Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)(48)

He stopped in the walkway and turned back to look at me, those gentle brown eyes.

“Did you really sit at a restaurant for three hours just to talk to me?”

He did that thing where he went quiet.

I was starting to realize these pauses were a protective reflex. He always thought about what he was going to say before he said it. Like he was weighing it, deciding what he should reveal.

Jacob was a fortress. And I got the sense he didn’t let people in very often. But it was imperative that I get in. One, to make this all believable to his family. But two, because I wanted in. I really did want to get to know him.

He intrigued me.

What kind of person protects his ex and his little brother from the consequences of their own fucked-up selfish choices? Thinks of his family’s feelings before he thinks of his own.

Anonymously donates a kidney to a stranger.

Zander had said Jacob would give you the shirt off his back and that whole analogy seemed wildly inadequate now that I knew what Jacob was really like.

He had his own private code of ethics.

I didn’t have that kind of grace. My high road was currently under construction.

But it made me like him so much. And all the stories his family told did too. I wanted to go back in time and hold baby Jacob. Be his friend in high school and tell all his bullies to fuck off. I sort of wanted to tell Jewel to fuck off too…

He waited another beat before replying to my question. “Yes,” he said. “I sat at a restaurant for three hours.”

I shook my head at him. “But…why?”

He fiddled with his keys, looking down at the walkway. “I wanted to talk to you,” he said simply, the same answer he’d given earlier. He looked back up at me and we stood there, peering at each other.

Being harmless to each other.

It didn’t mean anything. I’d wanted to talk to him that day too, and I’d had no agenda. And he was in love with someone else. That was literally why we were here. But it made my stomach do a little twisty thing anyway.

Maybe it twisted because for whatever reason, Jacob liked me. And being liked by Jacob meant something because he was so shy. It’s like when someone’s pet comes to sit with you instead of their person, and you feel like the chosen one. It made me feel a little special, like he saw something in me. Though I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what that was.

“Okay,” I said. “Well, good. I wanted to talk to you too.”

The corner of his lip twitched and he looked down at his shoes. “Good night.”

“Yeah. Good night.”

I watched him get in his truck and drive off before I went inside.



“I thought you hated him,” Jessica said flatly.

We were sitting in the cafeteria at lunch the next day. She had a chicken salad and I was eating a Caesar wrap.

“I think it was just all the sexual tension?”

She narrowed her eyes at me.

“Yeah, you know how thin the line is between love and hate? That whole thing? Turns out it’s true. Who knew.”

“I thought you said you’d never date a coworker.”

“That was more of a guideline than a rule.”

She pursed her lips and skewered a cherry tomato with her fork and chewed it slowly, eyeing me.

We’d made the official announcement this morning. Told Gibson, who seemed one part surprised by it and one part relieved, because even if he hadn’t slipped about the kidney thing, this now meant Jacob would have told me himself, being my boyfriend and all.

The only person in on the scheme was Zander, who I guess Jacob had talked to about his situation. So I asked Jacob if I could tell my best friend, which he agreed to, since it was only fair.

That was an interesting phone call.

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

Jacob’s whole family had sent me Instagram requests. We’d have to start posting pictures of us on there, now that we’d gone public with our “relationship.”

When I got home from work, I started in on the house. Jacob was coming over tomorrow to see my place. Honestly, there wasn’t much I could do about the way it looked. It wasn’t dirty, it was just freakin’ old.

But I could make some improvements on my room. For one, I didn’t need to sleep under the ratty bedspread Mom got me for my fifteenth birthday. The glow-in-the-dark stars could come off the ceiling. I also didn’t need all the Smallville posters hanging everywhere. I’d been seriously obsessed with Tom Welling and in a really creepy way.

I started by taking all those down. The teal paint I’d insisted on when I was fourteen had faded around them from twenty years of sun. All the spots looked horrible, but I didn’t have time to paint. I wanted to buy a new bedspread, but I didn’t have time for that either.

I stood back and looked at my pathetic room and realized how it would look to him. It was embarrassing. It was sad.

I tossed the posters in the trash and gave up.

My cell phone pinged as I flopped onto my bed.

Jacob: What’s the dinner plan for tomorrow night?

Me: I don’t know. We can just order DoorDash or something.

…Jacob is typing…

Jacob: I need more information than that.

I called him. He answered immediately.

“What do you have in mind?” I said without saying hello.