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

by Abby Jimenez

Little by little, we were figuring it out. And there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t feel her absence like a void in my soul. I missed her like I missed the sun in the winter.

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.

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.

I just wish I hadn’t learned it with Emma. Because nothing and nobody else would ever compare. With anyone else, it’s just folding socks on a sofa.

I came up behind her. “Just please tell me Alex didn’t damage any—” I froze. Emma was on the sofa. She had Chelsea cradled in her arms, bundled in her Frozen blanket, and she was talking softly to her. My dog had his head on her thigh, looking up at her. It was like a still-life painting. Something a master had created out of the deepest recesses of my brain.

Not a second had passed. It hadn’t been six months since I’d seen her, it was a heartbeat. A flicker. 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.

Home is something that’s always there, I realized. No matter where you are in the world, you know it’s where you left it, unchanged and waiting. Only now that I was here, I saw Justin was neither unchanged or waiting. He was cold. Short with me. And not glad at all that I was here.

It’s one thing to go to therapy and learn skills. It’s very different to have to use them in real life.

My home was here. My home was him. The man saying goodbye to me. And he didn’t even know it. I hadn’t been strong enough to tell him then, back when it mattered. But I was strong enough now. I turned in the entry. “I have something to say to you before I go. I’m going to tell you what I’m thinking, even though you didn’t ask.”

“I know it probably doesn’t matter, but I could meet you where you are now. I can meet all of you. I’ve filled my cracks. I don’t want to be an island. I want a village. I want lots of friends and lots of love in my life.

I took a permanent job and I’ve been going to therapy. I’m learning to depend on people and ask for help. I’m trying to be vulnerable, even when I know I might end up getting hurt, and part of that is telling people how I feel.” I took a deep breath. “I know I never said I love you. You have to understand how hard that word was for me.

“I didn’t have a choice with you,” I said. “I couldn’t keep you out. I want you to know that I loved you at first sight, Justin. It just took me a really long time to be able to tell you what I saw.” He let out a shaky puff of air. “I love you,” I said again. “I’m sorry it came so late. You deserved to hear it sooner. When it still mattered.”

If he really did want me, I would dock for a lifetime. I would do it all. I would move in here and raise these kids with him and be still and big and present. I knew how to now.