Page 116 of A Love Letter to Whiskey
She nodded, leaning her head on my shoulder and passing me the bottle of whiskey. “I think he always has, babe.”
I sniffed, not wanting to cry because I wasn’t sad. I really wasn’t. I was relieved, and hopeful — even if unrightfully so.
“What am I supposed to do? All we do is hurt each other. How do I know we’ll ever be able to make it? How do I trust him with a heart he’s broken so many times?”
Jenna thought while I thumbed through the charms again, thoughts racing.
“What’s your biggest fear with it all? You know as well as I do that if you give your heart to him, really give it to him, he’d never do anything to hurt you. If anything, it should be him who’s afraid — and clearly he’s not. So what’s the real issue?”
I chewed my bottom lip, answers to her question swirling in my head. “It’s just, look at the path of destruction we’ve laid. He cheated, I cheated… twice.” I cringed with the admission. “We’ve hurt others around us, and we’ve never really been together. It’s always been about not being able to have each other. What if it’s just about wanting what we can’t have? What if that’s all part of the allure? It just feels wrong, and in the eyes of most sane people, it is. We’re built on lust and bad decisions.”
“But are you?” Jenna challenged, sitting up again. She turned to face me, tucking her feet inside the tub. “No, you and Jamie never had it easy. And yes, you hurt a lot of people along the way. But at the end of the day, it’s your life, B. You have to live with it, no one else. So you can’t think about the people around you, how you’ve hurt them or what they think of you. It’s up to you to be happy because no one else is going to do it for you.” She smiled then, blue eyes bright in my dim bathroom. “Whatever you choose, make sure it makes you happy.”
“That sounds a little selfish.”
Jenna shrugged. “Yeah well, sometimes selfish and smart are synonymous.”
It was like surviving an explosion. For over a year, my ears had been ringing, eyes adjusting to the smoke, and now, all of a sudden, everything had cleared. I’d let myself be ruled by fear and anger, pain and sadness, but I’d never once thought of the possibility that with Jamie, I would find happiness. It might not have been an easy road, and there were likely many more bumps ahead, but in the end, I couldn’t imagine my life with anyone else but him. He was it for me. He always had been.
“Why have I always seen him as an addiction? As a bad thing?”
Jenna leaned into me, stealing the bottle I had yet to drink from since the last time she passed it. “Sometimes we’re more terrified of the good things in life than we are of the bad. We feel we don’t deserve them, or that they aren’t real, that they’ll disappear quickly and easily and we’ll be left in the ruins.”
She was right, and I smiled at the clarity of it all. Jamie had always been a natural urge for me, but I’d labeled him as the bad kind — as something I should be ashamed of or something that had the power to ruin me. But the truth couldn’t be further from that.
“He’s not an addiction,” I whispered. “He’s an inclination.”
Jenna smiled, tilting the bottle of whiskey back toward me. “So, what now?”
• • •
The next morning, while Jenna was still fast asleep in my bed, I sat down at my laptop, and I started writing.
I started writing my love letter to Whiskey.
I started writing the book you’re reading now.
The honest, hard to read and even harder to write account of my eleven-year addiction to Whiskey.
I know I’ve put you, as a reader, through a lot. Maybe through too much. I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me right now, because the truth is there are more than a few times in my life where I made the wrong decision. I am flawed, and though I know it was hard to read, I’m not sorry for telling the truth. I’m not ashamed of my path. In a way, I think it’s about figuring out who we are through the mistakes we make.
I know who I am. And I know who I need.
So, Whiskey, if you’re reading this, I hope now you understand. We’ve always blamed timing, but the timing has always been right — we just never listened.
Up until this point, I’ve never fought hard enough. But if you give me the chance, I’ll fight every single day of our lives together. I’ll go to battle for you, and I’ll win the war in the end.
