Page 17 of Mama Si's Paradise

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Your clothes,” she said. “Take your clothes off. Your bath is ready.”

Nowthosewere words I never thought I’d hear in my life.Your bath is ready.

And I was already taking my clothes off.

Maybe they put something in the air here for real. Or maybe I was far,farmore fucked up from the events of the past two days than I realized. Either way, I listened to this stranger in the blue dress, and I took all my clothes off in front of her, and then I got in the tub. The tub that smelled like roses.

An actual fucking tub—and I wanted to cry because I’d never had a tub in my life. Hell, I’d never seen a tub outside of movies before. Now I was in one and it was heavenly. The water and the foam and the smell was heavenly.

Marissa continued to fold towels and robes, white and fluffy and threaded with pink. My nakedness didn’t bother her at all. In fact, she didn’t look at me twice until the water and the bubbles covered me completely, and only my neck and head were outside, resting on the edge of the tub.

It occurred to me that I could have been dreaming as I stared at the ceiling. It occurred to me that all of this was just in my imagination, not real.

After all, why would anyone give me this room and this bathroom and this tub full of heavenly water?

After all, why would someone like Mama Si look at me the way she had and say thatI was the one?

The one for what?

Why?

So many questions.

My eyes must have drifted shut gradually. Sleep must have snuck up on me, too, because I didn’t realize I wasn’t conscious at all—until I felt a hand on my cheek.

“Fall, wake up.”

I had fallen asleep indeed.

I sat up, and the water around me moved, confusing me for a bit. Filling me with panic. But then I remember where I was—in the bathroom that was in the very room Mama Si had given to me. Just simplygiven to me.I remembered Marissa, too, and her wide blue eyes as she stood there and looked down at me with a towel in her hands and a smile on her face.

“Your water is cold. You might want to come out now,” she told me.

The water had indeed gone much colder than I remembered, when I could have sworn I just closed my eyes a minute ago.

I stood up, the water trying to pull me under—or maybe it was just my heavy limbs. “How long did I sleep?” I wondered because the sky was still blue outside. The ocean was still right there.

“Just about thirty minutes. You must have been tired,” Marissa said, putting the towel around my shoulders, and another over my head before she brought a robe closer, too. She’d prepared everything.

“A little,” I admitted, thougha littlewasn’t exactly accurate. I had barely slept for three hours last night.

How far away that life seemed to me just now, while Marissa dried my hair with a towel and made sure my robe was wrapped all around me tightly, then pulled out a pair of fluffy slippers from the drawer, too.

“Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to rest just as soon as you meet the others,” she said.

“The others? What others?”

Marissa chuckled. “You’ll see. Come on, they’re waiting.” She pushed the door wide open and waited for me to go through first.

“Miss Hayes, how wonderful to meet you,” said a man who was possibly two times my size, with a big smile and thick curly hair, arms covered in tattoos that I could see because of the short sleeves of his white uniform. “I’m Claus, Mama Si’s chef. You look lovely.” And he came at me with his hands raised, put them right on my shoulders, and kissed both my cheeks. He smelled like cupcakes, the ones with pink icing and rainbow sprinkles I used to steal from the bakery back home with Brandon when we were kids.

Nostalgia hit me like a fist to the gut, but I held myself. A tatted-up chef as big as the damn door was smiling and looking down at me all lovingly, and though he couldn’t be much older than forty-something, I could have sworn he thought of me as a little girl.

“Come. Sit with me,” he said, waving to the bed. “I need to hear all about your favorite dishes. Tell meeverything.”

Marissa slightly nudged me to the side as if to say,go on, sit down with the giant chef. He’s completely harmless.

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