I called Gran not ten minutes ago and she agreed to split the sober-living monthly bill with Ashton and I. I just needed to tell Ashton we were doing it. Colin never initially wanted to get into saving failing restaurants, it was my idea. It all started with Marcie’s Diner. Sweet Marcie was a thirty-year-old single mother who’d opened a retro nostalgic diner in Brooklyn but didn’t have the budget or creativity to make it any better than Denny’s. When she posted on the door that she’d be closing her business the very next month, I went home to Colin and declared we were saving Marcie’s Diner.
And we did.
And every restaurant after that. Colin called it my good flaw. It was a flaw because sometimes I saved places that couldn’t afford our fee, or I put way too much emotion and caring into the place and brought my work home with me. But it was still good at the end of the day.
Here we go again. My good flaw was going to save Wayne.
God willing.
I stepped into the room and Wayne looked away from his TV and at me. A wide smile lit up his jaundice face. “Millie, did you hear? The doctor said they got a transplant for me. Goes in Monday.” He tapped his tummy.
I’d asked the doctor not to tell him it was me. I wanted to be the one.
I nodded. “I heard, that’s actually what I came to talk to you about.”
He looked confused. Reaching out, I dragged a chair over to the bedside and sat down, pulling his hand in mine.
“I’m your donor, Wayne.” I smiled, waiting for his happy reaction.
It never came.
His face fell and his palm flinched in mine. “What? NO.”
I looked at him, confused. “Yeah … I’m a perfect match.”
He ripped his hand out of mine and put it up in the air as if trying to push me away. “No, no. I can’t, Millie. Not you.” His voice cracked.
Grabbing his hand again, I held it again firmly in mine. “I’m the only one left, Wayne. The only one willing to do this. I’m all you got.”
He swallowed hard and nodded. “I know and that’s why I can’t. I’ve taken enough from Ashton. If something were to—”
“Everything. Will. Be. Fine,” I assured him. “I’m a healthy twenty-seven year-old woman, only giving a portion of the liver. In six to eight weeks the entire thing grows back.”
He frowned, looking down at me. “Really?”
I nodded. “And then you will live many more years with your family.”
He laughed. “My family don’t want me anymore.”
I shook my head. “They don’t want drunk Wayne. They’ll take sober Wayne any day. That’s why Gran and I have gotten you a spot at a sober living facility for the next year.”
His eyes widened. “Sober living for a year?”
I grilled Gran about his past rehab stints. They were all places with a thirty-day detox program, but not the therapy and long-term sober living required to really heal someone like Wayne.
I nodded. “It’s a deal breaker for me. If you don’t agree, I won’t give the liver.”
He frowned. “I don’t want to take anything from you, Millie. Anything that could hurt you—”
“Wayne.” I shook him a little, making my voice firm. “The man I love needs a parent. You’re all he has. I want to marry him and have kids with him someday and they’ll need a grandfather.”
Tears lined Wayne’s eyes as he nodded, causing them to spill over onto his yellow-tinged cheeks.
“Can you do that? Can you be a good future grandpa for my kids?”
Ashton and I hadn’t said it but I knew we were in this for the long haul. Eventually I’d convince him to marry me and have some babies.
He burst into sobs and I stood, taking him in my arms, unable to hold back the tears myself.
“It’s so hard.” Wayne choked up. “Being alone with my thoughts. There’s so much darkness there and death.”
I nodded, my chin pressed into his hair. “I know. I know a thing or two about death, but we gotta focus on the living or we become ghosts ourselves.”
I released him and we both wiped our eyes.
“Hey, this place has therapy, and vegan food. It’s going to be great,” I told him with a smile.
His face fell. “I don’t mind a little therapy, talkin is good for the soul, but if they put tofu on my plate, I’m outta there.”
I smiled. “I’ll sneak you in bacon on Sundays, how’s that?”
He groaned. “Fine.”
I sat with him, talking for the next hour. Sober Wayne was amazing. He was chatty and sweet and you could feel his need for human affection. Every time I touched his hand or hugged him, he looked like it was the first time someone hugged him in forever. Maybe it was.
We said our goodbyes, and I turned to leave, but when I got to the doorway, he called my name.
“You’re just like my Jenna.” He smiled, but it quickly turned into a frown and then he just lay back and stared at the ceiling, as if merely saying her name pulled him into some dark memories.
I didn’t know what to say. What did it do to a parent to know you killed your own child, even if it was an accident?
“Hang in there, Wayne. We’re gonna get through this.”
He just nodded and I left.
I sighed with relief the moment I started Ashton’s truck. Everything I’d done over the past week had given me purpose. Saving Ashton’s bar, saving Wayne. I hadn’t felt this useful and needed in over a year. It felt so damn good that I grinned all the way home.
Ashton
I stared at Millie as she made me breakfast in my apartment kitchen. There wasn’t even talk of her moving back into the apartment down the hall. She just unpacked her bag in my apartment and that was that. I liked that about Millie, loving her was so damn
