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

by Abby Jimenez

The moment Emma came into view, my entire world slipped into slow motion. My brain took a screenshot. I felt the moment freeze and save. She was beautiful.

“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.”

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

“I told you, I was at work!” “Liar!” “I’m a surgeon, Amber. I don’t have a nine-to-five, I stay until it’s done, I can’t answer the phone in the middle of an appendectomy—” Amber drew her arm back and threw the large glass thing again, only this time it bounced off the car’s hood, hit the concrete, and broke in half. Neil stared at it in shock. His jaw flexed. Then he started stalking toward her. “Oh my God,” Emma breathed. “He’s gonna hit her. Justin, he’s going to hit her!” I was already in motion, but I wasn’t fast enough. Neil got to Amber first. He grabbed her by the shoulders, yanked her toward him—and hugged her.

He stood there in silence for a long beat. Then he talked to me but looked at the award. “You know, there was a time when I would have gotten in my car, driven to the nearest five-star hotel, and picked up the first woman who would have me just to teach Amber a lesson. But I’m trying. I’m really trying to be the best version of myself.” He stayed for another moment. Then he turned and walked slowly back into the house.

I drank in his gentle breathing sounds. The rise and fall of his chest. 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. My eyes teared up at the realization. I didn’t know how to process it. It scared me, and I didn’t know what it meant or what I should do now or how it would change things. But suddenly nothing was the same.

I wanted to tell him how much I’d missed him. That I’d stared at pictures that had only fragments of him in them, how I’d dreamed about him and how I felt when he came to the cottage. 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,” he said tiredly. “I mean, unless you tell me to. I’m not a creep.” I laughed and my sore stomach hurt. He pulled me closer and kissed the top of my head. And for the first time maybe ever, I felt like I belonged somewhere.

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. With the exception of Maddy, I kept my friendships at arm’s length and my relationships even further away. I never fell for anyone. I never let anyone close enough to try.

“Justin, I think something is wrong with me. Like there’s something in me, in my heart, that doesn’t work right.” He peered at me gently. “What doesn’t work right?” I pressed my lips together trying to keep the crying under control. “It’s like there’s a part of me that’s always small,” I whispered. “And I don’t know why and I don’t know what to do about it.” I started crying again and couldn’t hold it back. I felt full of cracks all of a sudden. Deep, long, jagged cracks. And they’d always been there. I’d just learned to live with them so long I no longer noticed them.

He put his forehead to mine and whispered and soothed me, even though he didn’t know what I was crying about. But I did. 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.

I wanted to forget. To be so lost in him I couldn’t think about what scared me, or the cracks in my heart, or the things that didn’t work right in my soul. I got lost in myself all the time. But I knew now that Justin was the only person in the world I could ever disappear into.

“You need to stop using me like a piece of meat. It’s dehumanizing. I’m serious.” I cracked up and he crashed into me and walked me backward to the bed, laughing. He slid over me on the mattress and kissed me, his smile so big I could feel it against my mouth. I loved this. Everything about it. I loved that he always made me laugh. I loved that no matter what we were doing, it was fun. I loved that I slept so well when he was next to me, and I felt safe and cared for and wanted. And I really, really loved the sex.

I just folded into the chaos of the morning while the coffee brewed and the kids got ready for school and the dog got let out. And it made me wonder why I hadn’t just done this sooner. I liked it. I liked seeing this other side of him—this paternal version that signed permission slips and brushed a little girl’s hair into pigtails and made breakfast in slippers and a hoodie and pajama bottoms.

I felt like I could stay in this moment forever. Like it was timeless because of how absolutely perfect it was. And yet there was nothing perfect about it. Not in the traditional sense. We were in pajamas. We weren’t on a date, standing under the moon. We were next to a sink full of dirty dishes and a crusty waffle iron. There wasn’t music playing or candlelight or rose petals. But it was perfect. I wouldn’t have changed a single thing about it.

“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.”

