I nodded, smiled. “Yes. All of them. I want all of them.”
They all came in, my best friends, my parents, my brother. I faced the ring of people I loved best and called to mind this speech I’d rehearsed a hundred times in the last six months. I’d thought I’d give it alone. That I’d have to face the inevitable with an empty hand. But Kacey Dawson was there, her fingers entwined with mine. I wasn’t alone and my hand wasn’t empty.
I cleared my aching throat. “Okay, guys, the plan is there is no plan. No trips. No adventures. No bucket lists. This is what I want: to hang out together. Let’s have barbeques and breakfasts. A nice dinner at a fancy restaurant, or a breakfast at Mulligan’s. Or cupcakes out of an ATM. Let’s talk and tell stupid jokes and laugh a lot and…live.”
Nods and murmured assents.
“What I don’t want is anyone asking me how I feel a hundred times a day,” I said. “I promise I’ll tell you if I need anything but everything I could ever need or want is right here in this room. You are the loves of my life. I don’t want anything but to be together as much we can. That way, when the time comes…”
I swallowed hard, my vision blurring the faces of my people. “You don’t have to worry if I was happy. Or if I had regrets. I have none.” I looked to Kacey, my beautiful girl, and touched her tear-stained cheek. “No regrets.”
“Not one,” she whispered. She kissed her fingertips and touched them to my lips.
I took a moment to pull myself together, and quickly wiped my eyes.
“So that’s my big speech. I love you all and that’s it. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
My audience laughed softly through sniffles or coughs, and it was as if a horrible tension had been lifted. I didn’t want macho stoicism or restraint. I wanted their true selves and nothing more.
I wanted their moments.
Two days later, Theo came by my place in the late afternoon.
“Where’s Kacey?” he asked.
I handed him a beer from the fridge and took a green tea for myself. “She’s grocery shopping.”
Theo nodded, dropping onto the couch. “You’re not working tonight?”
“I quit today,” I said, sitting at the other end. “Harry asked if I’d been poached by a different limo company.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That his was the only limo service I’d ever work for in my entire life.”
“Shit, Jonah…”
“What?” I said, grinning. “Come on, it was a little funny.”
Theo snorted, turned his beer around in his hand. “Morrison said your kidneys are shot.”
“Apparently so,” I said.
He glanced at me. “And that’s what’s keeping you from being higher up on the donor list.”
“I know where this is going.”
“I’m just saying I could give you a kidney,” Theo said. “It would match. Your body won’t reject it because we’re blood. We’re brothers. You’re my brother…” His voice cracked open. He sat hunched over, his elbows resting on his knees. I waited until he’d pulled himself together and put my hand on his arm.
“The medication would eventually wreck it, while my body would wrecks a second heart transplant thanks to my craptastically rare tissue-type.” I chucked him on the shoulder. “So keep your damn internal organs to yourself.”
He laughed then. A small laugh, but real. “Fine. But say the word and it’s yours. Whatever you want or need…if I can give it to you, it’s yours. Okay?”
“I might have a favor to ask you.”
His head shot up. “Anything. Name it, give me something…”
But the doorknob rattled then. I glanced at it, holding up a finger. “Not now…”
Kacey came in the door, her arms laden with grocery bags. “Hey, my two favorite men in the world in one place. Must be my lucky day.”
Theo got up to take the bags. She smiled and teased him for being secretly chivalrous. Then they were putting the groceries away, bickering lightly the entire time, while I sat on the couch, my smile turned away where they couldn’t see.
We ate dinner at my parents’ house that night, as we did nearly every other night now. Oscar and Dena and Tania were always invited. I wanted my people around me as often as possible.
Early on, Kacey was chatting with Tania, and Dena was helping my parents plating the dinner. Oscar glanced surreptitiously toward the kitchen and pulled his chair closer to mine. He rubbed his hands up and down on his jeans as if his palms were sweaty.
“What’s up, man?” I asked. “You in the doghouse with Dena?”
A smile flickered over his lips, then was gone again. “No, but I could be if I don’t get this right.” He puffed his cheeks with air and said, “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”