༆ 001 - Before The Fall

༆ 𝐌𝐈𝐀

༺༺༒༻༻

"Mia!! Mia!! Where the fuck are you? Get your ass in here right now — it's starting, it's starting!!"

I nearly broke the frame in my haste to rush to the sitting room.

"Jesus Christ, Nat." I steadied the glass against my chest, orange juice sloshing dangerously close to the rim. "I was gone for forty seconds. I went to the kitchen."

"Forty seconds too long!" She was already patting the cushion beside her, eyes glued to the screen, practically bouncing. "Come, come, come — they're doing the introduction segment."

I sat, tucked my feet under me and pretended my heart wasn't already trying to pound its way out of my chest.

Nat turned to me with that grin. "Do you think he's going to call your name? Like actually say it, on camera, in front of everybody?" She pressed her hands together. "Oh God, how romantic would that be, right? After everything — imagine."

"Today is not about me." I kept my eyes on the screen. "Today is Frank's day. His win, his moment. Whether he mentions me or not doesn't change how proud I am of him, Nat. That's the truth."

I could practically feel her eye roll even though I wasn't looking at her direction.

Frank's face appeared on the screen and everything else went a little quiet.

He was grinning — that full, easy grin that cameras had always loved, that I had watched him practice in our bathroom mirror more times than I could count.

He waved at someone off-camera, laughed at something a reporter said, shoulders loose, completely at home under those lights.

He looked happy.

He looked like everything we had worked for.

My chest swelled in pride.

Five years of sleepless nights and spreadsheets and favors called in and shifts that ended at two in the morning to support him and carry him as he worked on his career.

Five years of juggling multiple shifts.

And seeing him right now, finally getting what had always been meant for him — it made every single bit of it worth it.

When he finally stepped up to the podium, Nat went rigid beside me.

He started speaking, his speech rolling off his tongue smoothly.

Acknowledging the team, the team, the coaches, management, his agent.

He thanked his mother and half the room laughed warmly.

He was good at this, had always been good at working a room, and I watched him do it with the particular pride of someone who had sat across from him at a kitchen table at midnight, coaching him through what to say and how to say it.

Then his expression shifted.

Just slightly.

"But I would be standing here under false pretenses," he said, his voice dropping,"if I didn't take this moment to acknowledge the one person — the only person — without whom none of this would exist. Not the award, not the career, not the man I've become." He paused, let the room sit with it. "This speech means nothing if I don't say her name tonight."

Nat's hand flew to my knee.

"Oh my God." She spun toward me, grabbing my arm with both hands. "Mia. Mia. He's doing it — he is literally about to do it, I cannot believe—"

"Nat, shh—"

"Five years! Five years you have worked herself to the bone for this man — multiple jobs, gave up your education, called in God-knows-what favors — and it is only right, it is only the basic, decent, gentlemanly thing, that he stands up there in front of the whole world and give you the acknowledgment you are owed. You deserve this, Mia. You deserve—"

"Can we just listen?" I pointed at the screen. "Please. I would like to actually hear it when it happens."

She clamped her mouth shut and turned back.

Frank continued, "This woman supported me through every dark season without complaint. When I had nothing — no contracts, no prospects, no real reason to believe any of this was going to work — she stayed. She held my hand through it. She helped me build everything, everything that brought me to this moment tonight, brick by brick, at great cost to herself." He smiled, and it looked genuine, and my chest was so full I didn't know what to do with it. "So I am proud — so proud — to finally, officially, introduce her to the world." He paused, that smile stretching wider, working the room with perfect timing. "And God willing, to introduce her as my fiancée before the night is over."

Nat squealed beside me.

My heart stopped.

Five years. Five years of not yet, not now, just a little longer, baby, the timing isn't right — and here it was.

Here we were.

Publicly, finally, in front of everyone.

All of it had been worth it.

I had never really doubted it but feeling it confirmed — watching it arrive — was something else entirely.

