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

by Abby Jimenez

I had no idea how single parents did this. I had no time for anything, let alone myself. But for Emma, I would make time. It wasn’t even a question. I would fit her into the complicated web that was my life. Because when you’re in love, you do hard things.

Home wasn’t a place, it was a person.

To me, love meant you stayed. But now I understood that love sometimes means you let someone go.

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.