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

by Abby Jimenez

She scoffed. “Yeah, well, we’re all strong-ass women until a smoke alarm starts chirping at three a.m. on a high ceiling and there’s no one to hit it with a broom but you.”

Her eyes were wide. “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.” She beamed at me. “I like this new you.”

“I’d say that was pretty damn clear. God, he’s annoying. He’s like that hair stuck to your shirt and you know it’s there ’cause you can feel it on the back of your arm but you can’t get rid of it?”

“Just keep her laughing,” Doug said. “When a woman laughs, her eyes are closed more. She won’t notice how ugly you are.”

My vagina has officially been closed so long I’m afraid a Spirit Halloween is going to move in.”

wondered how many of the little trinkets I’d found in Aunt Lil’s box were like this. The remnants of small moments in her life that stayed with her forever. Proof of a thumbprint on her soul. It’s amazing how someone can touch you, even if you only know them for a moment in time. How they can change you, alter you indelibly.

Nothing could convince me this woman wasn’t made for me to love. I think my soul recognized hers the second I laid eyes on her. Our bodies knew it the very first night.

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.

I fell into one of those sleeps of the brokenhearted. The kind that breathes in and out, between here and gone. You want to dream about them but then regret it when you do, because waking up hurts too much. So you hope for nothing but black. The temporary reprieve from existing without them.

My chest felt tight, and I clutched a hand over my heart and squeezed. I missed her so much it was physically painful. It was a form of grief. A withdrawal. Starvation. It was unnatural. Because I wasn’t supposed to be without her. My eyes started to tear up. There’s something more final than forever. It’s never. Never is infinite.