Justin and the kids and I did everything together. I did driving hours with Alex, took Sarah to dance, folded laundry on the bed with Justin while we watched movies. I spent a full day and took care of his mom’s plants in the yard, something he was stressed about. On Saturday Justin and I cooked dinner together and set up an ice cream sundae bar for dessert. We walked the dog holding hands, and I lay in bed watching him work after the kids went to school.

I liked taking care of him and his family. I liked bringing Chelsea to school on my day off to give Justin time to go for a run and then going to Starbucks and surprising him with his favorite coffee. I liked rubbing his shoulders while he sat at his computer and hearing Sarah tell me about her day. But mostly I loved being there when he woke up. Not having to wait for a text. Seeing him the second I opened my eyes.

I had no idea how single parents did this. I had no time for anything, let alone myself. 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.

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

I could see myself behind her in the mirror. My eyes were puffy. She didn’t even ask what was wrong. It didn’t even occur to her to see why I’d been crying. It didn’t occur to her that today was my birthday and she’d forgotten, again. But now that seemed perfectly natural. Of course she’d forgotten. Now I knew what I was worth to her. I truly, truly did. I’d been operating on the belief that I should be the most important thing in her life.

I thought things had been bad when I was sick and alone on the island. But it occurred to me that I might actually die here in this hotel room. This would be the thing to kill me. I would just wither away. Fail to thrive. I would lay down and not get up. And who would even know? That’s the nature of being on the island. That’s the price. And it still cost less than the alternative.

“I am the worst thing that could ever happen to either of you,” I said. She cocked her head. “Why? Because you have a flight response to stress? A messed-up attachment style from years of trauma and neglect?” The truth hit me gently in the chest.

“Is that what it is?” I asked, my voice flat. She picked lint off her pants. “I mean, I’m not a therapist, but I’ve done a lot of reading about it. I’ve had my suspicions for a while. Avoidant attachment relationship style is my best guess.”

“Sit. Go on, take the chair.” I took the order and dragged myself to the chair across from her. She got up and rummaged in her bag and pulled out a sandwich, a bag of salt and vinegar chips, and a bottle of apple juice. She unwrapped the sandwich and put it in my hand, opened the chips, and twisted the cap off the drink. Then she sat there and watched me eat. I could barely taste the food, but my body responded like a wilted plant being watered.

The sandwich was what I always ordered. She’d stopped to get this. She’d ordered it for me. She knew what kind of state I’d be in and she’d come prepared. Maddy was like a first responder for my soul.

“Better?” I nodded. “Yes.” “Good. Now I’m going to tell you something, and I really need you to hear it,” she said. “You can cut me off, cut Justin off, be so small no one can ever find you. Go ahead. Run like the wind, I won’t chase you. But you can’t escape yourself.”

“You are not what happened to you. You are what you do next.” Something in her words finally got through, and I suddenly wanted to cry.

“You turn around, you face it, and you fix it,” she said. “Or you’ll be running from what Amber did t...

“I need to see him,” I said. “Before we go. I have to tell him in person.” She nodded. “All right. We’ll take you there tomorrow.” “And then what?” “It’s my turn to pick,” she said. “I get to pick two times in a row. That was the deal.” I wiped under my eyes. “Okay. So where are we going?” “Somewhere you always should have been.”

“Justin, do you know what I would never wish on anyone? The instability that I grew up with. That’s what I am. I don’t know how to be a normal human being. I don’t know how to love without being terrified. I don’t know how to fight with you without my first impulse to be to pack up and leave and never see you again. I don’t know how to belong to a family who only belongs to me because I belong to you. I am not strong enough for it. And I am giving you the one thing Amber could never give to me and that’s to be honest about it and let you go.”

“I have too much to unpack,” she said. “I have triggers that I can’t control.” I could see the pain on her face. I felt like I was looking in a mirror. “Emma, I’m going to tell you something. And I don’t need you to say anything, I just need you to hear it.” I paused. “I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since the moment I laid my eyes on you. And I know we haven’t known each other long, but I don’t care, because it’s true and it’s there, and it doesn’t matter to me if it makes sense or not. I’ve been waiting my whole life to feel like this and I thought it was a curse that nobody else ever worked out. But it wasn’t. It’s just that they weren’t you.”

