Page 3 of Mama Si's Paradise

For the next hour, I drank that martini little by little and tried to get my thoughts in order as best as I could. I was a twenty-year-old girl in Roven, Maine, far away from Detroit where I was born and raised, with no degree and no job experience. I’d just followed my boyfriend, who was four years older than me, to this shitty town because he got a job offer he didn’t want to refuse. It was supposed to be for a year only before they moved him to L.A, but then we stayed another. Then he signed the contract for the third year, too.

He said he liked Roven. I said I liked Roven, too.

I lied.

Stop thinking!

I turned to my phone just to give myself a break, but all mysocial media apps were full of everythingpiano. Free lessons, tips, facts. That’s all I really knew. That’s all I’d wanted—to save enough money to buy a piano, and maybe when Brandon felt like he had enough saved to the side, I could pay for some lessons, too.

Now, look at me. That’s all I’d dedicated my free time to, and I doubted anybody in this shitty place was going to care about who invented the piano or how many types there were or how many keys they had.

Then I went through the gallery to look at pictures of Brandon and me. There weren’t many of those. In fact, there were less than I’d thought. I had a lot more of birds, dogs, instruments, and paintings in there than of us together.

Easier to delete, I guessed, and as I went through them, I realized Brandon never really lookedin lovewith me. He looked…comfortable. Very at peace in my arms, but not in love.

And to look atmyown face?

Yes, I was even worse. Not only was I not in love, but every smile looked forced. It hadn’t been, though, had it? And there had been no signs that he was cheating on me, either. He was never on his phone longer than usual and he was never out late. There had been no signs…right?

Fuck, I couldn’t remember for the life of me.

“I’ll work at the port,” I said to myself as I turned the phone off. My anxiety, fueled by the vodka, reached sky-high levels suddenly. “I’ll wait tables. I’ll clean.” There were jobs. There was money here that I could earn.

Therehadto be.

Annabelle heard me. “Or you can use that train money and actually go back ho?—”

“No.” I cut her off before she finished speaking. I was not going back home to Missy. I would rather live in the streets of Roven for the rest of my life.

“Fine,” Annabelle mumbled. “Fine, you’re not going home.”

She knew very well whathomewas. I’d told her once by accident while we drank wine on the stairs of the apartment building one afternoon when Brandon was at a conference.I hadn’t doubted him then, but now I wondered if thatconferencehad been held between the legs of the woman he’d cheated on me with.

A moment later, Annabelle sighed. “We’ll find you a job. Shouldn’t be so difficult, right?” And she looked at me as if she expected a confirmation.

“Mama Si is hiring.”

We all turned to the other side of the bar, to the woman who was sitting with another man behind the brown suit guy.

I narrowed my brows. “Mama Si? Isn’t that…”A brothel?

“Mama Si’s Paradise. You’ve seen it—up on the cliff. A friend works in housekeeping and she told me they’re hiring,” the woman said as the man next to her smoothed her frizzy curls behind her head and she pretended not to notice.

“Yes, yes, I’ve seen it.” Everybody had seen Mama Si’s Paradise.

Annabelle shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

“Are you serious?” She knew what the Paradise mansion was. Everyone around here did.

“I mean, I heard they pay very well. And they offer living arrangements,” Annabelle said.

“But it’sa brothel.”

“It’s not a brothel,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Besides—what do you care if you’re working in housekeeping?”

I turned around and looked out the small windows near the door. Far in the distance I could see the biggest building in the entire town, surrounded by golden gates and a shitload of trees that hid away some of the white and pink walls.

“People come from all over the country for Mama Si’sParadise,” the woman said, as she tried to get the man off her hair, but he kept trying to touch it. He was so drunk I had no clue how he hadn’t fallen off the stool yet. “It’s… like a hotel, but with extra benefits.”

---