Page 119 of A Love Letter to Whiskey
You deserve to know what happened next.
You deserve a happy ending — at least, as happy as masochists such as ourselves can provide.
But, before I can tell you the end of her side of the story, I need to at least tell you some of my side.
So, again, we can’t start here.
We have to go back.
Way back.
To the very first drop…
SHE WAS RIGHT ABOUT one thing.
The first day I met B, she did, in fact, fall flat on her face.
It was particularly hot that day in south Florida, sweat rolling down my back in consistent streams as I ran the path I’d frequented since I was a freshman. Primarily in the fall, that path that circled a little suburbia lake was part of my morning ritual. Basketball season was in full effect, which meant running in the mornings and staying well after practice in the afternoons to work on my lay ups and free-throw shots.
If you couldn’t tell already by B’s recount of our love story, I’m persistent when it comes to what I’m passionate about.
I can still remember every singular moment of that first taste of each other, from the way my sneakers sounded hitting the paved trail to the steady rhythm of my breath as I ran. It seemed like the universe slowed down time when I looked up from my feet and saw them — Jenna and B — running side by side before B pulled out a little in front.
She thinks I didn’t see the exact moment when she noticed me, but it was impossible to miss.
I felt her eyes on me like warm hands, like an embrace from an old friend and a kiss from a stranger all at once.
Those slate gray eyes pierced me right through the chest, enough that I pressed my lips together against the sting of them. I smirked a little when those eyes wandered the length of me, and I gave myself permission to do the same — taking in her wild and unruly hair, the freckles speckling her cheeks, the lean, athletic build of her body, her toned little stomach peeking out between the band of her black shorts and white tank top. I remember her legs more than anything, how she was so short, and yet they seemed to stretch on for days, and my eyes caught on her neon pink sneakers for just a moment before I snapped my focus back to her eyes.
Or, it would have been her eyes, if she hadn’t turned around to mouth something to Jenna.
Keep in mind that I was as stupid boy back then, so while now I would have realized the plan of attack should have been to slow to a walk and try to talk to them as they flew past, back then, my peanut brain thought it made more sense to accidentally run into her.
I’d drastically underestimated how much of a punch that little thing could pack when she slammed into me.
Or how much of a backboard I was, since I sent her flying straight to the ground.
Still, the plan did work in a way. Because though she was on her ass, she was looking up at me — those peculiar gray eyes — and when I smiled down at her, offering my hand to help her up, I knew she felt it, too.
I didn’t know what it was, to be clear. I knew it was something — new, unfamiliar, exciting. But again, I had teenage boy brain.
Which is exactly why everything happened the way it did in those next few minutes, setting off a domino effect of bad timing and things — people — getting in our way.
B slipped her hand into mine, feather-light and unsure, her eyes as wide as silver dollars.
“You okay?” I asked, subtly checking her for bruises or bleeding. I wanted her to answer before I tried to help her stand.
But she didn’t respond.
She didn’t so much as breathe as she looked at me, which I know now was because she was apparently stunned by my handsomeness — her words, not mine. But at the time, I read that little quirk of her brow and lack of response as rejection.
I read it as her not being interested, not even a little bit.
I read it as my mere presence offending her.
I read it wrong.
“Oh my God, are you fucking blind?!”
Jenna was the first to speak to me, and then she promptly shoved me away from B, stealing her hand from mine and hoisting her up.
B was still a little off-kilter when Jenna turned on me, those little blue eyes of hers narrowed. “How about you brush that long ass hair out of your eyes and watch where you’re going, huh, champ?”
Jenna crossed her arms then, popping her hip to the side, and that’s when I noticed her.
