43 pages • 1-hour read
A Love Letter to Whiskey
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Chapter 19-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of emotional abuse, addiction, substance use, and sexual content.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Clean”
B finally feels at home while surfing with Jamie. She knows that he wants to tell her something, but neither of them will force it. They go camping for Jamie’s bachelor party, and she feels awkward when one of the groomsmen, Charlie, tells her that he knows she is still in love with Jamie and that he expects Jamie to act on his feelings before the next day.
Jamie and B stay up after the others go to bed, and when she goes to the bathroom, she lets him hold her phone. While she is gone, Jamie sees that B has kept all his old voicemails; he kisses her when she returns. As they go back to his tent, B tells him that she doesn’t have the will to stop kissing him and that he has to choose whether to take things further. When she reminds him that he is getting married tomorrow, Jamie stops kissing her, but they still sleep in the same tent that night.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Medicine”
The next morning, Charlie rustles Jamie’s tent, alerting B and allowing her to leave unseen by the other groomsmen. Jamie hardly looks at B as they prepare for the wedding. When B arrives at the country club, a pair of photographers approaches her, and she knows something is wrong. Jamie’s sister, Sylvia, and Charlie stop B from going back to where the bride and groom’s parties are getting ready. Jamie then storms out of Angel’s room, and Angel blames B for the commotion when she sees her. Sylvia reveals that Angel saw a picture of Jamie, B, and the other groomsmen together from the bachelor party; she got jealous and cheated on Jamie, causing them to call off the wedding.
B searches for Jamie for hours, finally finding him at the bar of her hotel; he’s drinking whiskey and doesn’t want to talk about what happened. B leaves Jamie a spare key to her hotel room before heading there herself. She has sex with Jamie without speaking about what happened, knowing it will help him feel better.
Chapter 21 Summary: “12 Step Program”
The next morning, Jamie feels guilty but also relieved: He loved Angel, but not as much as he loves B. He takes B to the airport and kisses her unapologetically. B tells him to call her whenever he is ready to be with her.
Back in Pittsburgh, she is ecstatic about what the future holds, ending her relationship with River and telling her mother and Jenna about her future with Jamie. She researches publishing houses in Florida and gets ready to compromise on what she wants out of her career.
After a month of hearing nothing, B calls Jamie, but he doesn’t answer. Two months later, she calls again and leaves a voicemail, asking him to call back and let her help him, if only as a friend. After six months without hearing from Jamie, B has become angry and asks Jenna to check on him. When Jenna sees him the next day, she reveals that he looks like he’s doing well and does not seem to be seeing another woman. B feels broken knowing that Jamie has moved on, and she resolves to move on from him as well. She gets rid of any evidence of Jamie having been in her life and spends the next two years putting their relationship behind her. Then, Jamie shows up unexpectedly at her apartment.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Wilson’s Weakness”
B is packing up her apartment for a move after one of the best years of her life: Jenna moved to Pittsburgh, and B got a promotion and met Bradley “Brad” Neil, her “Mr. Right.” They got engaged and agreed to move in together in a whirlwind romance. B hasn’t thought about Jamie since she told Brad that she loved him, but she knows he is still a part of her.
Now, however, Jamie arrives at B’s front door, holding an invitation to her and Brad’s wedding. B feels uncertain about what she can handle with Jamie, especially because she is drunk for the first time in a year. She called Jamie to tell him about the marriage, but he never picked up. He refuses to believe that she is actually getting married, having expected her to wait for him as long as he needed, like he did when she left college. Jamie asks if she loves or wants him, but B has prepared herself for this moment and tells him that she doesn’t. Jamie walks away, and B feels forced to follow him. When she tells him to wait, he sees that she was lying about her feelings and comes back to kiss her.
Jamie orders B not to get married as they begin to have sex, asking if Brad makes her feel the way he does. Though B thinks, at the time, that she will never regret a minute of their night together, she does the next morning when she sees how her life is about to change. She blames Jamie and calls what they did a mistake even as Jamie tries to tell her that she is not happy without him. Jamie reveals that he didn’t call because he had signed the wedding certificate the morning of the wedding, meaning that he and Angel were legally married. Angel tried to get half of everything he owned in the divorce, even his share of his father’s company, and she used video footage of Jamie and B on the night of the wedding as evidence that he had been cheating on her. Jamie had to block B’s number to prove that he wasn’t in contact with B and protect his assets. The divorce was finalized the same day that he got B’s wedding invitation.
