Part of Your World(35)

“Is it? Because I feel like contouring my cheekbones on my day off is sort of my loss. Do you want to meet for dinner? So my outfit isn’t a total waste?”

“I can’t,” I said. “I’m doing that weekend thing with Gabby and Jessica.”

She groaned. “Crap. I forgot about that.”

“Why don’t you come down? If the place is booked, we can share my bed.”

She scoffed. “Uh, pass. There’s only so much of Gabby’s complaining and Jessica’s eye rolling I can take. It’s fine. I’ll just go see Benny or something.”

“How is he?” I asked. Her little brother was having some pretty serious health issues.

“It’s starting to affect his kidney function.”

My lips curved down. Benny was only twenty-six—younger than Daniel, and Daniel was a baby. Too young to be this sick.

Benny’s deteriorating health was hitting Bri pretty hard. It was like she felt she needed to fix it because she was the doctor in the family, which was totally unfair.

“This isn’t your fault, Bri.”

Benny had excellent care, and his condition was progressing anyway. Sometimes medicine was like that. There was only so much you could do.

“So what’s up with the guy?” she asked, changing the subject.

I shrugged. “Not much. I talked to him last night.”

“Oh yeah? Phone sex stuff?”

“No. Just talked. Nothing serious. I left him on read for like a week. I was so overwhelmed with the whole Neil squatting in my basement thing I kept forgetting to call him back.”

“Are you going down there again?”

“Eventually. Maybe next weekend?”

“Okay. Well, just remember not to name his penis. Once you name it, you get attached.”

I laughed. Gabby and Jessica were coming out of the gas station. “I gotta go,” I said, still cracking up.

“All right, call me later.”

The girls got in the SUV, and Gabby turned back onto the road. We drove for thirty minutes, Gabby and Jessica talking about the new hot pool guy everyone was hiring and some Butter Braid fund-raiser Gabby’s kids were in. I wasn’t really paying attention. I had one earphone in listening to audiobook samples Daniel had recommended.

“Ugh, gas station coffee is so gross,” Gabby said, dropping her cup into the drink holder. “I don’t even know why I bother.”

Jessica sighed loudly. “Maybe you can get something better when we get there. So where exactly are we going again?”

“Oh, my God, you guys are gonna love this place I found,” Gabby said, making a right near a cornfield. “It’s on the Root River. They have this epic bike trail. It used to be a railroad track and they paved it. We can rent bikes in town. Kayaks too.”

I pulled out my earbud and leaned over to look out the windshield. “The Root River? I thought we were going to Red Wing.”

“We were. I’d already booked a different place, but I canceled it for this one when it popped up. It’s this small town, it’s super cute. Grant County. It’s this bed-and-breakfast I’ve had my eye on. I got an email saying it was opening for the spring.”

“What town?” Jessica asked.

“Wakan.”

Wait. WHAT?

My heart started to pound.

“Wakan?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “Are you sure?”

“Uh, yeah.” Gabby laughed.

“Not Wabasha? Or Winona?”

“Is something wrong with Wakan?” Jessica asked, bored.

“No. I don’t know, never been there,” I said, my voice a touch too high.

Daniel’s bed-and-breakfast wasn’t open. He closed it in the off-season, so I didn’t have to worry about ending up there. But if I was in Wakan, chances were good I’d run into at least one person who recognized me from that first night, and I wasn’t ready to tell Gabby and Jessica about Daniel. I wasn’t ready for these worlds to collide. Not yet. Maybe never.

I knew unequivocally that if Gabby and Jessica met Daniel, it would get back to Neil. Jessica could keep it from Marcus. They didn’t talk. But Gabby would tell Philip, and Philip would absolutely tell Neil—especially if the story was the dramatic one I was sure Gabby would give him about my “boyfriend” being a tattooed twenty-eight-year-old who lived above a garage in a town with more corn than people.

Neil would make it a joke. They all would. And I didn’t want Daniel to be a joke. I didn’t want it to be anything. I just wanted to have fun and enjoy him and not think about my friends’ opinions on it or have Neil laugh and make it an example of how far I’d fallen since him. He couldn’t have this. None of them could. Daniel was mine and I wanted him to stay only mine, because what we had was good and it was making me happy and it wouldn’t survive the scrutiny.

And that was really it—it wouldn’t survive the scrutiny.

It wouldn’t hold up under their inspection. My friends wouldn’t approve. And this hadn’t really mattered too much to me, since I’d never imagined that they’d ever be in a position to.

We drove down a winding road that I now recognized as the final leg into downtown. “Where in Wakan?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“It’s called the Grant House,” Gabby said.