Part of Your World (Part of Your World, #1)

by Abby Jimenez

I was starving, I had to use the bathroom, and I was in shapewear. Basically the grand finale to the worst week ever.

An hour wait. And I’m in Spanx.” She sucked air through her teeth. “Satan’s underwear?

“Yeah, well, we’re all strong-ass women until a smoke alarm starts chirping at three a.m. on a high ceiling and there’s no one to hit it with a broom but you.”

A dragonfly landed on my hood.

It was the woman I’d pulled from the ditch half an hour ago. Fifteen minutes later, she’d walked into the VFW.

The place was—worn. The tables were mismatched with cheap chairs. There were broken vintage-looking beer signs on the walls, along with framed medals and black-and-white pictures of veterans.

“Bennie and the Jets” blared from an old jukebox against the wall. A huge deer head was mounted over the bar with rainbow Christmas lights strung through its antlers. It was all very tired and junky.

I glanced up. It was Truck Guy.

walk out into a dark parking lot with him?” She smiled. “Daniel is the only guy I’d leave this bar with.” “I don’t know how I feel about that,” he said. “You’re my cousin.” She laughed.

“Aunt Lil was ninety-eight, and she had a very good life. Many lovers, as she liked to say.”

“I live in Minneapolis. I’m just driving through. Hey, is it always this foggy out here?”

“There’s fog outside?” Liz asked, looking surprised. Daniel shook his head. “Never. It...

“So you’re not with your baby’s mother?” He looked amused. “Definitely not. I’m fostering.”

A laugh burst from my lips. “Your kid is a baby goat? In pajamas?”

“Doug is trying to seduce me with a poorly sung version of ‘More Than Words’ when he has an entire baby goat? If you have a baby goat, you always lead with ‘I have a baby goat.’” He chuckled. “Technically I have the baby goat.”

I woke up the next morning at six a.m., naked and happy after having the best date of my entire life. And then I realized she was gone.

“That’s a little tenth-grade retro, don’t you think, sis? And I’m slightly pissed at you for not telling me you got back with Neil.” I groaned, touching the splotch with my finger. “I didn’t.” Derek eyed me. “Then who gave you that…” He seemed to notice my hoodie at the same time. “And since when do you wear camo?”

“Because there are two types of people in the world, difficult ones and easy ones, and they marry each other.”

“You left your shoe,” she deadpanned. “Like Cinderella.”

“Well, right now Derek is loving something else far more important.” I sighed. “I love what we do, I just hate the pageantry of it. It’s like this unrivaled, bottomless tool for good and I’m the last one that can wield it, and I just wish it wasn’t me.” “With great power comes great responsibility.” I smirked, but she wasn’t wrong.

Hey, remember when Forbes called you guys the last great American dynasty and then Taylor Swift used that as the title of a song?”

Eight thousand nerves in the clitoris and still not as sensitive as a white man not getting his way.”

“Well, you should know that one of those things ruined my whole week. The other thing was just a hoodie.”

“Okay, first of all, that pig has a name. It’s Kevin Bacon. It’s rude not to use it.”

“Well, there’s Scape Goat—that’s Chloe’s mom. Chloe’s full name is Chloe Nose Bleat.” I ticked off on my fingers. “The chickens are Mother Clucker and Chick-a-Las Cage, there’s Barack O-Llama, the miniature horse is Al Capony—”

And the second I saw her, I knew I hadn’t imagined a thing.

Part of this was my hospitality background and my upbringing. It was in my blood. I was raised to cater to the needs of tourists. My life and the lives of everyone in this town were dependent upon people enjoying themselves

“What are those?” she asked, nodding at them. “Dragonflies,”

“My grandma used to say that dragonflies mean change is coming.” She went quiet for a moment. “Must be a lot of change.”

“And you’re the mayor, and you run a bed-and-breakfast?”

She snuggled into the crook of my elbow, and it was so familiar and comfortable I had to remind myself this was only the second time we’d been together.

The sexual tension between the two of us was like a sunflower turned to the sky.

“What were you doing when you fell?” she asked Pops. “Just gettin’ out of bed.” “Do you have any conditions you can tell me about? High blood pressure? A history of strokes? Heart attacks?”

“It’s just…I don’t know. I like that you guys take care of each other.”

“It’s alive, you know.” “What’s alive?” “This place. It breathes like you and me. It’s got magic in it.”

Alexis: Sorry, just realized I never replied. I grinned. Then I called her. She answered on the second ring. “Uh, hello?” “Hi.” “Did you just call me? On purpose? Without texting to tell me first like a normal person?” “Yeeessss.” I smiled. “Isn’t that what you do with phones?” “That’s not what I do with mine.”

“You make it sound like I sent you an unsolicited dick pic.” “The dick pic would have been less shocking.”

“I’ve never done an audiobook,” she admitted. “Oh, you should. It’s like a movie for your ears. You could listen on your drive down to see me.

I wasn’t ready for these worlds to collide.

“It’s called the Grant House,”

Me: I’ll be there in two minutes. Please act like you don’t know me. I’m sorry.

Wtf

“Thanks. We like the same books,” I said, looking at the rest of the stack.

“Grace costs you nothing,” I said. And I went back inside.

A big sign hung over the bar: THANK YOU, DR. ALEXIS.

“Have you ever seen anything so perfectly beautiful?” I breathed. I turned to Daniel. But he wasn’t watching the petals anymore. He was looking at me. “Yes…” he said quietly, holding my eyes. “You.”

“How do you know how to do that?” The question made me think of all the times I’d asked him the same thing, and he’d given me some snide comment about not having the time or the crayons to explain it to me. I took off my headlamp. “The things I’m capable of would shock you, Neil.”

“It’s so beautiful here,” I said, tipping my head back to look at the branches arching over the river.

“You should see it in the autumn. All the beauty falling down around you.”

“Grandpa had a heart attack, and Grandma went later that day.” “The same day?” “Yeah. It didn’t really surprise anyone. I always knew it would happen that way. They were inseparable.” He looked at me. “Neither one could live without the other.”

I had to smile a little. A few months ago, this woman hadn’t known how to sweep. She didn’t scrub toilets or clean the kitchen. Now she was washing skunk off my dog? It made