I looked back on all the damage we’d done — to ourselves, to those around us — and I mourned the time I’d lost fighting for someone who would never be mine. I’d been a fool, and now I was standing in the rubble of the life I’d wasted, drowning in both sorrow and a drive to build a new one.

I’d waited too long for Whiskey, and I refused to let him hold that power over me any longer.

And you know what? It actually worked. For the first time in my life, and with more pain and time than I’d hoped or even thought I could survive, I finally let him go. I deleted him off every social media network, wiped his number from my phone, packed all our pictures and memories away and started over fresh. I was clean. I’d moved on. I was happy. I was free.

Then, after almost two years without calling, Jamie just showed up.

TAYLOR SWIFT BLASTED THROUGH my apartment as I pranced around, hair tied up in a messy bun and half a bottle of wine already consumed. I sang the lyrics at the top of my lungs, sliding into the kitchen in my tube socks with packing tape in hand. The box I’d just packed full with dishes was padded and ready, so I closed the flaps and taped them shut, biting the cap of my Sharpie between my teeth as I scrawled kitchen across the cardboard. I smiled then, belting out a high note with the Sharpie as my microphone before dropping it back to the counter and tackling the next empty box.

There are rare, shining bright periods of our lives where everything seems almost too good to be true. All the pieces fall into place, effortlessly and beautifully, and we get to enjoy the final masterpiece with not one single worry. They’re the kind of moments where we realize we’re lucky to be alive, to be who we are, to be breathing the air around us. They’re the kind of days that remind us why we had to suffer through the dark ones, why it’s all worth it in the end.

That was the kind of day I was having.

It was pouring buckets outside, fall greeting the city with a cold, gray day, and yet I was emitting sunshine. I was drunk, a little sweaty, and a lot excited. Right on the heels of one of the worst years of my life, I’d happened to have had the best. Jenna had moved to Pittsburgh, I’d been promoted at work, and perhaps the most shocking of all? I’d found Mr. Right.

No, I’d found the Mr. Right.

Bradley Neil checked all my boxes. He was intelligent, witty, and sexy as hell. He’d built all his success on his own, chasing his dream of being his own boss and making it come true with his entrepreneurship. Brad was the founder and owner of an up-and-coming graphic design company, one he’d imagined into reality with hard work and creativity unlike anything I’d ever witnessed before. We met when Rye Publishing hired his company to completely remaster our logo and website. He’d caught my attention in the first meeting, reeled me in throughout the few weeks we worked together, and pulled me in hook, line, and sinker after the first date I agreed to.

From that moment on, it’d been like the sweetest fairytale.

Brad was a philanthropist, and I loved to give back with him. We’d volunteer in the community together, and in those times we learned more and more about each other. He told me he loved me after three months together. I said it back after four. After seven months, I met his family and he met Mom and Wayne. And then after just eight months, he asked me to marry him, and I said yes without a single hesitation. I didn’t think about how our relationship had been shorter than the one I had with my hair brush, or how it was probably absurd that we decided to only have a five-month engagement, or that I was practically insane for agreeing to move in with him even before we said “I do.” And as much as you may hate me for it, I didn’t think about Jamie — not one single time since the words “I love you” left my lips and met Brad’s ears.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Jamie was there — he was always there. He still owned that monumental piece of my heart, of my soul, of my body. I felt him like a hummingbird right in the center of my chest, wings fluttering, blood buzzing. He was always there, but now, instead of focusing on that buzz, I’d dulled it with other, louder, more demanding sounds.

Because you see, it’d taken months of agony, of withdrawal, of anger and pain and depression and losing more of myself than I care to admit to finally emerge on the other side of my life with Jamie Shaw. Every minute hurt, until one day it was sort of a dull ache, and then with more passing time it weakened to only a pressure — that pressure in my chest. I’d completed my twelve-step program. I was clean. I wanted to stay clean.

So, no. As much as you may hate me for it, I wasn’t thinking about Jamie. Not even a little bit.

In fact, I was so confident in my ability to not think about Jamie that I’d decided to drink for the first time in over a year. Part of my twelve-step program was giving up literal drinking, too. Every time I drank, I thought of Jamie. I wanted to call him or dwell on his memory. So, I gave up alcohol altogether — the literal and figurative versions, both.

But tonight I was celebrating, and so I’d popped a bottle of wine and though the old me could have pounded a bottle before feeling tipsy, the new me was drunk after half. But I was happy drunk — dancing, singing, packing. I felt it, a new chapter starting, a new day dawning.

I wasn’t thinking about Jamie.

Not until the exact moment he showed up.

It was a soft knock at first, barely heard over the rain and music, and I was right in the middle of wrapping a wine glass in newspaper.

“Just a sec!” I called. I’d just tucked the glass into a box when a second, louder knock came. I huffed, wondering why they didn’t just walk in anyway. I only ever had two visitors — Brad and Jenna — and both had keys. Clicking the pause button on my Taylor Swift jam sesh, I yelled louder. “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

I was still humming to the tune of I Wish You Would, hips swinging in my pale blue sleep shorts as I readjusted the bun on my head and pulled the door open without even checking the peephole. The air of it hit me with a whoosh, my smile bright and unsuspecting, and then I saw him.

Whiskey and water. A ghostly memory, a wound ripped fresh.

Did you know adding water to whiskey can actually enhance the flavor? It’s true. Turns out, a little dilution can be good, but in this case, it was my worst enemy. Because there was Whiskey, and there was water, but there was no dilution — no, his flavors had only grown stronger, they’d only aged better, and I knew with a head full of wine that I was in deep trouble.