Page 1 of Mama Si's Paradise

One

PART I:MAMA SI’S PARADISE

They call me Fall,like when a little kid is still learning how to walk and falls a lot.

Like the leaves do from trees when summer ages and decides to retire for the year.

Like snowflakes on a winter night, and rain in a spring afternoon, and stars across the midnight sky—exactlylike what my heart was doing when I pushed that door open and I heard the sound of her voice, those moans of pleasure I never quite knew how to fake right.

It fell and fell and fell, then broke into a million pieces long before Brandon walked out of the bedroom,ourbedroom, eyes wide and hair all over the place, a sheet—oursheet, wrapped around his hips. As if he was hiding from me. As if I hadn’t seen all there was to see on him a thousand times already.

He found me by the door to our small one-bedroom apartment still, doorknob in hand, unable to breathe or blinkor think, only fall and break and fall some more. Just like my name.

“Fall,”Brandon said. “What are you…you were supposed to be—y-y-you were supposed to pick up groceries!”

Yes, I was. It was my job to pick up groceries for the whole week, and I’d made the list and I had it in the Notes app on my phone. I knew exactly what to get, and he’d left me the money for it this morning, too, but halfway to the store, I’d realized that I forgot my wallet—silly, silly Fall—so I came back.

I came back and found this.

Brandon Jones, my boyfriend, the guy I’d convinced myself that I’d grow old with since I was sixteen. We’d been together since then, and we were going to be together to infinity—wasn’t that what he told me that night when we packed our bags and left our miserable town behind? Wasn’t that what hepromiseda week earlier when he got his job offer and hebeggedme to come with him so I could take care of him while he took care of his career, so that then he could take careof me?

Wasn’t that what we said we did—took care of each other?

“I’m sorry,” Brandon said.

“I fell in love, Fall. I couldn’t help it,” Brandon said.

“You and I are just not right for each other—you know this. We’ve known this for a while now,” Brandon said.

“She wants you out of the apartment today. I’m so sorry, Fall, but so do I,” Brandon said.

And lastly, “I’ll give you the money for the train ride back home. You will be just fine.”

“To a shitty fucking Tuesday,”Annabelle said, touching her martini glass to mine on the counter. Almost empty.

How much of my savings had I spent on booze already?Couldn’t really remember, but it’s not like I’d saved much, anyway, with Brandon being so goddamn paranoid about money.

But I did have the bills he gave me for the ride back home.Train money.

I smiled at the bartender—why the hell wouldn’t I? “To a shitty fucking life.” I drank the last of my martini and relished the way it burned me on the way down. “You know you shouldn’t be serving such strong drinks to underaged people, right?” I teased.

Annabelle batted her lashes innocently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You told me you’re twenty-one. The good people of Roven don’t lie about their age. I had no reason to suspect.” She grabbed my empty glass off the counter. “And, sweetie, you look at least twenty-five.” She winked at me.

I flipped her off.

Annabelle’s apartment was in the same building as mi—no.Brandon’s apartment, not mine. He rented it. We’d been sort-of friends since I got here, and she knew very well I was twenty still, but I’d come to her bar straight after I got kicked out that morning, having nowhere else to go, and she, out of the kindness of her heart, had served me all the alcohol I’d needed to be completely wasted within half an hour.

“Cheer up. So, your boyfriend cheated on you—so what? I got cheated on three times before I turned thirty. Not the first woman to go through this, and you will most definitely not be the last—not even for this hour,” she told me, leaning down on the counter so she could be eye level with me.

“It’s not that,” I said, and the words kind of slipped from me almost unintentionally. I didn’t mean to sayit’s not that—for courseit’s that! My boyfriend of four years cheated on me. What could possibly be worse?

But the truth was,thatwasn’t what I was thinking about at all. The truth was, itreallywasn’t that.

“So, what is it?” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and raised a blonde brow as she looked down at me, her bright green eyes never blinking like she was trying to hold me hostage with her gaze.

“Just…things.”

“Things, like the fact that he kicked you out of your apartment, or that you actually left without breaking anything and only took a handful of things in that tiny bag by your feet?Thosethings?” She was judging me and she didn’t even care.

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