A Love Letter to Whiskey by Kandi Steiner

cut off at my knees, but it was enough.
    I’d spent fifty hard-earned dollars on the coral top I was sporting, but it was worth it. I didn’t even know they made bathing suits with underwire, but my barely B-cups were pushed up to the heavens, making them look fuller than I’d ever seen before, and the bright orangish pink was blazing against my mocha skin. It tied around my neck and clasped in the back, and I’d paired it with simple black bottoms that tied at each hip.
    Makeup was still sort of a challenge to me, since Jenna helped me more times than not in high school, but I’d played up my gray eyes with a smoky eye and nude lip gloss. My hair was natural, spiral curls jetting off in different directions but framing my face in a tame enough way. I took one last look and slid into my gold sandals just as Ethan knocked on the front door.
    Marie let him in before I could slip on my black, mesh lace cover-up and he stalled, his eyes trailing. “Damn.”
    I laughed, because I had no idea how to react to the way he was staring at me. I reached for my coverup resting half in the sink, half out and pulled it over my head, but his hands were on my hips, stopping it from falling the rest of the way down.
    “Maybe we should skip the party,” he murmured.
    I lightly shoved him toward the door and he dropped his hands, my coverup hitting my thighs. “Nuh-uh. I’m giving up a full night of studying, mister. You’re taking me out.”
    Ethan looked pretty enticing himself, dressed in patriotic board shorts that just hit his knees and a plain white t-shirt. He kissed my nose before grabbing my hand and leading me through the door and out to his car.
    The drive was quiet, the wind whipping around us in his convertible Mustang. He said it was a gift from his father for high school graduation, and that was all I needed to know to guess what kind of upbringing he had. Still, we hadn’t really talked much about where we’d come from. For the both of us, it was more about where we were going. He asked me a lot about my major, which I still hadn’t decided on, and he loved to tell me his plans to make a difference in our country. He was going into politics. He knew that with certainty . I was a little jealous of that.
    What I loved most about Ethan was how much he believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. He challenged me to ask myself what I wanted out of my life, and no one had really made me think about it before I met him. He didn’t just see the girl in his car tonight, he saw the woman she would become in ten years. I was a vision to him, and he was a comfort to me.
    We pulled up to a large, rustic gate less than half an hour later and Ethan entered the code before driving us up a long driveway shielded by trees on either side. When the mansion it lead to came into view, my jaw dropped.
    I’d been to beach houses before in Florida, but nothing compared in size to this one. It was two stories, at least a football field in width, off-white with deep-red paneling. Ethan parked his car and held the door open for me while I continued to stare.
    “Come on, time to show you off.” He grinned, offering me his arm, and I hooked mine through it to let him walk me inside.
    I expected marble floors and high chandeliers, I expected fancy artwork on the walls and vases more expensive than my tuition on every table, and I found all of that. But what I also found that I was not expecting was a full-blown house party. The music blaring from the DJ set up in the far corner of the massive living room was deafening, lights streaming from his table across the crowd of students. It looked like a club in the space that had been cleared out in front of his table and the rest of the house was packed with different groups of people talking, playing drinking games, or doing drugs.
    “Wow,” I breathed.
    Ethan ran a hand over his barely-there buzz cut as he followed my eyes. “Yeah, I guess I forgot to mention it gets kind of crazy