A Love Letter to Whiskey (22 page)

EVEN AS FAR AWAY
from shore as I was, I could still hear the ring of my cell phone. I could still feel it vibrating like it had that morning, just like it had every year on this day since I’d left California. And just like always, I’d let it vibrate and ring, not silencing it but not answering it either. I’d stared at his name on the screen and thought to myself that I was almost there — I was
almost
to the point where I’d be able to answer. I was closer, but I still wasn’t there just yet, and so that phone call sat at the front of my mind while I swung my feet lazily in the water on either side of my board.

There were only two times when I had felt okay over the past three years: when I was writing, and when I was surfing. Each of them provided their own, unique kind of solace.

When I was writing, I was facing my fears — my anxieties, my feelings. I was putting them into words, giving them life, letting them know I recognized they existed. It was therapeutic and even if no one other than my professors had seen anything I’d written, it felt good just to get it out of my system.

Surfing, on the other hand, was the step before writing. It was what I did when I needed to avoid a feeling, or when I needed to allow myself time to think on it before I could point my finger into its chest and call it what it was. Right now, I was taking a pulse check, celebrating how far I’d come while also recognizing I still had a ways to go to be completely whole again.

The swell was smaller than California, but it was enough. As a perfect wave started forming, I bent forward and paddled out quickly, popping up on my board just in time to catch it and ride it back to shore. For the few moments I glided across the top of that wave, the wind in my long, wet hair, I felt free.

Then, I paddled out a bit, sat up, and straddled my board once more, my eyes on the sun that was still struggling to wake up with me.

It’d been exactly three years since my father’s death.

How drastically my life had changed since that day.

I still remembered every aching moment that lined the path of healing I’d been walking since then. I remembered the break on that beach with Jamie, the numbness after the funeral, the denial and desperation that followed me around for nearly a year before I finally started accepting and adjusting. Writing and surfing — they were my only release.

At first, I’d driven myself mad searching online for answers about my father’s death. I’d researched everything there was to know about electric shock drowning, as if that would help, as if that would bring him back or make it any less difficult to hear those who knew him best say how tragic it was to lose him in a
freak accident.
I hated when they said that. I hated that stupid phrase and the fact that there was no comfort or clarity to be found within it. It was just a callous way to make sense of something that never truly would.

Next, my mother convinced me to try therapy. She’d finally gone, after all those years of shouldering what my father did to her. It seemed like his death had killed her and freed her in equal measure, and her therapist helped her address those feelings. Still, after just two sessions, I knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to talk.

And so, I wrote.

Eventually,
slowly
, writing started to really help — especially once I declared English: Creative Writing my major at Palm South University. Once writing assignments started to come and I was tasked with reading other works of fiction that made my emotions feel more in reach, everything started clicking together, and I started to feel okay.

Mom helped, too — along with her boyfriend, Wayne. They’d met at the beach one morning when she came to watch me surf, and he’d been nothing but a positive light in both our lives. It was the first time in my entire life that I’d seen my mom in love, and I wondered if it took my father’s death for her to be
able
to love at all. Up until that point, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that Mom had spent nineteen years of her life in close proximity to a man who had violated her in the most personal way — all for me. She tried to keep us a family unit, to ensure I grew up with both parents in my life. Now, she was finally focusing on herself, and seeing that made me feel like it was okay to focus on myself, too.

I’d dated, just like she had — and by
dated
, I mean I let two different boys take me out to dinner and then take me back to their beds. Neither had filled the gap left by the last man who’d touched me, but they’d been a nice distraction, at least.

Ethan called me sometimes, too. I only answered his call once, the first time he called after I’d explained why I left — after I told him the truth about Jamie and me. He called less than a week later, drunk as a twenty-one year old in Vegas, his words slurring together as he cursed me for breaking his heart. I cried with him, ashamed of what I did to him and still in pain over my father. After that, I stopped answering his calls, too.

Three years.

I still remembered that day, the feel of it, the pain. It was as if I was a ball of yarn, and that was the day I’d become completely unraveled, my string frayed and worn. Over the past three years, I’d slowly pulled myself together, forming the same ball of yarn I’d been before yet one that was wound differently. I was almost okay again.

Almost.

In just two months, I’d be graduating college and heading to Pittsburgh, ready to start the next chapter in my life. I rode in one final wave with that thought reverberating through me. When my feet hit the sand again, my board tucked tight under my arm, I had an overwhelming urge to face one last challenge before graduation.

I dropped my board into the sand next to my beach towel and rifled through my bag, searching out my cell phone. It was hot in my hands, the sun warming it even through the cool February chill. I thumbed through my missed calls log and hovered over his name, finger shaking at the thought of dropping just a centimeter more to dial his number.
Was I really ready to talk to him? What would I say? What could I offer?

I didn’t have the answers to any of those questions, so I sighed, flipping over to my voicemail log instead as I fell back onto my beach towel. I clicked on the message saved from my first birthday after I’d left California, my favorite message from him, and put the phone on speaker as I laid back and gazed up at the pinkish-blue sky.