I thought about the rom-coms Mom used to watch when I was growing up. The dramatic grand gestures that keep them together at the end. But that’s not what real grown-up relationships are like. They’re like this. Being mature enough to know your limits, and adult enough to accept when someone tells you what they are. Even if it breaks your heart.

“What do you think she’ll be like?” she whispered, after a moment. “Who?” I said gently, holding her to my chest. “The girl you’ll meet after me. Your soulmate.” My heart shattered into a million pieces. If you had asked me yesterday, I would have said it was her. 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.

I hoped Maddy moved in with Doug when she was ready—that she knew I was ready to have a normal life now and it was okay to let me go a little because I wouldn’t disappear when she did. I would never get that small again.

I’d done three months of CBT and I had a talk therapist I really liked who specialized in trauma. She had me do a once-a-week drive down to Rochester to meet her for EMDR treatments for my complex PTSD—another thing I hadn’t known I’d been dealing with but made sense to me once I was diagnosed. I’d talked to Doug, who also dealt with it, and he’d said EMDR really helped him. So I’d tried it and it did help, tremendously.

There were a few times over the last six months that my phone rang from a number I didn’t know. For the first time in my life, I let it go to voicemail. I was at peace with my decision to have no contact with my mom. I felt free in a way. I no longer worried where she was, or if she was okay. She wasn’t my burden anymore and I hadn’t even realized how heavy she’d been for me to carry because I’d done it for so long. I finally set her down. And that started with me forgiving her.

I told myself that if I could do the work, make strides in therapy, stay here for six months, be still in one place for the first time in my adult life, that I’d be ready enough to reach out to him and see if there was anything left of us—and I did it. Today was the six-month anniversary of my coming to Wakan. I’d been watching the date approach for weeks and it was finally here.

I was going to meet him where he was for once. And I was terrified. Nobody in this world still possessed the ability to break me like Justin did.

I wanted to go home. Grant House was where I lived, but it wasn’t home. Justin was home. The kids were home. Justin was right. Home wasn’t a place, it was a person. For me it was a whole family.

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.

Sarah had a maturity about her now that she didn’t have before. And not the kind that comes from growing up too fast in the midst of trauma. The kind that comes from healthy parenting and coming of age. It made me happy. It made me feel like I’d done the right thing leaving when I did.

I turned away from her. “Sometimes you leave because it’s better to deal with your problems on your own.” “Did you?” I came back to her. “Yeah. I did. And I’m really sorry if my leaving hurt you. The last thing I wanted was for you to feel abandoned. I know what that’s like.” “I didn’t feel abandoned,” she said, looking me in the eye. “’Cause I knew if I ever called you, you’d come.”

Even small, I was better than she was. And then she did call and I did come. I’d passed a test I didn’t even know I’d been taking. “When we get home, you should come inside,” she said. “I bet he’d want to see you.” I had to muscle the lump down in my throat. “Okay,” I whispered. “I’ll do that.” I just hoped she was right.

The kids kept getting sick from going back to school. It felt like I had someone home with a cold every day for two solid weeks. Then I got sick and had to take care of everyone else on top of it. The house was always messy. Cleaning it was like shoveling in a snowstorm. Everyone needed me, all the time. Chelsea’s separation anxiety from Mom and Emma hit a crescendo and she hung off me like a monkey when she was home and cried every time I dropped her off at school. I was touched out and overwhelmed and missing Emma so badly it was hard to breathe.

But a light had gone out inside of me and nothing was going to turn that back on. All of this was because of Emma. And I didn’t blame her for one ounce of it. If you can choose anger or empathy, always choose empathy. And I did.

It was black and white back then. To me, love meant you stayed. But now I understood that love sometimes means you let someone go. I appreciated the strength it required for her to come tell me she had to in person, even though it was hard.

On Halloween night Sarah and I made a lasagna and hot chocolate and took Chelsea trick-or-treating. And I realized, when the kids were back at the house, sitting on the living room floor going through their candy, that I’d had a good day. It would have been better if she was here. But it was still good.