Life couldn’t be that cruel, right?
“They’ll work.” I reached out and squeezed his hand, grasping at positivity like a life raft.
He nodded, giving me a weak smile. “So … it’s noon. That means if we catch the next flight out, we should still have time for the open mic night tomorrow.”
A grin swept across my face. “You didn’t cancel it?”
He shrugged. “I was going to and then I saw that a thousand people had RSVP’d. Thought it might be stupid to cancel that.”
I nodded. “It would.”
His brow furrowed. “Although everyone is commenting that they are only coming for the free beer.” He pinned me with a glare and I laughed. “Trust me, we’ll sell enough avocado toast to pay for the whole thing.”
He smiled, and I pulled back to face him. “Ashton?”
He looked up at me with vulnerable eyes.
“No drinking, no smoking, no throwing away your second chance,” I warned. If I was going to be with him, I needed to know he was going to try.
A serious expression crossed his face and he nodded. “I won’t, but, Millie, just so you know, you’re my second chance, not this heart.”
In that moment I thought that maybe we could save each other.
Ashton
Millie had been a tornado of activity all morning. We’d barely slept on the red-eye back from Connecticut. We landed at 1 a.m. and I got a few hours of sleep, but Millie was at the farmer’s market at 5 a.m. buying every avocado in sight. I watched her now as she sat crossed-legged on the concrete out in front of the shop, scribbling tonight’s menu on the chalkboard sign. She wiped her cheek and a smear of white chalk streaked across her face.
A sly grin worked its way up my mouth.
My girlfriend was a little psycho, so what? Weren’t we all? As Gran said, love made you do crazy things. Did it matter that Colin’s heart brought her to me? I’m the reason she stayed and that’s all that mattered now.
A timer went off on my phone, and even from outside she must have heard it because Millie looked at me with stern eyes.
Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the anti-rejection meds and shook them in the air at her and she smiled.
Walking back to the bar, I filled a cup of water and downed the pills.
For the first time since Jenna died, I had found my will to live, and she was standing not twenty feet from me. Chalk on her face, hair a mess, a little bit crazy, but she was it for me. I wanted it all with her. Marriage, house, kids, all of it. Anything she wanted, I wanted just so she’d be happy. I hated this fucking bar because it reminded me of my deadbeat dad, but she saw something in it, a future for us and so I’d love it too. In time.
She looked up at me as if she read my thoughts, and we shared a knowing look. It was one of those looks where you both know that you’re thinking the same thing.
A sly smile swept across her face, but then her phone rang and she pulled it to her ear. I went back to wiping down the bar top, slowly. Everything was slower, but the doc said my strength would return when my damn body stopped rejecting the heart.
No. My heart. Not the heart. They told us not to think like that, not to think of it as something that didn’t belong to us. Some rejected organs could be pinpointed back to “psychological adjustment issues.” That’s what my new organ transplant therapist said. Yep. I’m starting therapy. I was doing everything possible to stay alive and healthy so I didn’t put Millie and Gran through another heartbreak. So that I could have a million more days with this woman who drove me insane.
I glanced up at her again and her face fell, like she’d gotten bad news on the phone. I stiffened, and she looked up at me, seeing if I was watching her. A smile graced her face and I relaxed a little, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She waved me off, as if telling me it was okay and I went back to cleaning the bar.
This whole relationship thing was new to me. If she wanted to tell me who was on the phone, she would … right? Or did I walk out there and ask who just called? No, that was demanding, and I wasn’t that kind of guy. But she’d definitely looked like she’d seen a ghost … and even now, back to writing the sign, you could see her mind chewing on something.
Was Julie okay? Did her and John break up? Was it—?
“Reinforcements have arrived!” Gran’s voice broke through my thoughts and I grinned when she walked in holding a mop and wearing her farm worker overalls. My cousins and aunt were behind her, all ready to lend a helping hand.
“Hey, how did you know we needed help?” I asked.
“Millie,” they all said in unison.
The day I got back from the hospital, Gran had been waiting for me in the bar. I’d showed her Millie’s letter and she’d cried reading it. I’ll never forget what she’d said.
“If a woman is capable of so much love and loyalty that she’d do what Millie did to be closer to Colin and get closure, now that’s a kind of woman you want loving you.”
She was right. I wanted that love now, I wanted that kind of devotion. I’d had it and now I’d never let it go. Yes it was new, but it was deep, and it hooked into me with a permanency that scared me a little.
Millie walked in from outside, wiped chalk on her pants and gave everyone hugs.
“How can we help?” Gran asked.
Millie rattled off the to do list of