Hey, B. It’s me… Jamie… but I guess you already know that, huh?
He sighed, and I’d listened to that call enough to know exactly how long the sigh lasted before he spoke again.
I know you’re hurting. I know you’re pushing me away because you think you should handle this all on your own. And honestly, I don’t know, maybe you’re right — maybe I’m not the person who can help you right now.
There was a shuffling noise then, and I had theories about what it was — him running his hand over his face, maybe? Or was it the wind? Was he at the beach where we’d said goodbye?
But I want to be. So please, just… call me back. I miss you.
My chest always ached at that part.
Happy birthday.

The voicemail ended, and I closed my eyes, letting the sound of Whiskey soak into my skin like sunshine, hoping it would be enough to keep me dry a little while longer.

“TO COLLEGE,” JENNA SAID,
lifting her shot glass filled with chilled Patron high in the air. “May it remember us fondly as it kisses our sweet asses goodbye!”

“Cheers!” I yelled in unison with the table as we all clinked our glasses together before tapping them on the table and throwing them back. I hissed as the tequila stung my nose and throat, quickly reaching for a lime and sucking it dry.

“Shit, that burns,” Jenna laughed, her blue eyes watering.

“I hate tequila,” I agreed, dropping the dry lime in the bowl and reaching for my beer.

“Same, but it gets the job done,” Kristen said. Jenna and I both tilted our beers in a
touché
before taking a sip. Kristen slid off her bar stool and pointed at both of us. “Be right back, I have to pee.”

Kristen was my project partner in one of my capstone classes. We’d gotten to know each other a lot over the last few years, especially being that we were two of the maybe five minorities in the English: Creative Writing program. She was from Brazil, and I loved her unique outlook on literature — especially modern American literature. I was going to miss her, but damn was I ready to get away from Palm South University.

I adjusted my graduation cap on my head, still annoyed that Jenna was making me wear it out all night. I always thought it was silly when grads did that, as if they were begging for attention or a pat on the back from every patron in the bars they attended on their graduation day. Still, I was in a good mood — I guess walking across the stage will do that to you. So, I indulged her, wearing my cap with a smile as we celebrated surviving the past four years. At least she’d let me change out of my gown and into a cute pair of jeans.

“So you’re booked the rest of the weekend until you leave Sunday night?” Jenna clarified again, her pouty lip protruding.

“Yes ma’am. Mom has a small family party planned tomorrow and then we’re driving out to the beach for the night and all of Sunday until I leave.”

“Well, I guess I can’t be mad at mother/daughter time,” Jenna compromised with a sigh. She lifted her beer to her lips but spoke again before taking a drink. “She’s going to miss you, you know.”

I joined her sigh. “I know.” Picking at the label on my beer, I thought about how close Mom and I had become over the last three years since I’d flown home from California. We’d grieved together, healed together, and grown together. I ended up living at home while I finished out my schooling at PSU, and as much as I loved reconnecting with Mom and growing even closer than before, I was ready to take on a new chapter. I was ready for a new city, for new people, for a new chance at finding myself. “She’ll be okay, though. She has Wayne.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. Lucky bitch.”

I laughed and Jenna smirked, clearly not ashamed in the slightest that she had the hots for my mom’s boyfriend. They’d been dating for almost a year now, and he was good for her — he was good for both of us. He helped me apply to grad schools out of state when I was terrified to leave, and I was forever thankful for that.

“I’m still mad at you, you know,” Jenna added. “Here I am finally coming back home and you’re leaving.”

“Maybe I’ll come back after grad school. Who knows.”

Jenna grumbled. “Just save me a spot in your bed, okay? And for the love of God,
don’t
become a Steelers’ fan.”

“That’s baseball, right?”

Jenna groaned just as Kristen rejoined us and I laughed, uncrossing my legs just to cross them the other way.

It felt good to laugh, to have fun. It’d taken me so long to get back into a headspace where I
could
laugh. Losing my dad had fucked with my head more than I thought it would, and it was only in the last year that I truly felt myself learning to let him go — to let the guilt go. I loved him, and that was okay. I was angry with him, and that was okay, too. But now, it was time to leave him here in Florida and find out who I was — who I could be — in a new city and state.

“Oh my God,” Jenna whispered, dropping her beer to the table and tugging on the belt loop of my jeans. She leaned in close, her eyes somewhere behind me. “Don’t look, but Jamie is here.”

“
What?!
” I whisper-screamed.

“Who?” Kristen asked simultaneously, cranking her neck in the same direction as Jenna. She told me not to look, but of course I didn’t listen — how could I? A ghost had just walked into the bar, and I had to see for myself. As soon as I spotted him, my heart jumped, and the hole I’d felt growing since the last time I’d seen him filled, warming my blood.

It had been three years. Or had it been just yesterday? I wasn’t sure. I felt both measurements of time, noting his differences but feeling his familiarity even from across the bar. In Scotland, you can only classify whiskey as Scotch once it’s been aged in casks for a minimum of three years. I realized it in that moment that Jamie was a young Scotch now, a blended whiskey promising experience and flavor. My mouth watered and, like a magnet, his eyes found mine just as the door swung closed behind him.