B is angry with Jamie for not trying harder to tell her the truth. He insists that it doesn’t matter because they both love each other, but B forces him to leave, feeling that the two of them only hurt one another. Three months later, B marries Brad but thinks about Jamie even on their wedding night.
Chapter 23 Summary: “A Love Letter to Whiskey”
The narrative catches up to the Prologue, when Jamie shows up at B’s door unexpectedly on her birthday, just as he did shortly before her marriage a year before. Five months after she got married, she separated from Brad, feeling numb since Jamie left. Jenna and B’s mother have been worried about her, and B knows it is warranted, even though she now tells Jamie that she is fine. Jamie tells her that he still loves her and always will; rather than saying goodbye, he says that they’ll meet again when the timing is right. B feels like she has destroyed her entire life.
Jenna takes B out for her birthday that night, which cheers her up slightly. Afterward, Jenna gets B to open a birthday present that Jamie gave her earlier. B sees that the gift is a keychain with charms that symbolize moments in their relationship. After seeing all the charms and what they mean, B understands that Jamie really does love her. Still, she tells Jenna that she is worried that their relationship has just been about wanting what they can’t have. Jenna assures her that while circumstances may have prevented B and Jamie from being together, their love is real, and B shouldn’t consider it a bad thing or an addiction.
The next morning, B sits down to start writing her love letter to “Whiskey,” this book. She now speaks directly to Jamie as she writes, apologizing for the mistakes she made and letting him know how strong her love for him is. She plans to give him this book shortly before his 30th birthday, and she hopes he will remember their time together and the pact that they made. She says that she will be waiting for him.
Epilogue Summary: “Last Drop”
B sits in the passenger seat of Jamie’s car once again as they drive to the beach to go surfing. She mentions the wedding ring on Jamie’s finger and her belief that Jamie’s wife doesn’t deserve Jamie, finally revealing that she is now his wife.
Chapter 19-Epilogue Analysis
Throughout most of the final chapters, B continues to describe Jamie as an addiction. She feels “Clean,” the title of Chapter 19, when she goes surfing with Jamie without having to think about his upcoming wedding. However, she still considers their relationship addictive, telling Jamie that she doesn’t have the will to stop him from having sex with her when they are in his tent at the bachelor party. In this way, B denies her own agency in the relationship, developing the theme of The Importance of Accountability. The language of addiction and recovery resurfaces in her relationship with Brad when B describes having gone through her own “12 Step Program” like the one associated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Her choice to give up alcohol during this time mirrors how she tries to purge Jamie from her life. Even so, she feels herself “relapsing” when Jamie enters her life again and tries to reassure herself: “You can do this. You’re clean. You are in control” (260). Yet when Jamie tries to leave, B feels like she has no choice but to stop him, saying, “He knew I wanted him. I always had. I always would” (264)—a remark that frames their love as inevitable.
Simultaneously, however, B begins to question whether she should consider Jamie an addiction at all. In Chapter 20, she thinks about how whiskey can be medicinal, saying that while it is a drug to some, “[t]o others, whiskey is medicine. A shot of bourbon can chase away what ails you, whether it be a sore throat or a broken heart” (241). Her reflections suggest that Jamie might actually be good for her—an idea that B has largely not allowed herself to explore. Eventually, B is sure enough of herself to decide that Jamie is “not an addiction […] He’s an inclination” (284). Besides avoiding the negative connotations of “addiction,” this reframing highlights B’s agency; she may be naturally “inclined” toward Jamie, but she can choose whether or not to act on that feeling.
B’s character arc thus involves both coming to grips with her own agency and Learning to Accept Love. As she recognizes the potential of a relationship with Jamie, B also realizes that she is deserving of the happiness she wants. Moreover, she recognizes that she has a say over how her life unfolds. She makes serious life choices when she separates from Brad and chooses to be with Jamie, expressing a willingness to wait for him and put effort into their relationship, as he did for her earlier. The book she writes to Jamie is evidence of her character development, as writing it entails acknowledging and owning up to all the ways she was wrong and sabotaged their relationship. Her ability to joke about her own flaws as she does in the Epilogue—“I think his wife is selfish. I think she’s a little lost, a little broken, and a little too fond of making mistakes” (287)—further illustrates her humility and her commitment to personal growth. When she and Jamie drive to the beach to go surfing at the end of the novel, it symbolizes the peace and happiness that B has finally found in life: Just as B and Jamie know how to ride out ocean waves, they have navigated the ups and downs of their relationship.
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