband’s firm. Now, that was a real shock to me. She broke up with Charles. But I didn’t think she’d already have a replacement for him. It just didn’t seem right. Disrespectful, even, were they really through as a couple? Though, I too should be pissed about this piece of information. I hardly felt anything at all. I had seen Patrick three days ago, and was almost deceived with his change of attitude. So that was a bluff, and I called it. Either way, it wasn’t my business at all. And had Katherine really been just Carol Lewis—then it’s got nothing to do with me. Except reporters had to leak their private life, and their upcoming wedding is all over the news. No doubt, Charles had seen it. I hope not. I didn’t want to have to comfort him, I wouldn’t know how. The bell jingled as the door hit it. Someone had entered the restaurant. And judging the soft creak of steps, I knew it to be him.

I looked away. I averted my gaze from him. Afraid, he’d look into my eyes and see the truth there. That I had known all along but it kept from him. I could have given him at least a little warning. But I didn’t want to get involve. I had not intended for him to find out this way. In such a vulgar, wide-spread announcement in national television for the world to see, I wanted to spare Charles the pain.

He approached our table, “Hello,” he greeted with a wave of a hand.

“Hi,” I replied numbly.

“You haven’t called me from last time.”

“I wanted too,” I lied “I just forgot…”