Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I popped the pills into my mouth.
Chugging them down with tap water, I searched for a grief support meeting nearby on my phone. Maybe I could get to one before I had to open the bar. They seemed to be the only thing that helped. Hearing other people recounting their shitty lives was the only thing that made me feel normal, made me feel like I could keep going. I wasn’t suicidal, I didn’t want to kill myself, I just didn’t want to be alive. But I was starting to wonder if there was a difference.
Chapter 3
Millie
I banged on Julie’s door like a cop, much heavier and more aggressive than I’d intended, but with the amount of vodka rocking through my body, I wasn’t aware of my own strength.
Julie opened the door looking freshly showered and in cute pjs, holding a bottle of wine and popcorn. When she took in my clearly hammered and disheveled appearance, clutching an open bottle of vodka to my chest, she tried to yank the wine back, but I reached out and grabbed it. The two bottles clinked when I clutched them between my arms.
“I need this,” I slurred and stumbled into her apartment.
“So … you started early,” she observed.
I nodded, slowly, and the room spun as I did. “Right after our lunch, actually.”
Right after Colin’s parents had called to see how I was doing and tell me they would always think of me as their daughter. Then I’d told them I was closing the cupcake shop.
Things had spiraled after that.
Julie sighed. “It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling.”
I glared at her. “Don’t shrink me.”
She held up her hands in a sign of peace. “Honey, I think you’re doing great. It’s only been a year and … you’re great.”
I chuckled, taking a deep swig of the vodka before handing it to her. “Drink.”
She sighed and pulled a swig from the neck of the bottle before coughing. Her mouth puckered like she’d swallowed a lemon. “Geeze, let me mix proper drinks. We haven’t drunk straight from the bottle since your power hour on your twenty-first birthday.”
I took the vodka back from her as I stared at the polka-dot wallpaper that graced her entryway, remembering when she and John had put it up two years ago. Colin and I had helped.
“It’s been a year and I haven’t kissed another guy, my career is over before it really began, and I’m still mourning the life that was taken from me. The future that was taken from me,” I said aloud, pacing her apartment. “What if I never have kids? I’m twenty-seven. What if I am ready to date next year at twenty-eight? Let’s just say that I meet ‘the one’ right away, but he doesn’t propose until I’m thirty-one and we have a year engagement. That’s thirty-two. Then he wants to fucking travel, and just, ‘be a couple for a few years’ before we try to start a family. Suddenly I’m forty and my eggs are shit and I’ll never be a mother.”
Julie’s eyes widened as she reached for the bottles. “Wow, is this how you think all the time?”
I just nodded, letting her take the vodka but I held onto the wine.
She tipped her head back, chugged the vodka straight from the bottle and handed it back to me.
“Then you’ll fucking adopt or freeze your eggs. It will be fine. Stop being so negative.”
She was right. I was never like this before Colin died. I was the optimistic one, but my future was ripped away from me and I was a planner.
A planner without a plan.
“I just…” I stared off into space. “I never got closure. I mean we were going on our honeymoon the very next day. I never got to say goodbye or prepare or…” A sob escaped my throat. “Kiss him one last time.”
Julie reached out and grasped my hand, tears forming in her eyes. “Honey, I see tragedies every day in the ER. Life doesn’t give you a warning. You just need to make the best of it in the aftermath. Just yesterday we had a similar case where a lady lost her husband and he was a donor.”
She paused, checking for signs of distress on my face. I just nodded and she continued. “They had been married thirty-two years. It was a factory accident. Anyway, we told her there was a perfect match for his heart and she flipped. She wanted to know who was going to get the heart and meet his family and all this crazy shit. It’s like she—”
I squeezed her hand tightly as dizziness washed over me.
The donor recipient.
Why the fuck hadn’t I thought about the donor recipient all this time? Maybe if I could meet them, I could get some closure.
A lopsided smile lit up my face. “Julie, you’re a genius. Yes! The donor recipient.”
“Oh, God. No.” Julie shook her head. “That’s not what I meant—”
“Julie, it’s perfect. I can meet the donor recipient and see that Colin has given someone else a chance at a new life. What if it’s like a twelve-year-old kid with his whole life ahead of him, or a mom with five kids?” I jumped up onto the couch and the room swayed. “This is it! This is what I need. My closure.”
I looked down at my best friend. Her head was in her hands.
“Julie.”
“No,” she mumbled in her hands.
“Jul, I need your help. I need the recipient’s info.”
Julie looked up at me and sighed. “You can file a
