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

by Abby Jimenez

“Found him,” Maddy said, after about forty-five seconds. I gawked. “That fast???” “The FBI should hire more women. We’re natural investigators.

“Wait. Should we be looking at this? It feels like a violation of his privacy.” She gave me a look over the top of her phone. “When men stop assaulting women they meet on the internet, we’ll stop creeping on them to make sure they pass the vibe check. And anyway, if he wanted privacy, his account would be private.”

“He’s got a bed frame,” Maddy said. “So?” “So that’s a green flag. The closer to the floor the bed is, the worse humans they are. Every guy who pretends to forget his wallet on a date a thousand percent sleeps on a futon or a mattress on the floor.

“You know, for someone that cute, he’s pretty funny,” she said. I looked at her over my phone. “What, they can’t be cute and funny?” “No. When they’re that attractive or over six feet tall, they usually have the personality of a sexy palm tree.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Are we even sure this is safe?” I asked, glancing at the lump under her shirt. “If they’re not safe, why are they cute, Justin?” Emma said. “It’s the forbidden puppy,” Mom said. All three women started laughing.

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

“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.”

But for Emma, I would make time. It wasn’t even a question. I would fit her into the complicated web that was my life. Because when you’re in love, you do hard things. And nothing about anything was easy right now.

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

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.