She said it softly, just for me.
But there’s nothing questioning in her expression.
She’s already reached her conclusion. This is just her choosing the moment to say it.
I don’t answer her.
I don’t have to.
She pats my arm once, satisfied, and turns back to the room.
Deek, from the other side of the space, tips his beer toward Nitro and shakes his head, dragging the moment out with theatrical grief, like he’s putting on a show. “Between Will and Nitro…” he announces, to nobody and everybody, “… who’s left for me to drink with? The way Ghost is going, he’s gonna fall next!”
Ghost’s voice comes from his corner, flat and final. “Don’t.”
Sage is sitting right beside him, and when she turns to look at him, her whole face lights up, eyes bright with the kind of excitement she’s making absolutely no effort to hide. “He said don’t,” she replies, clearly and with enormous satisfaction.
Ghost looks over at her like her backing him caught him off guard. It only lasts a second, but something slips through the cracks anyway. Something underneath all that control and that flat expression he hides behind on purpose. Then it’s gone before anybody else in the room would’ve noticed it.
But I’m watching from the bar, and I have a good line of sight.
I lift my beer and take a long, slow drink.
Who are they kidding?
Millie’s hand finds my arm at the bar. A light touch, unhurried, settling against my sleeve the way something belonging finds its place. I look sideways at her. Her eyes are still soft from the tears, still warm from what she just watched, and she’s not pretending she wasn’t moved by it because Millie doesn’t pretend things aren’t what they are.
She looks up at me, and there is something in the look that I feel settle through the middle of me like a weight finding ground.
I turn my hand over on the bar, palm up.
She sets her hand in mine.
The room moves around us, full and warm, celebrating. I hold Millie’s hand and say nothing, and it is enough. It is more than enough. It is the kind of quiet that doesn’t need filling, the kind you only reach after you’ve earned it, and I think about Queenie’s hand on my arm, and her voice saying,‘Don’t wait as long as he did, dear.’
I think about Jonas in his armchair, saying,‘Take care of her, not just the business.’
I close my fingers around hers.
Sunday afternoon holds its shape around all of us, and across the room, Nitro has his arm around Marley, who is showing Queenie the ring, and Queenie is touching it with the reverence of someone recognizing something beloved coming home. Sage is watching Ghost not react to anything, her attention patientand luminous, like she’s already decided this is exactly where she belongs.
Dad catches my eye from across the room.
He nods once.
I nod back.
And he knows that as soon as I get my patch, whenever that may be, that I am making Millie my Old Lady.
No ifs, ands or buts.
This woman is MINE!
Chapter Twenty-Eight
WILL
The Next Day
