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

by Abby Jimenez

“I don’t see any red flags here, other than he’s got a J name. J-named men are the worst.

“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.”

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

“Maybe home isn’t a place. Maybe it’s a person.”

“I’m thinking that my mom takes a lot out of me. And that maybe she doesn’t leave anything for anyone else.”

“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.”

“You don’t have to forgive her. You really don’t. 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.”

J-named men are the worst.”

She asked for pictures—” “To show people. Because it doesn’t fit the narrative that she’s a loving and doting mother if she doesn’t even have pictures of you to show people while she’s taking credit for your accomplishments.”

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

It was easier to pretend to be angry and tough than to admit to being devastated and heartbroken.

You can’t negotiate feelings. You can’t convince someone they feel something they don’t.

“You can’t help someone unless they want to be helped,”

“You are not what happened to you. You are what you do next.”

“Sometimes you leave because it’s better to deal with your problems on your own.”

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.

Home is something that’s always there, I realized. No matter where you are in the world, you know it’s where you left it, unchanged and waiting.