Page 63 of Part of Your World

It was amazing how good I felt. Like I’d had a full body and mind reset. And I didn’t think it was only because of the sex either. I was happy to be here.

Come to think of it, I’d felt like this last night after we’d hung up too. I’d slept better than I had in months.

Daniel was a vacation for me, I realized—like a break from my own brain or the reality of my current crappy situation. And we had that easy flowing conversation that you so rarely find with someone. I had it with Derek and Bri, but I’d never had it with Neil. With Neil, I always felt like I needed to say something important or smart for it to be worth bringing up. We spent a lot of quiet meals together.

At the time, I thought this meant we were good with comfortable silence. But now I realized it meant something else. Some strange, stiff, unnatural dynamic that I’d dealt with for so long, I didn’t know it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t a comfortable silence, it was just…silence.

I started wandering the garage looking around while Daniel rummaged in a fridge. Hunter walked with me, pushing his head under my hand until I resorted to walking with a palm between his ears.

I saw the headboard Daniel had been working on last night. It was propped to dry. He had chairs hanging from the walls in various stages of completion. A dresser set and a pair of nightstands sat by the garage door.

He had a stack of books on a stool by his workbench. I picked up the top one. The Circus Fire.

Daniel looked over at me. “That’s a good one. Have you read it?”

I shook my head at the cover. “No.”

“It’s about the deadly Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus fire of 1944. You’d probably really like it—severe burns, emergency situation, mass casualties. Your kind of thing.”

I laughed.

“You can borrow it if you want.”

“Thanks. We like the same books,” I said, looking at the rest of the stack.

I knew he liked history, but most of these weren’t big titles. Self-published books about Alaskan homesteaders and stories of Native Americans. A memoir about a man who ran a dogsled team in the 1940s.

I liked lesser-known books too. I’d even read a few of these. It was a little surprising. I didn’t really know anyone who read the exact same kind of books I liked.

“What’s the last book you read?” he asked, pulling out a frying pan.

“Well, I actually just finished this one,” I said, showing him one from his stack. “But right now I’m reading The Great Influenza by John M. Barry.”

“Oh yeah, I read that,” he said, setting some carrots, garlic, and an onion on the counter. “About the Spanish flu of 1918. You know my great-great-grandfather Wilbur Grant saved the whole town from that.”

“Really?” I said. “How?”

“Cut down trees to block the roads into Wakan. Kept everyone in, everyone out. Didn’t lose one person. They were pretty pissed at him though at the time.”