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

by Abby Jimenez

“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.”

“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.” She peered at me. “If you can choose anger or empathy, always choose empathy, Justin. It’s so much healthier than anger. For both of you.”

And something in me accepted him. Opened up and let him in. 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.

And for the first time maybe ever, I felt like I belonged somewhere.

“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.”

🥹

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.

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.

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.