There are plenty of perfectly logical reasons why a woman in her thirties would choose to be single. Samantha Pruit; however, didn’t think a woman needed an explanation. Still, she had one—a whopper of a reason—yet it was anything but logical.

Sam shifted on the Central Park bench and looked up from her journal, considering each passerby, eager to find her next story. Despite no romantic life of her own, she managed a successful blog, Central Park Paramore, where she crafted elaborate stories of love, inspired by her observations in the park.

Sam’s phone buzzed in her coat pocket. She pulled it out to see a notification from her analytics app. She didn’t need to look. The steady drop in site visitors had been the theme of the past few months. But the habit was hard to break.

A quick swipe, and there it was—another week of slipping numbers. She chewed her bottom lip, fighting the instinct to scroll deeper into the data. Her literary agent’s voice echoed in her mind: You’ve got to pivot, Sam. The readers want more than words now. Videos, podcasts, something fresh.

Her chest tightened as she remembered their last email, and her agent’s thinly veiled warning: The publisher needs to see growth if we’re going to lock in this deal.

She sighed and slid her phone back into her pocket. There was no escaping it—the blog needed a makeover, and fast.

The thought gnawed at her, a dark cloud looming overhead, smothering her creativity. A decade of work, of carefully crafted stories, suddenly at risk of becoming obsolete. She hated the idea of rebranding, of catering to short attention spans and viral trends, but the alternative was even worse: watching everything she’d built slip through her fingers.

She turned her attention back to the task at hand, finding a new type of love story. Something, someone, compelling enough to turn things around.

It was still early and the sun just barely illuminated the tops of the tallest trees, their leaves already turning a brilliant yellow hue. A sudden breeze sent a flurry of golden leaves cascading toward the ground and an idea blinked into her mind.

Fall-ing in Love. A small smile formed on her lips as she wrote the words. A good pun brought her a particular form of satisfaction.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

She turned the phrase over in her mind. Why was it called falling in love? What a curious description, she thought. She pulled her phone out again and looked up the definition of the word fall, then jotted the description down.

Fall (verb): the act of falling or collapsing; a sudden uncontrollable descent.

Fall from grace, fall short, fall apart. Those all made sense. But a sudden uncontrollable descent into love? Why would anyone find such an experience enjoyable? It didn’t matter how many times she wrote about the act, she couldn’t understand why anyone would welcome the insecurity of it all.

Perhaps this is what the blog needed–a new character, who would keep her readers guessing. Someone who gave them this dizzying feeling of falling. With a heavy sigh, she straightened her spine away from the bench and clicked her pen half a dozen times before settling back against the wooden slats.

A young couple approached from the left, holding hands and locked in conversation. Across the lawn, she spotted a woman kneeling to pet a puppy.

There’s a trope I haven’t written in a while, she thought. Guy buys an adorable dog to pick up women.

She glanced down at Mozz, whose tongue hung out the side of his toothless mouth. “It’s a good thing you’re so ugly, Mozz,” she said aloud. He cocked an ear at the sound of his name but continued to monitor something in the distance. Sam did whatever she could to avoid conversations with strangers, so an ugly dog was a must.

Mozz went suddenly stiff, and Sam followed his line of sight to a pair of squirrels chasing each other around the trunk of a tree. Sam predicted his next move and issued a warning command.

“Leave it,” she said, monitoring his body language out of the corner of her eye.

One of the squirrels scuttled out onto a branch and Mozz began to tremble with excitement. He could hardly contain himself. The loose hold her foot held on the leash wouldn’t be enough if he decided to bolt. Sam bent to loop the handle around her wrist, but she was half a second too late. Mozz darted across the path toward the tree.

“Mozz!” she shouted, as she lunged for the end of the leash instinctively.

"Whoa!" a man's voice boomed from the right.

She turned to look but it was too late to react. What felt like the force of a freight train barreled into her and sent them both hurtling to the ground. Sam's torso hit first, then her head slammed into the paved pathway, barely cushioned by her knit cap.

The last thing she saw, before her vision went blurry then black, was the face of a man she’d seen countless times around the park.

Charming, Fucking, Charlie.