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

by Abby Jimenez

“So you don’t know how to peel potatoes, but you can deliver a baby?” “What, like it’s hard?”

I was so proud for everyone in town to see me with her yesterday. I was proud of what she did with Lily—I was proud to even know her. I don’t think she realizes how exceptional she is. I got the sense nobody tells her, which is weird.

I was glad I was going to have the shirt she was wearing after she went home. Something that had her perfume on it, smelled like her. When she left, the only proof I ever had that she’d been here, or that she even existed at all, was the ache I was starting to feel when she was gone.

I saved the photo to an album called Daniel, and I had the most peculiar urge to make the picture my screensaver.

She gawked at me. “You are standing here, lying to your best friend—I have known you for ten years. It is all over your damn face.” She waved a hand in front of my nose. “You’re packing a trauma kit for the car because that’s how much time you plan to spend there, and you’re trying to tell me this is just a sex thing?”

“Well, maybe you should stop it then.” I blinked at her. “What?” “Stop seeing him.” I paused for a moment. “Why?” “Because I know you, Ali. And no matter what you’re telling yourself, I see what’s happening. You’re just setting yourself up to be hurt. You’re setting him up to be hurt.”

“Right. You don’t know. See, this is what I mean. You keep seeing him and you’re gonna end up more messed up than after Neil. This was supposed to be a fling. No feelings. You hooked up with this guy because he was someone you couldn’t catch feelings for. And now you are, and you need to call it off before you can’t anymore.”

For the first time in my life, I was in a situation where I knew I was making a terrible mistake. I was careening toward certain death at terminal velocity. But I couldn’t not do it. I knew continuing this thing with Daniel was pointless. There was no happy ending here. But I missed him. He missed me. And I wanted him to know it. At least tonight. “I miss you too.”

“Let me guess. You’re taking a top-down shot, using the flash, standing in your shitty garage bathroom, you can see your feet in the picture and you’re wearing socks.” I looked down. Shit. I heard his engine turn over. “That’s what I thought. Don’t do anything until I get there.” “Doug—” “DON’T DO ANYTHING UNTIL I GET THERE.” He hung up on me. Fifteen minutes later Doug walked in. He had a ring light. “No.” I shook my head. “I’m not using that shit.”

Daniel was wonderful. He just wasn’t wonderful for me.

“What does happy even look like, Bri? I fall in line and do what’s expected of me, give up Daniel, but I get to keep my family? Or I give it all up, become the shame of the Montgomery legacy, lose my dad, devastate my mom, but I get the boy I like? Which one is happy?”

“You know what’s so dangerous about drowning?” I said, looking up at him. “It’s silent. So unless someone’s paying close attention to you, no one saves you.”

reached up and hugged him, and he folded around me like he always did. Only there was something almost rooted about his arms this time, like he was trying to keep me from drifting off. Or sinking.

It’s amazing how someone can touch you, even if you only know them for a moment in time. How they can change you, alter you indelibly.

Daniel had altered me. I was already better for knowing him. Which made leaving him all the more bitter.

I felt so…loved. By all of them. I’d had dinner with my own parents last night and I didn’t feel this loved.

The world stopped turning. We were suspended in frozen animation. A moment so perfect it couldn’t be real. And I realized then that it was too late. I was in too deep. The time to walk away had ended. I think it was over the moment it began.

I’d have to tell him that this was a dead end and let him decide if he wanted to stay the course. I decided this all in a split second of Daniel’s lips on my mouth, everything changed.

“I saw this documentary on a tsunami once,” I said. “When it’s coming, it pulls the water away from the beach. Pulls it lower than sea level so the ocean floor is exposed. You can see all the sand and shells and coral, so people go in to look at it. And then the tidal wave comes, and it’s too late to run. It already has you.”

“Daniel, when we started this, it was just a sex thing for me.” I waited. It looked like she was struggling. “That’s not what this is for me anymore.”

“Why don’t you let me decide what’s fair for me?” I said.

