43 pages • 1-hour read
A Love Letter to Whiskey
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Chapters 7-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, emotional abuse, substance use, and sexual content.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Water of Life”
B avoids Jamie for a few days after their kiss, and things seem like they are going back to normal between them. Jamie dates other girls during this time, and B feels strange about it; all the girls are white, blonde, and curvy, while B has darker skin and a more athletic build. B starts to bond with one of her roommates, Marie, and gets better at surfing in California. One day, Ethan asks B if Jamie is more than her friend, and she feels both guilty and regretful about saying no. Ethan has been comparing himself to Jamie and wants more reassurance from B, so she knows that she needs to start pulling away from Jamie.
A few weeks later, when she is helping Ethan with his campaign for student government, she gets a text from Jamie and knows something is wrong. She meets Jamie that night, and he takes her for a drive without talking for two hours. They go to a small beach, where he finally tells B that his father’s accounting firm—the place where Jamie always planned to work—is going under. Jamie always depended on that accounting firm to ground his view of his future, and he feels desperate as B tries to reassure him that she believes in him. Jamie decides to go back to Florida for a while in the summer and wants B to come with him, even though he knows she has been pulling away from him. She tells him that she has been avoiding him because Ethan feels threatened by him. B admits that she is also afraid of what she will do if she is alone with Jamie; he asks if he can kiss her, and although she claims that it will make her angry, she kisses back when he does. They end up having sex, which B compares to getting drunk on whiskey.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Straight Up”
B wakes up happy the next afternoon but soon panics as she remembers that she has a boyfriend. She feels desperate as she texts Jamie, only to run into him a moment later with another woman. Jamie never texts her back, and B thinks of him all day and night.
The next morning, she realizes the full weight of the mistake that she and Jamie made on the beach and feels terrified of seeing Ethan later that day. When she goes to Ethan and Jamie’s apartment, she can feel Jamie’s presence from the moment she walks in. She tells Ethan that they need to talk, but he pushes it off until later. Jamie follows B into the kitchen and confronts her about talking to Ethan and ignoring him. However, Jamie himself storms out when B accuses him of sleeping with another woman; the woman whom B saw him with was just his lab partner. Later, B goes back to her dorm and sees that Jenna has come to surprise her.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Jack Daniels”
B is annoyed with herself because she can’t stop thinking about Jamie, even when she and Jenna go to a party later that night. Jenna is surprised to see Jamie at the party, as B never told her that he attends the same school. B gets drunk from a flask of Jack Daniels as she watches Jenna and Jamie flirt with one another, and Ethan worries about her as she gets another drink. Ethan reminds B that she wanted to talk earlier, but she knows she can’t tell him about Jamie tonight. Instead, B suggests that they all play “Never Have I Ever,” and the whole group learns uncomfortable truths about one another’s sexual pasts. B and Ethan then get in a fight when he tries to prevent her from going skinny dipping, calling her by her full name. As B storms off, Jamie follows and tells her about how he hasn’t stopped thinking about the night they had sex. Jenna finds them as they start to kiss again and demands that B explain herself as they head back to her dorm room.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Hangover”
B and Jenna talk until the early morning, and Jenna’s understanding surprises B. Still, Jenna makes her choose between Jamie and Ethan, and B chooses Jamie. However, just as she is about to talk to Ethan and Jamie, she gets a phone call from her mother telling her that her father just died in a freak accident on a lake. B goes to the beach to be alone while Jenna packs B’s bags for her, but as B gets ready to surf, Jamie appears and tells her that she should not go out in the stormy conditions. B talks about the complexity of her feelings for her father and the fact that she hasn’t talked to him since the day she graduated. While Jamie tells her that it’s okay that she still loves her father, B insists that it is not and compares it to her illicit feelings for Jamie. Jamie admits that he loves her back and asks her to stay with him that night.
