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.

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

Maybe that’s why I was a good nurse. I had the gift of extreme empathy paired with detachment. I could deeply understand someone and anticipate their needs, but also never get close enough to them to feel it when they passed away or suffered or I moved on.

It’s funny how when you find someone you like as much as I liked her, the destination is suddenly wherever they are. Even if there’s someplace better, you wouldn’t go if they couldn’t come.

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

That if I needed him, he would be there and he wouldn’t be bothered by it no matter how late or inconvenient the time. No… not just if I needed him. If I wanted him, he would be there. It didn’t have to be important. He would be there for anything and any reason.

“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.”

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

Instead she’d end up being the one who got away. Not a soulmate, just the love of my life. And unfortunately they’re not the same 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 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.