It's Not Summer Without You (Summer, #2)

by Jenny Han

I couldn’t let myself believe it. When a person you love dies, it doesn’t feel real. It’s like it’s happening to someone else. It’s someone else’s life. I’ve never been good with the abstract. What does it mean when someone is really and truly gone? Sometimes I closed my eyes and in my head, I said over and over again, It isn’t true, it isn’t true, this isn’t real. This wasn’t my life. But it was my life; it was my life now. After.

This, this was heartbreak. The pain in your chest, the ache behind your eyes. The knowing that things will never be the same again. It’s all relative, I suppose. You think you know love, you think you know real pain, but you don’t. You don’t know anything.

my mother was at her best when she was busy, doing things. She did not fall apart, not when she was needed. No, my mother rose to the occasion. I wished that was a gene I’d inherited. Because I was at a loss. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I would never be somebody’s favorite again. I would never be a kid again, not in the same way. That was all over now. She was really gone.

Nostalgia, a shared history, counted for a lot. More than I’d realized. I’d miss her

everything in life, there’s the game-changing moment. The one moment everything else hinges upon, but you hardly ever know it at the time. The three-pointer early on in the second quarter that changes up the whole tempo of the game. Wakes people up, brings them back to life. It all goes back to that one moment.

I wasn’t like my mother, as strong and durable as steel.

I just needed to be on the beach. The beach would make me feel better. Nothing, nothing felt better than the way sand felt beneath my feet. It was both solid and shifting, constant and ever-changing.

I wanted to memorize it all in case I didn’t get to come back again. You never know the last time you’ll see a place. A person.

Like always, it was Conrad who dictated the mood of the house, how everyone else felt. Nothing would feel right again until things were right with Conrad.

I live in reality, unlike you. You’d rather live in a fantasy world than see people for who they really are.” He said it in a way that made me wonder who he was really talking about.

How could two people who had once been passionately in love not even fight? Didn’t they care enough to fight it out, to fight not just with each other, but also for their marriage? Were they ever really in love?

I didn’t want my love to fade away one day like an old scar. I wanted it to burn forever.

It was starting to hurt my feelings, the way he was acting like they were imposing on me, as if we weren’t family.

He was so un-self-conscious and easy with who he was. He made me want to be like that too.

It wasn’t the thought that counted. It was the actual execution that mattered, the showing up for somebody. The intent behind it wasn’t enough. Not for me. Not anymore. It wasn’t enough to know that deep down, he loved me. You had to actually say it to somebody, show them that you cared. And he just didn’t. Not enough.

We stood there, looking at each other, saying nothing. But it was the kind of nothing that meant everything.

I will never look at you in the same way ever again. I’ll never be that girl again. The girl who comes running back every time you push her away, the girl who loves you anyway.

I release you. I evict you from my heart. Because if I don’t do it now, I never will.