Just for the Summer (Part of Your World, #3)

by Abby Jimenez

The moment Emma came into view, my entire world slipped into slow motion. My brain took a screenshot. I felt the moment freeze and save. She was beautiful.

“Why not forgive? In a world where you can choose anger or empathy, always choose empathy, Justin.

Sometimes the best way to show love or be kind to someone is to meet them where they are.”

think sometimes the key to happiness is framing those things in a different way.”

“Unhealed trauma is a crack. And all the little hard things that trickle into it that would have rolled off someone else, settle. Then when life gets cold, that crack gets bigger, longer, deeper. It makes new breaks. You don’t know how broken she was or what she was trying to do to fill those cracks. Being broken is not an excuse for bad behavior, you still have to make good choices and do the right thing. But it can be the reason. And sometimes understanding the reason can be what helps you heal.”

wow! this book is sooo good!

“I think the thing that always got me through the stuff with my mom was knowing that she didn’t want to be the way she was. Nobody wants to be the villain, Justin.

You can still love someone that you’ve decided not to speak to anymore. You can still wish them well and hope for the best for them. Choosing a life without them doesn’t mean you stop caring about them. It just means that you can’t allow them to harm you anymore. But if you don’t think your life would be better without them in it, then accept that they have cracks. Try to understand how they got them and help fill them with something that isn’t ice.”

“If you can choose anger or empathy, always choose empathy, Justin. It’s so much healthier than anger. For both of you.”

Not everything that comes out of crisis is bad. Sometimes your traumas are the reason you know how to help.

“You cannot keep caring about her more than you care about yourself.”

“You’re not asking too much,” he said. “You were just asking the wrong person. Ask me instead.”

But now I understood that love sometimes means you let someone go. I appreciated the strength it required for her to come tell me she had to in person, even though it was hard.

The best kind of love doesn’t happen on moonlit walks and romantic vacations. It happens in between the folds of everyday life. It’s not grand gestures that show how you feel, it’s all the little secret things you do to make her life better that you never tell her about. Taking the end piece of the bread at breakfast so she can have the last middle piece for her sandwich when you pack her lunch. Making sure her car always has gas so she never has to stop at the pump. Telling her you’re not cold and to take your jacket when you are in fact, very, very cold. It’s watching TV on a rainy Sunday while you’re doing laundry and turning her light off when she’s fallen asleep reading. Sharing pizza crusts and laughing about something the kids did and taking care of each other when you’re sick. It isn’t glamorous, it isn’t all butterflies and stars in your eyes. It’s real. This is the kind of love that forever is made of. Because if it’s this good when life is draining and mundane and hard, think of how wonderful it will be when the love songs are playing and the moon is out.