Chapter 5

Someone knockedon the door not five minutes later.

I’d opened the window, had rested my elbows on the sill and I was watching the sky and the ocean, breathing in the air that smelled like roses and sounded like music, so even though I heard the knocking, I still couldn’t move. Even though the door opened, I still couldn’t tear my eyes away from the blue, until…

“Excuse me, Miss Hayes. May I come in?”

Finally, the spell broke and my body remembered what it was like to move. I turned around slowly, not exactly sure what to expect, but a young woman was by the door, her feet outside still as she watched me, cheeks pink and blue eyes wide.

She was waiting for my permission.

“Of course,” I said when I found my voice—dry, hoarse, but a voice, nonetheless.

The woman stepped inside and closed the door behind her, her smile wide. Her smile genuine.

“Thank you,” she said. “My name is Marissa. I’ll be your primary help around the mansion. It’s good to meet you, Miss Hayes.”

Being called miss had always triggered me, probably because of my grandmother’s name—Missy.

“Please, call me Fall.” I stepped to the middle of the room and she came closer, too. She wore that same dress—baby blue with golden buttons, perfectly clean and pressed. Her light brown hair was done in a thick braid behind her head. She didn’t look more than a few years older than me, maybe even less.

“Of course,” the woman said with a deep nod. “Welcome to the Paradise. You’re going to love it here.”

“I will?” Because I didn’t know what to feel just yet.

“I think so. It’s a dream come true,” she said, and slowly, she leaned in and put her hand around my arm. “Come, Fall. Let’s get you cleaned up and in a new pair of clothes. I have a dress being pressed for you—exactly your size. Just until you have the chance to buy new clothes. I think you’re going to love that, too. Come.”

“Where are we?—”

There were two doors to the right of the bed, the design the same as the walls, almost identical. I hadn’t even noticed them. The first led to a bathroom, apparently. My own personal private bathroom, with a shower and a tub and two sinks in it. With white and pink and yellow tiles and a big window right over the round tub, from where I could see the ocean, too.

Marissa went to the tub, turned on the faucet, then pulled out some towels from one of the two wide drawers. Meanwhile my feet froze in the middle of the room, and that was the first time since yesterday that the need to cry built up inside me. It rose within me like an ocean wave, and I had to bite my tongue and hold my breath until it passed.

It was getting too much. Everything was getting too much.

“Can you hear me, Fall?”

I blinked and found Marissa with two towels in her hands, looking at me expectantly.

“I’m sorry, what?”

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

Now those were 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, far more 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 that I 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 simply given 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, though a little wasn’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 me everything.”

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

I shook my head, not exactly sure what the hell to even think at that point. I just sat down and made sure the robe was covering me completely from my neck down to my ankles.

“Start off with your favorite childhood dish. What was on your mind any time someone asked you what you wanted to eat? And what did you want to make every day for yourself when you grew up? What did you pester your mom about until it was on the table and ready to eat?” Claus smiled brightly. “I like to make those dishes for birthdays, occasionally for a job well done, too. Mostly birthdays, though, and yours is in just five months!”

At that point it would have probably been a very good idea to ask him, how in the fuck do you know when my birthday is?

As it was, I just shook my head again. “I…I don’t know. I’m not…not really big on food. I’ll eat anything.”

The way his smile dropped all the way… “There’s no such a thing as not big on food,” he informed me. “But regardless. Tell me your favorite dish as a child. I’ll work something out. Just give me a name.”

Shit. I really didn’t want to ruin his mood again. “Mac and cheese,” I said, clearing my throat. “It’s, uh…it’s mac and cheese.”

“Right,” he said, almost like he was disappointed. “And how did you make it?”

“Any cheese works, really. I just used whatever was in the kitchen.” I went for a smile, too. He returned it, but I could tell it was strained.

“Of course, yes. What did you eat for special occasions and birthdays?” he then asked. My cheeks flushed. “And lastly, I need to know your family’s Thanksgiving dinner.”

