Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)

by Abby Jimenez

This year was going to be my villain origin story, I just knew it.

The only problem with anger is that it burns hot and fast. It doesn’t tend to burn long. Sadness burns long. Grief. Disappointment.

My God, she was beautiful. She was so beautiful it disarmed me. For a second I forgot what I was even doing there.

she had me flustered just by looking at me—the way she was looking at me, annoyed and impatient. I felt my social skills drop off like a heart-attack victim flatlining.

backstabbing traitor, Kelly,

There was something so kind and disarming in his light brown eyes that I almost forgot how much I disliked him. Almost.

I distrusted good-looking men on principle. Nick was good-looking, and look where that got me.

I like the sob closet. Close enough for a spontaneous midday breakdown.” “My favorite kind,” he said tiredly.

I was a soft breeze away from losing it again—and I got my period. I get to bleed for a week without the sweet release of death.

I always found Jessica a little too bitter, but now that I was bitter too, I appreciated her burn-the-patriarchy energy.

I’m canceling my bikini-wax appointments. Just gonna let the forest reclaim the land, succumb to my inner swamp witch.”

I will however accept your invitation to be invited and never come. That sounds like an excellent time. I also enjoy not answering calls, not networking, never leaving the house, and hanging out with my dog.

I must return to my isolation now. I need twenty to twenty-two hours of alone time a day to function.

My brother found him behind a dumpster by a gas station, which I’m told is where the best cats come from.

I was happy I seemed to have fallen into a category that she approved of, a man in possession of complete bedroom furniture.

She probably had this fun little back-and-forth with everyone in one way or another. But for me it was a lifeline. An outstretched hand while I was falling, an umbrella in a downpour. Friendship in a hostile place.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to live like that? To not carry that burden around with you. To not feel constantly overwhelmed and overstimulated and second-guess every little thing.

There were times when my protective shield cracked down the middle. When the anger parted and the sad seeped through. I hated when it did. At least when I stayed mad, the emotion was directed outward and not in.

I would jump in front of a bus for this man. Take a bullet. Fight a mob. I would defend him to the death, kill someone for so much as looking at him wrong.

I decided right then and there that my job was going to be to quiet it all down. I would be a buffer. An emotional support person. I would throw myself over him like a bulletproof vest. Wrap him up in my protection.

Alexis said it sounded like a romcom and to let her know when I got to the Only One Bed scene.

Imagine being the woman he picked to join him here. Having a gentle man like this one choose you to be a part of his private, insular world. To be as special as each thing he carefully surrounded himself with. How lucky that woman would be.

Sometimes it felt like Jacob and I were two magnets being flipped over and over and pressed together. Pulling us in, pushing us out, pulling us in.

Jacob made me feel safe. He was like a living lullaby. A softly spoken word. The smell of coffee and toast in the morning or a cozy fleece blanket. The rain pattering on the roof on a day where you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything.

Of course. We’re sharing a tiny bed, and there’s going to be a romantic fire. Perfect.

My traitorous vagina was putting on war paint and blowing a Viking horn like it was about to go ransack Jacob’s village.

I think, subconsciously, that was what I was hoping for. I wanted him to disappoint me. I wanted to get past the façade that everyone shows the rest of the world and see who he really was unscripted. But the plan had backfired. Because I was in love with Jacob unscripted.

Briana was a catastrophic life event. A thing that changed everything. And I wouldn’t be the same after this. All the women I’d ever met and all the women I ever would fell away beneath her.

She had me. And I suspected she always would. No matter how this ended. Nothing could have prepared me for her.

She snuggled into me and it was everything. My entire universe condensed to a single place and time.

It seemed a waste to love her as much as I did without her ever knowing it. To be unaware that her very existence was my reason for smiling, for being happy to wake up in the morning.

I loved him so much. I wanted to die, I loved him so much. I wanted to crawl inside of him and live there. I wanted to spend the rest of my life just being with him. Adoring him. Protecting him. Living in all his quiets. Letting him touch me any way he wanted to, as often as he wanted to.

“Use me,” he said, his eyes resigned. “Use me for whatever you want. Just stay.”

“It’s always been real.”

Yours truly, Jacob

that’s what love does. It shows up.