More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Abby Jimenez
Read between
July 2 - September 16, 2025
“Just a reminder, you can’t marry a man you just met.” “You can if it’s true love,” he replied seriously.
“I do like pizza though,” she said. “Do you eat the crust?” I asked, petting a passing kitten. “I love the crust on pizza,” she said. “I hate the crust.”
The olive theory
“Why not forgive? In a world where you can choose anger or empathy, always choose empathy, Justin.
I gave him a little smile. “You know, I was almost too small to come here tonight.” “I’m glad you did.” The corner of my lip turned up. “I’m glad I did too.”
“Be glad you don’t get it. It means your life has been a lot gentler than hers.”
“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 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.
“I swear to God this guy is the epitome of If He Wanted To He Would.”
“What if I mess them up?” I asked quietly. She smiled at me gently. “What if you save them?”
Justin deserved good things. He deserved for the hard things of his life to be made a little easier, the way he made everyone else’s life easier.
Sometimes I felt like I was roaming this earth as a ghost, seeing everything and feeling nothing. These tiny things, a fluttering heart, butterflies in my stomach—the urge to dock.
“How the hell do I do this?” I whispered. Brad answered. “You go through it. You can’t go around it, you have to go through it. And we’re here to help you do it.”
“Oh my God, that guy’s fucking in love with you,”
Maybe Justin was the right guy, at the wrong time.
In a few weeks I was going to leave. It was what we’d agreed upon. Four dates, one kiss, and a breakup. Just for the summer.
“Hey,” I said, blinking at him. “What are you doing here?” He lifted a bag onto the counter with his free hand. “I made you lunch. Wanted to surprise you,” he said, shifting his sister on his hip. “I know you said you never know when you’re getting your breaks, so I figured I’d just drop it off. I made one for you too, Maddy. Vegetarian. You don’t eat meat, right?”
THE DEFINITION OF IF HE WANTED TO HE WOULD!! The fact her own mom forgot about her and instead made sure her own boyfriend was taken care of and left her daughter out of it. BUT DONT WORRY - JUSTIN ALWAYS COMES IN CLUTCH
“Why did you come?” “Because you needed me,” he said simply. “I will always come when you call.”
I felt the stirring of something in my belly so rare to me I could count the occurrences of it on one hand. Justin was on the island. Not the real one. The one in my soul.
I didn’t know why it was so hard to say what I was feeling. Maybe because it felt hard to feel what I was feeling. “You didn’t leave,” I whispered. “I will never leave you,”
“Don’t you miss him?” “I’d miss you more.”
“What are you thinking?” I asked. He didn’t answer for a long moment. When he did, he did it with his eyes closed. “All I ever think about is you.”
“If this isn’t magic, then what is?” he asked. “What does it feel like to be under a spell if this isn’t it?”
There are so many things in life that exist on a spectrum. Trust. Kisses. Love. You can love someone and still not be willing to give up your way of life for them. And then there are those you love who you’d take a bullet for. It’s all the same emotion, just different levels. I’d lived on the low, safe side of everything.
I was made to experience him. And he was right. It was magic.
This wasn’t a transaction. This wasn’t like anything I’d ever known. I wanted him to hold me after. To wake up with me in the morning and eat cereal in my bed while we watched TV. I wanted to see his pajamas on Christmas morning and find out what he looked like with birthday candles lighting his face and snow in his hair. I wanted to be tangled in him, in all his limbs and all his strings. I never wanted us to end.
It was about love. I was falling in love. Every fiber of my being had been fighting against it. It went against all the survival instincts that had kept me safe for the last twenty-eight years.
“Sometimes I feel like the seasons could come and go and come and go, a hundred years could pass, a thousand, the ground could collapse under us, this house could crumble and go back to the earth, and we would still be standing here frozen in time, because every second I’m with you is eternal. I’ve never felt anything like it.”
I set the basket down and wrapped her in my arms, and she burst into tears. Protectiveness surged through me. I hated this. I could feel how tired she was. It reminded me of the way Mom felt the day she left. An emotional exhaustion. Bone weariness. Only love hurts this way. And the way that her pain hurt me was love too.
“Why are you so good to me?” I whispered. “Because you deserve it.”
“You’re not asking too much,” he said. “You were just asking the wrong person. Ask me instead.”
AHHHH I LOVE THIS
“You can’t help someone unless they want to be helped,”
I couldn’t stop crying. I had never in my life cried like this. I felt like my soul was leaving my body.
“I can’t breathe,” I cried. “I can’t breathe!” As soon as Justin put the car in park he was unbuckling himself and getting out to come around to the passenger side. Then he opened my door and lifted me into his arms. “Breathe with me, okay?” he whispered. “In and out. Slow.”
My childhood shifted forever in my mind. My mother’s neglect wasn’t the product of mental illness, or lack of resources, or circumstances beyond her control, the inability to do better. My life was chosen for me. It was chosen by her.
My defenses wrapped around me like an impenetrable protective shield, and I felt myself go eerily calm. I knew this was the last time I’d ever see her. I wouldn’t miss her. I wouldn’t grieve her. I would never look for her. This is what I was capable of. This was my gift. This was my curse.
How do you recover from something like this? How do you walk around in the world after finding out your whole life was a lie? How do you wear mascara and buy stamps and go to the carwash and vacuum and do all the things that fully functional people do?
“I am the worst thing that could ever happen to either of you,” I said.
“You are not what happened to you. You are what you do next.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “Because the more I care about all of you, the more I want to run.”
But it didn’t make it any less devastating. I felt like my soul was being split down the middle and someone was about to leave with one half of it forever. And they were. She would never come back. I think I was lucky she was even here now.
I was going to meet him where he was for once. And I was terrified.
For the first time in my life, I was capable of love—and the loss that came with it. I could handle it now. I’d healed enough for it. So I got in my car and I started the journey back to him.
“I didn’t feel abandoned,” she said, looking me in the eye. “’Cause I knew if I ever called you, you’d come.”
The love stories sold us the wrong thing. 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
...more
This is my favorite quote of all time I think.
This is the thing nobody tells you about The One. How they’re timeless. How the moment they pop up again you’re right back in it, right where you left off.
But not my home. My home was here. My home was him.
