snaked out with surprising strength and gripped my shirt.
When I met his eyes, I saw a fierceness there. “Since the day I lost your mother, I’ve just been waiting to die.”
His words cut right through me with their honesty.
“And the day you lost Jenna, you’ve done the same.”
The room spun a little at his truth bomb, I actually felt a dizzy rush of adrenaline go through me. Was I like him? Putting poor Gran and everyone through hell because I was drinking and smoking and forgetting my pills? Was I waiting to die?
Yes.
I could lie to everyone else but I couldn’t lie to myself.
“You had Jenna and I to live for!” I snarled. “That should have been enough.”
He released my shirt, his arm dangling off the side of the bed. “And you had Millie, Gran, your cousin. Why wasn’t that enough?”
Motherfucker!
He stared up at the ceiling. “I loved your mother too much, too deeply. She became my everything. Now all I can do is numb the pain until I see her again.”
I shook my head. “Meanwhile, your only son and your own mother-in-law will just be here watching you circle the drain.” I shook my head in disgust. “No matter that we love you too deeply, no matter that you used to be our everything.”
I turned from the room, not stopping when he called my name, not caring when I heard him sob. I didn’t care that alcoholism was a disease, or that he couldn’t help it. I only cared that my last living parent didn’t seem to love me enough to want to live.
Chapter 18
Millie
I lay in my childhood bedroom, staring up at the Justin Bieber poster on the wall, and cringed. Why do parents leave their children’s rooms untouched, like relics of our embarrassing past? If I had children and they went off to college, I would strip their room the next day and turn it into a gym or something cool. If they came to visit, I’d have a really nice blow-up mattress waiting for them. No one needed to stare at their old Justin Bieber obsession like this. It was depressing.
Standing up, I crossed the room and ripped the poster off the wall, sending the four thumbtacks flying.
That felt good.
Living with my parents in Connecticut again wasn’t ideal, and Julie had of course offered for me to stay with her and John, but they’d just got engaged. I wasn’t going to do that to them. Besides, I was only a forty-minute train ride away. My parents were touring the country in their RV anyway, so I had the place to myself.
Until I could find a job, I had already started a side gig. What kind of work does a failed restaurant entrepreneur and fry cook look for you ask?
Well, since there were no lead baker or chef jobs currently open in the area, and I didn’t desire to wait tables … I’d taken on my first custom cupcake order. After getting off the plane late last night there was a note waiting for me from the Mabbit’s, our neighbors. They wanted to order cupcakes for their daughter’s birthday today. I was quite sure my mother asked them to order them from me to give me something to do, but I wasn’t going to complain. Sabrina was turning nine years old and wanted rainbow poop emoji cupcakes. Twenty-four of them for fifty dollars.
You gotta start somewhere.
I slipped downstairs into my mom’s ‘90s kitchen and got to work. Both her and my dad retired two years ago, and ever since had gone on three-month-long RV trips around the country to visit all the national monuments. I was spared from having to wallow in my pity with them.
I set into my zone, mixing batter, cracking eggs, trying not to think about the fact that I had somehow fallen in love with a man I knew for a week and slept with once.
Idiot.
After I pulled the cupcakes out of the oven to cool them off, I checked my phone to see two missed calls from Julie and one from Gran.
Ugh.
Everyone kept “just checking in” to make sure I was okay. I’d blocked that motherfucker Ashton’s number after he sent his cousin to publicly kick me out of his bar. Once I replayed our conversation from the hospital back in my head, I’d gotten so angry at his disrespect. Yes, I’d lied to him, big-time, but to call me a psycho and make me feel like I was just trying to