Daniel gave me everything he knew. He kept nothing for himself,

I wish I’d never met him. Letting Daniel go was going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I felt like I was swimming out to sea with him, getting farther and farther from shore, and I’d saved no energy for the swim back.

It was amazing how lovable and agreeable he could be when you were doing what he wanted.

The first domino to fall. Everything was about to change.

It occurred to me that we were talking about things that the two of us would do with someone else one day.

I had the weirdest urge to climb onto his tube and let him hold me. But it would be too heavy. The tube would sink. We’d end up underwater.

I’d decided. I’d give up my life here to be where she was if she’d have me. I’d give up my house and this town and all the people in it. If she was at the hospital eighty hours a week, I could be there when she left and be there when she came home. Make her breakfast, take her lunch, take her dinner. I could pick up the slack. She wouldn’t have to do anything, it could be all me this time—I’d go to her. It didn’t have to end.

I couldn’t talk to her about the stuff her ex probably did, I couldn’t make the money she made or buy her expensive gifts or take her on vacations. But I could love her better than anyone ever could for the rest of her life. That, I knew. And if there was even a fraction of a chance that might be enough, I was going to take it.

When she called, my mood lifted. When I saw her coming down the driveway, my heart would pound. When she was here, I slept better. When she was gone, I was sad. She felt like the sun. Like she was the reason for everything. Like I’d always been waiting for her to get closer and bring me to life.

Nothing could convince me this woman wasn’t made for me to love. I think my soul recognized hers the second I laid eyes on her. Our bodies knew it the very first night.

The power she had over me terrified me. But it also gave me clarity.

“I love you,” I whispered. And then everything changed.

“Look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t love me. I want to hear you say that you don’t love me back. You say it and I’ll let you leave.” My chin quivered. “I can’t say it. Because I do love you. And that is the fucking problem.” Tears spilled down my cheeks.

mine. “If you want something badly enough, Alexis, nothing else matters.”

“I love you,” he whispered. “We are together. This isn’t over. And even if you leave, it won’t be over because you’ll take the love with you and it’ll bring you back.”

And he was right. I couldn’t escape this. Love follows you. It goes where you go. It doesn’t know about social divides or distance or common sense. It doesn’t even stop when the person you love dies. It does what it wants. Even if what you want is to not be in love.

All of this just solidified what I already knew. I really didn’t exist for her outside of Wakan. She had a whole different life, one I had nothing to do with, and she had no intention of including me in.

Bri looked me in the eye. “Look, I know all about you. She tells me. I’ve seen everything but the dick pics. And I’m the only one who matters. Trust me.”

Who she was with me was who she was on vacation. Who she was in Wakan wasn’t real life. This was her real life. And I knew before she even said anything that she wasn’t going to ask me to be a part of it.

But I didn’t need it to make sense, because for me the love was everything, it was all I needed. But it wasn’t enough for her.

People don’t stay in Wakan. They come and they have a magical time, and then they go back to their real lives. I’d fallen in love with a tourist. Because that’s what she was. And the vacation was over.

If this was the best thing for both of us, why was it so, so hard?

She did love me. I knew that. I believed that. But what does love matter when it can’t outweigh the rest of it?

“It’s just that I didn’t care if they sold or not. When you don’t care, everything’s on your terms. They can take it or leave it. It doesn’t matter to you, so ask for whatever the hell you want.”

I felt a lump form in my throat. Nobody was taking care of her. That hurt almost as much as the thought of some other guy doing

There’s something more final than forever. It’s never. Never is infinite. I would never see her again. I would never touch her again. I would never make her lunch or listen to her breathing while she slept. We’d never get married or have children or die on the same day.

She started sobbing softly in the background, and I had to put my phone on mute so she wouldn’t hear me cry.

I bawled into my pillow like a baby. And when I was done, I blocked her number so she could never do this to me again.

I’d put all this on and go through the motions at this party. I’d smile and meet people. But I’d be empty inside the whole time, and nobody would be the wiser. Nobody would know that I’d lost an entire town, the man I loved, and most of myself.