The camera moved left.

And focused on a woman in an emerald green dress rose from a front-row seat.

Blonde.

She was gorgeous…simply breathtaking. Her fingers were pressed over her mouth, eyes already shining.

"My girlfriend Sandra Sinclair." Frank's voice filled the space again, "Thank you for being so amazing and proving that indeed all a man needs is a strong woman beside him to conquer the world. I love you baby…and tonight, I really hope you can give me the honor of making what's between us a forever journey."

Frank walked down from the podium toward her.

He got on his knees.

In front of the cameras, in front of the audience, in front of the whole watching world — he opened a box and he knelt, and she was already nodding before he'd finished asking, and the room erupted.

"Sandra Sinclair," the host said warmly into the microphone, like the name was a gift. "What a night."

I couldn't move.

I was aware of Nat beside me — aware of some sound she was making, or maybe it was my name, it was hard to tell — but everything had gone slightly distant, slightly blurred around the edges.

All I could look at was the screen.

Frank….my boyfriend, kissing this woman whom I'd never seen in my life. Her hands on his face. The audience on their feet. The camera catching the ring as he slid it onto her finger, and the smile on his face that I had never — in five years — seen him aim at me like that.

The channel changed at some point but I didn't register when.

I didn't realize I was crying until I felt Nat's hand on my face, slowly wiping the wet from my cheek with her thumb.

She said my name softly but I was still staring at the blank screen.

This can't be.

This cannot be.

My phone buzzed on the cushion.

I looked down and saw his name flashed on the screen..

"Don't." Nat's voice had completely changed — all the excitement gone. "Mia, I am telling you right now, do not pick up that phone. Nothing he says in the next five minutes is going to be anything you need to hear."

I picked it up anyway.

I needed him to tell me this was a stunt. A PR move. Something that had a logical, survivable explanation that didn't require my entire life to be a lie.

"Mia." His voice came through easy and unhurried. "Hey. Listen — I know you must have watched the live and I'm sorry you had to find out this way, I genuinely am. That wasn't how I wanted it to go, and I want you to know that."

I said nothing. My jaw was locked.

He took my silence as permission to continue. "But I think if you're being honest with yourself, you knew things had been shifting between us for a while. We've been growing in different directions, and I think we both felt that, even if we didn't say it out loud. I've changed, Mia. The life I'm living now — the level I'm operating at — it requires another level of partner. Someone who can stand beside me in these spaces and be an asset, not just a waitress." He paused. "I need someone who matches where I am now. And I think, deep down, you understand that."

Not just a waitress.

Six nights a week for three years. Twelve-hour shifts so I could hand him money for studio time, for training, for the suit he wore to his first industry meeting.

I had waited tables and smiled at strangers and gone home with my feet screaming so that he could become the man standing on that stage tonight.

"I want to do right by you though, genuinely." His tone warmed slightly. "I'm going to transfer double — double — of everything you put in over the years, every cent, so you won't be out of pocket. That's more than fair, I think. That's me making sure you're taken care of." Another pause. "I hope you don't take this personally, Mia. You're a good person. I mean that. I just — I have to do what's right for where my life is going. You understand that, don't you?"

He waited.

Like he actually expected me to say yes. Like he had arranged my destruction so neatly, so reasonably, that the only logical response was understanding.

The line clicked dead.

Nat was watching me. I could feel it — the taut quality of her attention, waiting to see which direction I'd break.

I set the phone down on the cushion. Stood up.

"Mia—"

"I need to get out of the house."

"It's late — you haven't eaten anything since this morning, just sit down, okay? I'll make tea, I'll make food, just—"

"Nat." My voice came out quieter than I intended, which was somehow worse. "I'll be back."

I had my jacket before I reached the door. Pulled it open. Stepped out into the city — cold, loud, completely indifferent — and started walking with no particular destination and nothing left in my chest except something heavy and hot pain that I needed to very badly drown before it drowns me.