Part of Your World (Part of Your World, #1)

by Abby Jimenez

We should embrace this. Hot girl summer. It could be so fun.” “I think I’m more in the mood for Golden Girls summer…”

“I’m not an asshole. It’s my favorite thing about myself.”

This actually did make me laugh, which made him laugh—and it was adorable.

“Don’t let them decide the life you’re going to live. You only get one.”

“So what’s this guy look like?” she asked. I scoffed. “Scott Eastwood in The Longest Ride, only with a beard. Oh, and he had a baby goat in pajamas.”

“I’d follow a clown into a storm drain if he had a baby goat in pajamas.”

“Look at that man-trum. Eight thousand nerves in the clitoris and still not as sensitive as a white man not getting his way.”

“My grandma used to say that dragonflies mean change is coming.” She went quiet for a moment. “Must be a lot of change.”

“Grace costs you nothing. My grandma used to say it. She especially liked to say it to herself when I was being a little shit.”

You know, reading makes your penis look bigger—don’t quote me on it, the science is really new.”

“It’s coffee. You’re supposed to taste it. You can’t taste it with cream and sugar in it.” He looked at me dubiously. “That’s like saying you can’t taste your eggs because you add salt and pepper.”

Bri liked to say she could tell I’d never cried in a walk-in fridge before. I’d never worked retail or in a restaurant. She said it should be mandatory that everyone work at a fast-food place for six months because it changes you, and I think this is what she meant.

“This is how you die in the zombie apocalypse,” she said with wonder. “I always thought it would be an infected zombie bite or exposure or something, but it’s this. You get a caffeine headache on the first day and you lose your will to live and you just lie down and they eat you.”

“No. I refuse to have sex with someone who doesn’t have a headboard. I’m not that desperate—yet. My vagina has officially been closed so long I’m afraid a Spirit Halloween is going to move in.”

Wakan and Daniel were planted inside of me and they were growing there, like a garden bursting into life. Roots plunging and anchoring me, vines twisting and flowers pushing from the earth and blooming in my soul, filling me up. And I never wanted to leave.

believe you. I can handle anything you need to tell me. You don’t need to protect me from the truth and I’m here to help you in any way I can. It’s not your fault. And you don’t deserve it.”

“I saw this documentary on a tsunami once,” I said. “When it’s coming, it pulls the water away from the beach. Pulls it lower than sea level so the ocean floor is exposed. You can see all the sand and shells and coral, so people go in to look at it. And then the tidal wave comes, and it’s too late to run. It already has you.” I looked her in the eye. “They lure you in. They make you feel like you’re the best thing to ever happen to them, like you’re the most special woman in the world—like you’re seeing something rare. But that’s the trap. It’s how they get you close enough to drown you. And Liz? Nobody can save you until you’re ready to save yourself.”

“I love you,” he whispered. “We are together. This isn’t over. And even if you leave, it won’t be over because you’ll take the love with you and it’ll bring you back.”

Love follows you. It goes where you go. It doesn’t know about social divides or distance or common sense. It doesn’t even stop when the person you love dies. It does what it wants. Even if what you want is to not be in love.

It was amazing that one season of someone could paint over a lifetime.

There’s something more final than forever. It’s never. Never is infinite.

Daniel was a ripple on the water. He touched everyone. Even the people he’d never met.