People We Meet on Vacation

The friend who names what you're about to throw away

None of this matters. None of it. It’s just stuff. You can build another clinic somewhere else, but that? What you have with her? That is not easy to find. The universe doesn’t just hand out true love. And I know that’s what this is because I see you’re willing to kill yourself over it. So if you have that, if you’re one of the lucky ones, why in God’s green earth would you give it up?

Say You'll Remember Me · Abby Jimenez

A mother, a sundress, a stolen base: the anatomy of a kept memory.

All the neighborhood kids played kickball in the street for hours that night, and the adults even joined us for a game. At one point, my mother was high-fiving Michael after stealing home base in her floral sundress and wedge sandals. That moment was pressed in my memories like a yellowed photograph in an antique album.

Better Than the Movies · Lynn Painter

The sensible reason she gave for choosing that college, and the truer one she kept to herself.

We were just together. It all happened so easily and so quickly that it felt like it had always been that way. One minute we were friends, then we were kissing, and then the next thing I knew, I was applying to the same college as him. I told myself and everyone else (including him, including my mother especially) that it was a good school, that it was only a few hours from home and it made sense to apply there, that I was keeping my options open. All of those things were true. But truest of all was that I just wanted to be near him. I wanted him for all seasons, not just summer.

We'll Always Have Summer · Jenny Han