Page 19 of Mama Si's Paradise

Marissa didn’t even let me comment as she put the dress on me next, and the way she moved you’d think we had done this on a daily basis since forever. She even put some high-heeled sandals on my feet that I swore I couldn’t walk in, but she still didn’t care. Then she showed me to the second door inthe room—a walk-in closet bigger than the bedroom in my apartment.

Brandon’sapartment.

“It’s empty right now but you should have this filled up by the week’s end,” Marissa told me as she guided me to the middle of the well-lit room, holding me by the hand because she realized Ireallycouldn’t walk in those heels. Shelves upon shelves and drawers and hangers taking up every inch of the walls around me. Not a single thing was on them, but there was a large mirror in between them, and my reflection in it caught me by surprise.

I never much liked colors. I had more than enough on me—my hair was orange, a deep reddish orange that was far too vibrant for my taste, and my eyes were more green than hazel, and my skin was pale, the freckles on my nose and cheeks almost as orange as my hair. I stuck to blacks and browns that tamed the stark contrast between my skin and hair, and I thought it balanced me out nicely—but this dress?

This dress was…different. It was a rich orange that made me looklesspale somehow. More lively. It even gave my lips color. They were full and long but not pigmented in the least—except right now. How that dress was able to make them look like I was wearing just a smidge of lipstick was beyond me.

“There. That looks good. I like the fit—just a bit loose,” said Marissa, moving around me, looking at the dress. She was right, the dress was a bit loose, and the straps of the bra were perfectly visible next to the thin ones of it, but they somehow worked.

“That’s not me,” I said to the mirror, pretty sure it was a damn liar.

Marissa laughed, caught off guard. “Of course, that’s you—who else would it be?” She waved me off like I'djust said the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “C’mon, we still have work to do.”

She walked out of the closet, shaking her head and smiling still, and I had no choice but to follow, convinced every second more that I was inside a dream.

Marissa broughtme food on a large tray to eat in the room.Myroom, she called it. It was delicious, fancier than any lunch I’d ever eaten, even in restaurants when Brandon took us to celebrate something.

Then I met Jessica the fitness trainer, who required me to take the dress off completely so she could see “what she’d be working with” and where I needed to add more muscle mass. She said she’d have my training program for the next weeks ready by tomorrow, and that she’d talk to Claus about my diet, too.

It all felt so much like a dream that I no longer even tried to make sense of it, so when Marissa came into my room for the third time with another man behind her, I didn’t so much as flinch.

His name was Adam, and he was a hairdresser-slash-stylist, he said, and he’d be in charge of my appearance from now on. He analyzed my hair and my eyes and my body, did some tests with some silvers and golds on my skin to determine that I was a warm-toned girl, apparently, and my best colors were in the Spring pallet. He found that very funny, considering my name. I smiled and nodded as if I had any clue what the hell he was talking about, but he promised to be back soon tobring out the best in my hairand to do my makeup until I learned how to do it myself.

Yes,I said.

Of course,I said.

Thank you, I appreciate it,I said.

And then he left. Then, Marissa left, too, to let me rest, with the promise to be back to check on me later.

When I was all alone, I stayed there in the middle of the room, staring at the ocean through the window, the sun already preparing to set, staining the sky with all shades of orange. I stayed there for a long time, feeling like a stranger in this room, in this dress, in my skin.

Then I moved like a robot, took the dress off and left it right there on the floor, and I slipped under the soft covers at the very edge of the bed.

The pillow hugged my head like it had been waiting a lifetime for me to lie on it. The mattress was firm and soft. The smell of the sheets was that of roses, sweet, lulling me to sleep within minutes.

My eyes drifted shut before the sky turned dark.

Six

When I woke up,it was already dawn. The sky was a deep grey and the room perfectly silent. I sat up to realize my entire body was numb because I hadn’t moved a single inch since I’d lain down the day before. There was a clock on my nightstand, just as fancy and with the same golden colors as the lamp behind it. It was just a little after five a.m., meaning I’d slept almost twelve hours straight. I hadn’t dreamed. I hadn’t even realized I was sleeping, and now everything hurt.

Everything on the inside.

I got off the bed, trying not to panic because I had no clue what the fuck to do. Trying not to let the anxiety whispering in my ear win.I do not belong here,it said.This place isn’t mine, either,it said.I am nothing but a burden on Mama Si’s back, too.

Somehow, I found a corner and I sat with my back to it; I wrapped my arms around my legs and I rested my forehead on my knees. Somehow, I convinced myself to focus on breathing as everything that had happened to me in the past two days came crashing down right on my head.

The shock had finally worn off and I felt it all in its rawest form—the cold, sharp knife of betrayal cutting right into my heart, and the desperation and fear of being utterly alone in the world, with no one to turn to and no place to go, and the disappointment and the guilt for allowing myself to get to this point. For always expecting someone to be my hero, to come save me, even though deep down I knew that I was the only one who could pick me up and put me on my feet.Me.Not Brandon, not a faceless stranger who came in the middle of the night to rescue me from my misery, like I sometimes daydreamed. Just me.

But I’d ignored it, and now the guilt weighed so heavy on my shoulders that I couldn’t even imagine standing up.

Yes, the shock had worn off, and now I saw myself for who I was. Alone, stripped bare, sleeping under someone else’s roof once more, working as…whatexactly? An actual prostitute? An escort?

What the hell didentertainmentreally mean in this place?

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