Part of Your World(55)

This relationship would never expand. It would never take a deep breath and pull in those around us. It wouldn’t fill its lungs with my people and my life.

It would just be this. Only this.

And it wouldn’t last.

He broke away smiling. “I’m going to go get cleaned up. Then we’ll go get something to eat. Do you want to give Chloe her bottle while I’m in the shower?”

I nodded against his mouth, breathless.

When he was ready, he didn’t drive us to Jane’s like I thought he would. He drove us to the little family-owned grocery store.

I realized on the drive that I was actually okay with the idea of eating at Jane’s with Daniel, with everyone in the town there to see. Partly because it was my own fault that I didn’t let him make other plans. But the other part was that even though I knew technically Daniel was just a guy I was having sex with, it had evolved into something less scandalous over the last few weeks. I guess it felt more like we were dating than just hooking up.

With a jingle, he opened the door of the grocery store for me. He waved at Brian, who was checking someone out, and then he turned to me. “Okay. You didn’t give me any time to plan anything for your visit, so we’re going to get creative. We’re going to play a game.”

I arched an eyebrow. “A game?”

“Yup. A very serious game. The rules are binding.”

“Binding, huh?”

“Binding. Rule number one.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.”

“Daniel!”

He was laughing. “I’m kidding!” He ticked off on his fingers. “No substitutions, no backing out, and you have to try everything we get. Those are the rules. Do you agree to the terms?”

I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t know…I think I need more information.”

He crossed his arms. “I can’t tell you more about it unless you agree.”

I smiled. He looked so cute with his fake serious face. “Okay. I agree.”

He rubbed his hands together. “All right, this is how it works. We take turns wandering down each row with our arms out like this.” He made a T, with his fingers pointing to either side of the aisle. “The person watching says ‘stop’ and the one with their arms out has to grab whatever they’re pointing to. Whatever we end up with is what’s for dinner.”

I laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. And you can’t complain about it. It is what it is. We get three free-choice items at the end to try to pull the meal together. We can use stuff from home if we need to, as long as we’re using everything we got from the game.”

I smiled. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

“All right. First we start with the entertainment.”

He grabbed a cart and took me to the aisle at the back of the store where they had magazines and art supplies. There was a bin of DVDs for $2.99.

“Are you ready?” he asked, standing next to the bin. “I’ll go first.”

“Ready.”

He plunged his hand into the movies and started digging around. I let it go for about thirty seconds until I called it. “Stop!”

He pulled out the movie he had his hand on and looked at it. “Ever After. Drew Barrymore.”

“Yeeeess! It’s so good!”

He dropped it into the cart with a smile. “Your turn.”

We went to the snack aisle, and I put my arms out.

He waited for a second. “Go!”

I started walking.

“Stop!” he called when I was in the middle.

I looked at my options on either side. “Honey mustard pretzels,” I announced, wrinkling my nose as I grabbed the bag. “And peanut butter crackers. Not bad.”

We did the meat aisle and ended up with chicken thighs. In the produce section we got leeks and a bag of red potatoes. In the dairy aisle we got heavy whipping cream. For dessert we ended up with red, white, and blue bomb pops from the freezer case. Daniel grabbed chicken stock, celery, and a baguette as our three free items.

It was so fun—and simple. It’s exactly the kind of thing Daniel was good at.

He was so different from Neil. It was refreshing. Neil always went all out for our dates. But it was more for him, not me. Front-row tickets, exclusive restaurants—whatever looked best for his social media posts. After a while I got desensitized to it. It all lost its luster. Especially because he spent most of the dates looking at his phone or talking about himself.

God. How had I not seen it?

But then I knew how I didn’t see it. Because I’d been raised by a man who valued prestige more than he valued things like integrity and honesty. This was normal to me.

My brother was such a better person than the example he’d been shown. Derek broke out of the cage we’d come up in. I wondered if Lola had done it, if she’d been the one to show him a different way.

I mean, he’d taken that volunteer work in part because it would look nice on his résumé. But in the end, he’d stayed because he knew he could do good.

This was counterintuitive to everything we’d been taught. This work wouldn’t make Derek rich or advance his career. It wouldn’t help Royaume or impress our father. In fact, it would do the opposite.