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

by Abby Jimenez

The fading scent of roses would make me brace. Make me hyperaware of her comings and goings. Make me try harder to be less of a burden so maybe she wouldn’t feel the need to put me down again and go.

“I do love Trader Joe’s,” I said, smiling at the bag. “Nothing like a grocery store that makes you have to visit another grocery store right after.” Benny cracked up. Brad stopped rocking and narrowed his eyes at me. “Take that back.” “I absolutely will not.” He leaned forward. “With as much disrespect as I can manage, Justin, fuck you.”

I had the gift of extreme empathy paired with detachment.

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

Only love hurts this way. And the way that her pain hurt me was love too.

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.