In her defense, we did end up having a pretty decent time. We danced and laughed and drank. We drank a lot. But by the end of the night, we ended up right back in my apartment. In fact, we ended up in my favorite place in the apartment — my bathtub. Still in our Sixteen Candles-ish dresses, tulle fluffed up all around us, and a bottle of Makers Mark that we passed back and forth. Jenna’s playlist on her phone echoed off the walls of the bathroom and Jamie’s gift sat unwrapped, cradled in the mess of our dresses between us.

“Okay, so are you drunk enough to open it yet?” Jenna finally asked around three in the morning.

I took another swig from the bottle, eyes a little hazy, and laughed. “I don’t think that’s a reachable point.”

“What are you so afraid of?”

I shrugged, kicking the heels off my feet that hung out of the tub. Jenna followed suit, and we swung our bare feet as I passed the bottle back to her. “It’s not that I’m scared. I just don’t know what good it will do opening it.”

“You’re not curious?”

“Of course I am.”

Jenna huffed. “So open the damn thing. I’m dying over here.”

She tossed the box into my lap and I picked it up with shaking fingers, thumbing at the twine and wondering what it could be. It was light, and it rattled with each move of my hands. “I don’t know how I’ll feel after I open this,” I admitted, turning to Jenna then. Jamie had only ever given me one gift before then, and it was a funny one, an inside joke, but this felt heavier.

“Well that’s why I’m here,” Jenna said with a smile. “To help you figure it out.”

She squeezed my leg through the puffy fabric of my dress and my hands gripped the box tighter. I chewed my lip, unsure, but my fingers were already peeling away at the twine and paper. It was strange, the way my heart raced the same way it always had in the presence of Whiskey. Maybe it was the Makers, maybe it was the unknown gift, or maybe it was my body waking up, realizing before even I did that twenty-eight really would be a year of change.

When the paper was shed, I let it fall beside us, popping open the lid of a small, navy blue box. There was tissue paper inside, wrapped around something, and I was still shaking slightly as I peeled it back.

“Oh my God,” I whispered when the tissue was gone. Jenna leaned in closer as I rubbed the cool metal of a simple charm keychain.

There were six charms, and one small note.

Even if you must move on, please don’t ever let us go.

I read the note over and over, eyes misting before I thumbed through the charms. There was no explanation needed for them.

It was a keychain, which reminded me of our drives, so many of them over the years. The nights we laughed, nights we hurt, nights we just existed as a boy and a girl. His passenger seat would always be mine, and this keychain proved it.

The first charm I noticed was a music note. Classical music, our rare and kind of weird relatable preference. I thought of the playlists we’d had over the years, of The Piano Guys, of music that didn’t need words the same way Jamie and I never did.

Next was a surfboard, followed by a cat. I laughed at that one, wondering if that story had really meant more to him than I ever knew. Then, there was a bottle of whiskey. It looked similar to Jack Daniels, and memories of the bon fire at Alder flooded my mind at first before I realized it was also our first shot together. In my kitchen, all those years ago, when the addiction hadn’t yet been discovered and yet we had both felt it playing just below the surface.

So many times we’d been burned, and yet every time we wanted more.

The last two I focused on made my chest ache. One was a simple silver airplane, and I thought about the distance between us over the last several years. Between Florida and California, and then Florida and Pennsylvania, and always in our minds. Distance and time had always dictated so much for us, and for the first time in my life, I was starting to wonder why I let it. The very last charm was a flat, rose gold heart. I didn’t have to think hard on that one. His heart belonged to me, just like mine would always belong to him.

“You okay?” Jenna asked after a moment. I was so silent and still, save for the slight movement of my thumbs over the charms.

“He loves me,” I whispered. I’d known it all along, I’d heard it a million times, yet it was the first time it actually hit me. “Even after all this, Jenna. He loves me.”

She nodded, leaning her head on my shoulder and passing me the bottle of whiskey. “I think he always has, babe.”

I sniffed, not wanting to cry because I wasn’t sad. I really wasn’t. I was relieved, and hopeful — even if unrightfully so.

“What am I supposed to do? All we do is hurt each other. How do I know we’ll ever be able to make it? How do I trust him with a heart he’s broken so many times?”

Jenna thought while I thumbed through the charms again, thoughts racing.

“What’s your biggest fear with it all? You know as well as I do that if you give your heart to him, really give it to him, he’d never do anything to hurt you. If anything, it should be him who’s afraid — and clearly he’s not. So what’s the real issue?”

I chewed my bottom lip, answers to her question swirling in my head. “It’s just, look at the path of destruction we’ve laid. He cheated, I cheated… twice.” I cringed with the admission. “We’ve hurt others around us, and we’ve never really been together. It’s always been about not being able to have each other. What if it’s just about wanting what we can’t have? What if that’s all part of the allure? It just feels wrong, and in the eyes of most sane people, it is. We’re built on lust and bad decisions.”

“But are you?” Jenna challenged, sitting up again. She turned to face me, tucking her feet inside the tub. “No, you and Jamie never had it easy. And yes, you hurt a lot of people along the way. But at the end of the day, it’s your life, B. You have to live with it, no one else. So you can’t think about the people around you, how you’ve hurt them or what they think of you. It’s up to you to be happy because no one else is going to do it for you.” She smiled then, blue eyes bright in my dim bathroom. “Whatever you choose, make sure it makes you happy.”

“That sounds a little selfish.”

Jenna shrugged. “Yeah well, sometimes selfish and smart are synonymous.”