“I…we, uh…” We ate sardines and yogurt and tomatoes and bread. We ate bananas and apples. We lived in a trailer park and the money Missy got for raising me went to her booze and her colors—she fancied herself a painter. We didn’t really have much to spend on groceries. “Well, we always made chocolate cake for birthdays with my grandma. She used to make them so I’m not sure how exactly, but they were delicious. They had banana chunks in them,” I lied. “I’d eat that cake all day for each birthday, so, uh…and-and-and Thanksgiving dinner was really special, too. We always had stuffed turkey and-and mashed potatoes, and casserole, and then cheesecake,” I continued in a breath. “And pumpkin pie, too. I love pumpkin pie.”

Claus blinked at me, the smile still on his face. “That sounds…fancy.”

“Gravy,” I said with a nod. “We always made lots of gravy to top it all off.”

“Okay,” Claus said. “That’s a lot of calories right there. You’re lucky you’re skinny, right?” And he laughed. It was so fake it hurt my ears, but my laughter was even faker.

“I run every day.” That, at least, wasn’t a lie.

“Good for you. You’ll meet your fitness trainer, too, I imagine, and she’ll give me an approximate number of calories you need to be consuming per day, as well as protein and carbs and fat. Fat is very importantly.” He pulled out a small pad from a wide pocket in the front of his uniform shirt and began to write something down. “Weight and height?”

“About a hundred and ten or fifteen pounds, and five foot six-ish,” I said, and he scribbled it in his pad.

He then asked if I had any chronic conditions, whether I was allergic to anything specific and what I thought about different kinds of nuts for whatever reason, how I felt about gluten, and which veggie made me the most gassy.

When he wrote everything down, he put his pad back in his pocket and looked up at me.

“I think I have a close idea about what kind of dishes you might like,” he told me. “I’ll speak to Jennifer about your macros, and I’ll make your meal plan by tomorrow.” With a wink, he stood up, giving Marissa a look I couldn’t quite decipher.

“Oh. Thank you, that’s…” absolutely insane, were the words that popped into my head, so I just let my voice trail off. A meal plan with macros and the kinds of dishes I might like? What the hell was this place?

“No need to thank me yet. Can’t wait to explore your taste in the coming weeks, Miss Hayes,” Claus said as Marissa held the door open for him to leave.

“Please, call me Fall.”

“Oh,” said Claus, dark brows raised. “That’s a…sadname.”

Well, damn.

“Beautiful, though,” Marissa suddenly said. “Falling can be beautiful, too.”

“Of course,” said the chef, and with another nod at me, he slipped out the door.

“Your clothes are ready. I think you’ll like this dress,” Marissa said without missing a beat, and then she pointed at the foot of the bed, at a suitcase on the floor that was already open.

“I got you a warm orange to match your hair and eyes,” she told me, and pulled out a pale orange dress with spaghetti straps and a slit up the left side that was much more revealing than possibly anything I’d ever worn so far.

“Oh, that’s…that’s too much for me,” I told her, even though I loved the shimmery fabric of the dress and the way it looked so…sophisticated. Exactly like something those girls lounging by the pool would wear.

“Nonsense—it’s exactly enough. Here, put these on. Let me dress you up first, and then you can decide, okay?” She gave me a pair of panties, white and lacy with so little actual fabric, and a matching bra, too. I’d always had a big behind, and my boobs were pretty small, but the white bra looked gorgeous on me. Fuck—it looked amazing, and it made me feel so damn emotional for some reason. Maybe because I’d never really cared much about lingerie, never owned anything so sexy, so I had no idea it could actually make you feel like this.

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 in the room—a walk-in closet bigger than the bedroom in my apartment.

Brandon’s apartment.

“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 I really couldn’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 look less pale 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”d just 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. My room, 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 to bring out the best in my hair and 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.