Page 98 of A Love Letter to Whiskey
No. He wouldn’t have…
“It’s over,” Sylvia said behind me, but I was still staring at Charlie. He seemed to be amused by my discomfort, and I realized I didn’t know him at all. Of course he could have told her what he’d seen this morning, even if nothing had happened between Jamie and me. He didn’t owe me anything, least of all loyalty. Sylvia said something else and it snapped me out of my thoughts.
“What?”
Her face crumpled. “She cheated on him. Last night.”
The air was gone then, and I stared at her in disbelief. She cheated on him?
“I don’t understand.”
Sylvia blew out a breath. “I guess she saw Jamie post on Facebook that you guys had decided to go camping. It was a group shot of all of you, and his arm was around you, and it just set her off. She was drunk, all the girls fueled the fire and told her how wrong it was that he was going to be with another woman overnight. So they took her out, got her even more wasted, and she slept with one of the guys they met.”
My mind was spinning. “I’m so lost. She saw a picture, so she cheated?”
Charlie butted in then. “She assumed if you guys were in the same place all night, you’d end up sleeping together.” He frowned, crossing his arms, and I scowled right back at him.
“Yeah, well we didn’t. And her trying to use our friendship and her own insecurities as an excuse to cheat is pathetic.”
I expected him to argue with me, but the crease between his brows softened and he nodded. We may have technically slept together, but we didn’t have sex, and I didn’t want to explain myself to Charlie but it seemed I didn’t have to.
Sylvia sniffed, and I turned to find her eyes glossy.
“He’s got to be crushed,” she said softly.
I sighed, rubbing her arm soothingly. “I’ll go talk to him.”
I was fuming now. I wanted to march through the door behind Charlie and rip Angel up by her pixie cut. She cheated on him, she betrayed his trust, she hurt him. But then my lips tingled where Jamie had kissed them not even twelve hours before, and I remembered that though she’d put the final nail in their coffin, Jamie wasn’t completely innocent, either.
Neither was I.
“I just don’t know how you come back from something like this,” Sylvia added, wiping at her nose. My ribs crushed in a little tighter then, and I glanced behind her at the door Jamie had fled through.
“Me either.”
• • •
Perception is reality.
To some, whiskey is a crutch. It’s a drug, it leads to addiction, it dulls the senses and damages the mind.
To others, whiskey is medicine. A shot of bourbon can chase away what ails you, whether it be a sore throat or a broken heart.
That night, I realized that maybe I was Jamie’s whiskey, too — and maybe we existed in both realities. Maybe we were bad for each other, but maybe we were good, too. As much as I hurt Jamie, as much as he hurt me, we were there for each other always — without hesitation, without expectation.
We were each other’s drug as much as we were each others medicine. And in reality, they weren’t really that different at all.
It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be to find him. I checked our spot at the beach, rang the doorbell at his house, and ran by all his favorite bars. I’d racked up over one-hundred dollars in cab fare by the time I found him, where I didn’t expect him yet wasn’t surprised to see him either. He was slumped over, still wearing dress slacks and shoes with that loose tie hanging around his neck at the DoubleTree bar where we’d spent my first night in town.
His hand was gripping a neat glass of whiskey as I took the seat beside him. The bartender nodded to me, pouring up the same Crown Royal Black I’d ordered the first night. He served it on ice, and even though I hadn’t planned on ordering a drink, I sucked half of it down anyway.
Jamie looked miserable. He stared down at his glass, eyes bloodshot and glazed over. I debated reaching out, rubbing his back or squeezing his hand, but nothing felt right. So I waited for a while, just sitting beside him, drinking my medicine while he drank his.
I’d sat in so many comfortable silences with Jamie in my life, but that wasn’t one of them. Every second of quiet felt like a needle prick to my lungs, making it harder and harder to breathe. I just wanted to comfort him, to help him feel okay, and I didn’t know if I could. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when I finally spoke.
