Page 116 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

I kick off my shoes and let down my hair from the tight twist I keep it in for work. And then, barefoot and feeling free for the first time since I walked into the office and found a figment of my imagination made flesh, I wander around these absurdly lush rooms and simply…let myself enjoy it.

I have been adjacent to great wealth over these last years and have enjoyed that level of hospitality before. It is all quietly understated in these places. The wealth and consequence on display does not require explanation. Experiencing it, I realize, is meant to indicate who and what it represents. It is in the details.

A Texas oilman’s bearskin rugs and enormous antlers, decidedly not purchased from a store. A Belgian heiress’s seeming nonchalance about everything in her surprisingly down-to-earth home in the Hollywood Hills…save the collection of vintage Chanel that rated its own cottage.

I want to go creep around the house and see what other clues I can find, but something stops me. Somehow, I doubt I’ve actually been left to my devices here. If I step outside this room, I feel certain I’ll have an escort within moments.

But there’s more to it than that. It feels like a strategy. If I’m caught snooping, he’ll know that I’m looking for him. Or pieces I can assemble to find out who he is. And maybe not snooping might lull him into a false sense of security.

Either way, I take advantage of these hours I have to myself. My office is across an ocean. My laptop needs a charge. I draw a bath in a freestanding tub that could fit a dozen of me and sink into it, laughing a little as I look out at the exquisite view. Terra-cotta rooftops. The sea in a shade of blue that defies description. The hills and cliffs that lead to Monaco in the distance.

I find myself thinking about where I came from. Where I grew up and was always treated like some kind of discount Cinderella. My stepsisters were coddled and beloved. I was the target. And my father, because he was and remains fundamentally weak, apologized for my stepmother when he and I were alone but never did anything to change it.

I spent years thinking there was something I could do to change this. I modeled my stepsisters’ behavior. I dressed like them. Sometimes I copied them down to the tones in their voices.

But it made no difference what I did or how I did it. They were adored. I was despised.

Eventually I understood that the problem was me. No matter what, my stepmother could not loveme.She never had and she never, ever would.

My father could, or so he claimed, but only in secret.

What my stepmother did love was telling me, in detail, that no one ever would or could love me at all, and I believed her. She never understood that this was not a point of shame or upset for me, not really. Oh, certainly there were moments that stung and some that kept younger versions up at night or in tears, but it was all I knew.

Once I comprehended that it was not a problem that could be solved, that there was no answer that I could find to change it, I adapted.

You can’t truly miss what you never had.

There’s a liberation in that, I’ve always thought.

But I realize now, surrounded by a level of magnificence that I never thought I’d experience in my lifetime, that I am pettier than I realized before this very moment. Because a part of me really does wish I could reach out and show them all where I’ve ended up on an evening in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Because I know that they have not done the same.

I know exactly where all of my stepsisters are, what sort of men they’re married to, and how clear it is that they’re never going to get out of that town where we were raised. I know that my father grows weaker by the day, and fights it even less.

And while I will never lower myself to reach out to them—because tracking them is easier and requires no interaction—I hope that somewhere, in that sad little suburb they all claimed they’d leave as soon as they could, they all feel a twinge. That they all wish, somehow, that they’d made better choices when it came to me.

That sometimes, the wondering if I’m okay keeps at least one of them up in the night.

But I don’tneedthat, and so I let the pettiness go and I stop thinking about them altogether.

I luxuriate in my bath. When I’m done, I enjoy myself in the well-equipped bathroom that might as well be its own spa. I try on lotions, scents, and creams. I make myself sneeze when I lay on too many, and so I eventually rinse off in a glass-and-stone enclosure that bears no resemblance whatsoever to any other shower stall I’ve ever used in my life.

It’s not as if I’ve done badly over the years. But what I make, I put back into the business. That’s what I’ve been doing for years now. That’s how I’ve made it to the place that I have. I thought it was smooth sailing beforeheturned up.

It only occurs to me now, playing latter-day Cinderella-at-the-ball games in this villa, that I have perhaps neglected myself and my self-care for a little too long.

I eat a perfectly presented dinner by myself out on a little terrace, letting the sea breezes wash over me. And when I go inside, prepared to dress at last, the same woman is waiting for me.

She smiles at me when I only stare at her without comprehension. “I thought perhaps I could help you dress for the event tonight,” she says.

I open my mouth to laugh a little bit and send her away, but I stop myself halfway through.

Because this is all taking on the hue of a fantasy, so why not take it all the way? It will all be just as mysterious if I get dressed and primped into a version of myself I’ve never met before.Hewill be just as unknowable no matter if I do this by myself or not.

“Why not?” I ask.

It is not until she inclines her head that I understand that it was not actually a request.

And so I sit down at the little vanity in the dressing room, and surrender.

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