The next day, B and Jenna go back to Florida for the funeral. B doesn’t return to college afterward but instead begins to write voraciously and swears off drinking whiskey in both the literal and metaphorical sense. She makes one call to Ethan to tell him about what happened with Jamie and finishes her degree near her hometown in Florida. Jamie calls her twice every year, but B never answers, believing that her grief would only drag him down.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Sober”
Exactly three years after her father’s death, B watches Jamie’s name appear and disappear on her phone as she ignores his call. In the past years, she has only felt at peace when she is surfing and writing, and while she feels better than she used to, she knows she has a long way to go in her healing process. She has also witnessed her mother grow since meeting her new boyfriend, Wayne, having a happy and healthy relationship for the first time in B’s life. B is about to graduate from college and start a new life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she will be attending graduate school.
Jenna takes B and their friend Kristen out after graduation. While they’re at a bar, Jenna spots Jamie. Jamie sees B and approaches her, and they both feel content as they hug for the first time in years. Jamie is back in Florida after passing his accounting certification exam and accepting a job offer. Jamie invites B to leave with him, and she quickly agrees.
Chapter 12 Summary: “One Night With Scotch”
B appreciates the easy silence with Jamie and feels that the universe brought them together at the exact right moment. They move on to the topic of their relationship, and B acknowledges that it was wrong of her to push Jamie away, though she also says she needed the space. B tells him that she is leaving in two days, and he takes her to his place so that they can spend the night together. B knows that she may regret this, but she wants to be with Jamie while she can. After having sex, they argue about whether or not they can have a long-distance relationship. B agrees not to ignore him any longer but does not want to put a label on their relationship. He asks her to promise that he can have two things: “Tonight, and one day” (157). While B stays with him that night, that “one day” never comes.
Chapters 7-12 Analysis
These chapters of the novel highlight the toxic elements of B and Jamie’s relationship. Not only does B cheat on her first boyfriend, Ethan, but she is also quick to distrust Jamie, as when she sees Jamie walking with his lab partner or flirting with Jenna. B acts hypocritically, accusing Jamie of infidelity when she herself cheated on her boyfriend. The alcohol motif underscores the problematic aspects of the relationship, with B’s drunkenness at the party paralleling her turbulent feelings around Jamie and her sense that she has “overindulged” on him.
However, this toxicity is not, as B contends, a function of the relationship itself but rather of the fact that she is still Learning to Accept Love. For instance, when she and Jamie meet again years after her father’s death and promise to spend one night together, B writes about the scene as if it were a foregone conclusion that they would never be together again after that encounter. In reality, this merely reflects her own conflicting impulses: She knows that she is leaving, so it feels wrong to be with Jamie even as she agrees to spend the night with him. Her framing of the relationship as destructive or doomed is a preemptive attempt to avoid being hurt. As B herself acknowledges, her complicated relationship with her parents and her lack of understanding of what love looks like make her unsure of what to do in a romantic relationship.
Though the novel presents B’s actions as understandable in the context of her history, it does not excuse them. Rather, her character arc highlights The Importance of Accountability. In these and other chapters, B blames the failure of her relationship with Jamie on The Influence of Timing and chance, but she is not without agency in the situations during which she feels helpless. B doesn’t have to stay with Ethan when she realizes that she loves Jamie, nor does she need to cut Jamie off entirely when she leaves college. B chooses to ignore Jamie while he waits for her, saving his voicemails and continuing to hurt herself. In other instances, B consciously makes choices regarding Jamie that she recognizes she may later regret, like her choice to go home with him in Chapter 11. Such moments illustrate how often she knowingly and unknowingly sabotages her own relationship.
B’s father’s death is one of the key plot points in the novel and contributes substantially to her characterization. Her unexpectedly conflicted feelings about him make his death all the more impactful: Grief consumes B to such an extent that she feels that she would only hurt Jamie by letting him be around her, thinking, “What kind of person would I be if I let Jamie love me in my condition?” (139). Though B feels like she is protecting Jamie by pushing him away, her word choice is telling; she likens her grief to a “condition,” suggesting her broader struggles to accept her feelings. However, B experiences several positive changes in the wake of her father’s death that imply character growth. While grieving her father, she picks up writing and surfing again, two hobbies that bring her peace. She finishes her degree, makes new friends, and forges a better relationship with her mother as they both work through their complex relationships with B’s father. Overall, this period of B’s life is one of tremendous growth, yet little about how she reacts to Jamie changes when she finally sees him again.
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