Page 75 of A Love Letter to Whiskey
“Well,” Jenna said on a breath, like she was adjusting her position. “Lucky for you, I just finished eating my weight in egg rolls and Ben & Jerry’s and I’m only forty minutes into Cruel Intentions. The night is young.”
“You’re so beautiful.”
“I know,” she said around a mouthful of something — my bet was on the ice cream. “So, my pity party hat is strapped on. What are we celebrating?”
I clicked on my television for background noise, landing on MTV. “Oh you know, the usual. I miss the guy I basically told to fuck off and I have nothing to show for my current life outside of an extensive client list at work.”
“Why is that a bad thing? You work your ass off and everyone sees it. I wish I had your work ethic. You’re going to be making six figures by the time you’re thirty.”
“Yeah…” I traced the rim of my glass with my fingertip. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love my job. I’m proud of what I’ve done.”
“But everything sucks without Jamie.”
I sighed. “Nailed it.”
“Okay, before we go any further,” Jenna said, and I heard her suck another spoonful of ice cream. “What do you need from me tonight? Do you want me to pet your hair and talk you off the ledge or do you want some tough bestie love that feels like an ass slap and a punch straight to the nose all at once?”
I took another, longer sip of wine, repeating her question in my mind. She’d been petting my hair and telling me what was easiest to hear for months, but for whatever reason, on that cold Friday night in November with the holidays just around the corner, I felt particularly homesick and lonely. I was ready to cry into my bottle of wine, to shed the emotions I felt bubbling up too high in my throat. And maybe, just maybe, I was ready to face the truth I’d been avoiding.
“Kick me in the teeth.”
Jenna clapped her hands together on the other end of the line. “Okay, just remember you asked for this.” She paused, shuffling around, and I imagined her sitting up straight like she usually did before we had our come-to-Jesus best friend talks.
I untucked my legs, stretching out on the couch and pulling the throw blanket off the back to cover myself. “Mouthguard in place. Let’s hear it.”
“First off, you are your own worst enemy. You always have been. But this whole thing with Jamie showed me a whole new side of your warped sense of yourself and how you affect others.”
“Okay, you have my attention. Explain.”
“Well, you left Alder and never went back because you were so convinced that you were like poison or something. You thought he would drop out of school and lose everything he’d ever worked for because he wanted to love you while you were fucked up. But the reality is, if you would have gone back, Jamie probably would have brought you back to life sooner than you did on your own.”
I frowned. “I don’t think so. I was a mess back then. He had his own worries going on with his dad’s firm and I didn’t want to bring another source of stress into his life.”
“Right. You didn’t want to, but Jamie was happy to be the person you leaned on. He wanted to be. You just wouldn’t let him. And then, you run into him out of some miracle at the literal exact moment in your life where you finally felt okay again. And yes, you moved. Yes, long distance sucks, but you know what? It’s possible. I mean, do you honestly see yourself staying in Pittsburgh forever?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” I said defensively. “The point is there’s no way for us to know if the long distance thing will be permanent or temporary.”
“Yes there is.”
“How?”
“You make the decision to have it be temporary, B. It’s as easy as that. You look at what’s important in your life, and if Jamie is a top priority, then you adjust everything else accordingly.”
“He is important, but so is my career,” I said, huffing. “I don’t want to give up what I’ve finally figured out on my own for a boy.”
“Oh please,” she scoffed. “It’s not like that and you know it. It’s not like Jamie is asking you to stay at home with the kids and drop all your dreams. He’s asking you to work with him, to be a team, to finally put him first now that the timing is right. I mean look, first he was dating me, then you were dating Ethan, then your dad passed, and then you moved away. Even still, after all that, you two somehow found your way back to each other. And now, the only thing keeping you from being together is you.”
