Page 160 of A Love Letter to Whiskey
She whipped around to face me through the window, her eyes wide, chest rising and falling in a rapid rhythm.
Stay, I willed her.
Fight back.
Fight for me.
My jaw was tight as I watched her, waiting.
But after a moment, she just flipped me the bird with a sweet smile and peeled off like I didn’t matter to her, like I wasn’t worth the energy.
And I let her go.
I felt like I was walking underwater when I made my way back inside the bar, and Angel seemed to know something had happened, but she didn’t press me. She just gave me a long, sweet kiss, and then grabbed my hand and said, “Let’s go home.”
It took a while, but eventually, I broke down and called B to apologize for how I’d acted that night. Though I’d meant every word, I knew I shouldn’t have been as much of a dick to her as I was.
But more selfishly, I didn’t know how to live without her in my life.
We found a sort of weird friendship, but mostly, she lived out her life in Pittsburgh while I lived out mine in our hometown.
Time.
How do you even measure time?
It seemed to slip through my fingers after that, and I lost myself in the way Angel made me feel — loved, complete, whole.
Maybe I was still dreaming the day I dropped to one knee and asked her to marry me.
Maybe I was in a daze when I asked B to be by my side on my wedding day.
All I knew was that while I was fully ready to step into a new life with Angel at my side, I couldn’t quite let go of the woman who’d always been in that place.
But when B came back into town, I realized I’d have to.
I couldn’t have Angel and keep B — not the way I wanted to.
Still, even that week before the big day, I dreamed about it.
And it wasn’t Angel who walked down the aisle to me in those dreams.
It was stormy gray eyes and wild and unruly curls, freckles and warm brown skin.
It was B.
It always would be.
THE SECOND SHE APPEARED at the top of that escalator at the airport, I knew I was playing with fire.
It’d been over a year since the last time I’d seen her, since I’d screamed at her and dared her to fight me. She’d grown into a woman in that time, it seemed — her body leaner than before, cheeks more hollow, neck elongated, eyes holding a bit more history.
She locked those gray eyes on me as she rode down, gaze never wavering, and I wondered if her heart was pounding as hard as mine, if she felt that same magnetic pull that had always been there.
When she made it to the bottom, her eyes fell to the sign in my hand — the one that read Just B. She smiled, but then stood there, unsure.
I opened my arms, welcoming her home.
“Come here,” I said.
Even with her carryon bag slung over her shoulder, the second she was in my arms, I closed my eyes and inhaled a warm, comforting breath. All the nerves from the wedding, all the worry over seeing B for the first time in such a long time, it all disappeared the moment we connected.
Of course, it flooded right back the second we pulled apart.
B had more control than I did. She insisted I drop her off at her hotel, that we not hang out before the rehearsal dinner. And after, when all my friends went to bed because they had work in the morning and I begged her to hang out with me, she declined.
Of course, that didn’t stop me from showing up at her hotel bar.
I knew her better than she gave me credit for, and I knew whether she admitted it or not, that she had to feel some type of way being back in town for my wedding. I savored those stolen moments with her, the time spent catching up at the bar, the morning surf the next day, the rides around town in my Jeep.
But under that joy of being with her sat a sticky residue reminding me I was closer and closer to getting married.
That I was closer and closer to marrying someone who wasn’t B.
The emotions I felt with her near confused me at first, maybe because I truly thought I could slip into some sort of actual friendship with her now that I was serious with Angel. But the more time we spent together, the more I realized that longing for B was still there, deep in my chest, and it was excruciating to deny myself the pleasure of submitting to it.
As shitty as it was to admit, I was glad Angel had her bachelorette party in New Orleans. I was glad to have those last days before my wedding with B.
