Page 1 of Fall Into Me

Prologue

Before

Everyone has an earliest memory.

Some people recall memories from age nine. Age ten.

Some people think they can recall memories from when they were in the womb. (They can’t, because it’s scientifically impossible, and I don’t think I like those people.)

My earliest memories are from around five, and I remember thinking to myself that I was certain I could tell the most about a person by the way they laughed.

Every person has more than one, and I think that’s why I loved that my brain could have that thought. There are so many types of laughs one person can have that I’m not sure you’re ever really done discovering them. Not for yourself or the people around you.

There’s something about getting to hear someone’s laugh. This outward, crystal clear sign of joy. Of happiness. You can’t hide it once it’s happening. It’s like this unspoken permission for you to unzip yourself for a little while.

What I remember most about growing up is how my house was always filled with laughter. There was so much of it in every corner.

It painted the walls of the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, and the den.

It painted the whole inside of the house and the outside. It was absolutely everywhere, all the time, and then when it faded, this incredible peacefulness was left in its wake.

Those are what my earliest memories are made of.

My dad’s eyes crinkled at the corners, face split in two from a smile that made him look years younger. My mom with her head tipped back, nothing but a wheeze escaping her as she clutched her stomach in a desperate attempt to deter the cramps that ensued from the sort of laughter that made your eyes water.

I remembered looking at my little sister, who watched our parents with wide, dazzling brown eyes filled with unhinged adoration before she released a scream of her own. Clapping her hands and bouncing in her high chair, completely unaware ofwhyshe was suddenly filled to the brim with an overwhelming amount of joy, only certain in the knowledge that shewas.

I remember thinking to myself that when I grew up, all I really wanted was for the walls of whatever home I had for myself to be splattered with laughter in the exact same way. I didn’t want it to just start and end with the walls of this future, imaginary house, though.

I wanted to be covered in it. Head to toe. When I went to school. Out with my friends.

I wanted the inside of my very first car to be positivelydefiledwith laughter.

I wanted it everywhere and on everything. In my hair, my eyelashes, between my toes like grains of sand that you could never get rid of.

It never occurred to me that anything could move over that belief like a blanket of clouds slowly taking over the sun.

Imagine seeing them in the distance, sweet and cozy.

You might want to stick your hand up into the heavens and pull a handful of those fluffy bastards down to take a big bite. They’re scattered at first. The periods without sunshine at all aresparse and fleeting. Hardly enough to even start to notice the warmth leaving your skin.

But then they get more serious, and whether they break for the sunshine or not isn’t up to you at all.

That’s what I learned. That the sun was the laughter in my life, and the clouds had become something controlled completely by my heart. More terrifyingly, by the people—the person—who held my heart.

I heard his laugh first.

It wasn’t particularly loud or brash. There’s no reason it should have stood out among the others. No reason at all. I know for certain that in the moments after it had burst to life and filled the air of the bar around us, it had sought me out specifically. Like a string tied to one of my ribs. Tied toallof them.

I followed it right until I heard the sound again. The only real word I had for it was entranced.

Or drunk.

I was also incredibly drunk. But my eyes still worked, and I could see him where he sat right at the bar with someone who could have been incredibly famous or maybe he was just talking to a potted plant. I had no idea, and I didn’t care. I paid them–it?– no attention.

Him, though. I noticedeverythingabout him.

This rough-around-the-edges man with tattoos covering both his arms, all the way down to his wrists and peeking up above the neckline of his shirt. With hair that hit his shoulders and probably hadn’t met a brush in its lifetime but in the sexiest way.

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