“Shoes. Off.” I pointed at her feet. “You do that, and I’ll let you taste a few barrels. Just don’t tell anyone, least of all your parents.”
She chuckled, but finally stepped out of her heels. They fell on their sides as a relieved sigh slipped through her lips, and I watched her polished toes curl on my t-shirt.
“God, that feels so much better.”
I shook my head, reaching back behind the first row of barrels for the tasting glasses we housed there. “Are you always so stubborn?”
“I wasn’t being stubborn.”
“I guess that’s my answer,” I said, pouring a tiny splash from one of the barrels before holding the glass toward her. “Here. Take a sip.”
“Oh, no,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “It’s okay. Like you said, I’m underage.”
“So you’ve never had a sip of alcohol in your life?” I challenged.
She bit her lip. “I mean… I have, but not whiskey. That’s a man’s drink.”
At that, I full on belly-laughed. “What the hell kind of talk is that? Whiskey is a man’s drink?” I shook my head. “It’s whiskey. It’s expensive whiskey, at that. And I assure you, it’s delicious — whether you have tits or not.”
Ruby Grace blushed, biting her lip against a smile. “God, sorry. I sound like my mother. More and more every day now, actually,” she mused, glancing down at her toes before her eyes found the glass in my hand again.
I pushed it toward her. “Just a sip. You’re not even going to get close to feeling a buzz. But this way, you can taste the difference between a few barrels that were aged in different ways.” I swallowed. “You can pick out the perfect one for your future husband.”
She hesitated, but her hand reached forward, taking the other side of the glass. Our fingertips brushed just slightly, just enough to make me jerk my own hand away.
“And, hey, bonus,” I continued, shaking off the awkward tension. “You can be as ‘unladylike’ as you want here. I won’t judge. You can even burp, if you’re really feeling frisky.”
Ruby Grace laughed, eyeing the whiskey like she still wasn’t sure before she shrugged and tilted the glass in my direction. “Oh, what the hell. Bottoms up.”
She took a sip, and then promptly grimaced and stuck her tongue out as soon as she’d swallowed.
“God, that’s awful.” She shook her head, shoving the glass back in my direction. “Definitely not doing that again.”
I laughed, rinsing the glass with a splash of water from the bottles we kept nearby before filling it with the same whiskey.
“Okay, that was my bad. Maybe I should have told you how to taste it first.” I handed it to her again, though she eyed it like it was poison. “Smell it first.”
She did as I said, uncertainty shading her face as she looked my way again. “I’m not sure I’m doing it right.”
“You’re not sure you’re smelling right?”
She narrowed her eyes. “You know what I mean. I don’t… I don’t know anything about this stuff.”
“It’s okay, that’s why I’m here.” I stepped closer to her, taking the glass from her hand, and when I inhaled to demonstrate, it was her I smelled instead of the whiskey.
She smelled like lavender, like an open field in the heat of summer.
“Watch,” I said, taking another breath, this time focusing on the whiskey. “You smell it first, and ask yourself what you smell. Oak? Vanilla? Honey? Maple? Every whiskey is different, depending on how it’s aged, how the barrels are charred and toasted. See what notes you can detect first. And then,” I continued, taking my first sip. I let it linger in my mouth, swirling it a round before swallowing gently. “Taste it. I mean, really taste it. Does it give you different flavors on the tip of your tongue than it does on the back? Does it burn going down, or is it just warm? And what’s the aftertaste?”
Ruby Grace watched me, fascinated, her lips parted softly, eyes falling to my bare chest where a small drop of whiskey had landed. I thumbed it away, handing her the glass again.
“Now, you try.”
She took a deep breath, like she needed to focus to really do it right, and then she repeated my steps. And this time, when she finished swallowing, she smiled.
“Wow,” she said. “It’s different when you don’t just throw it back like a shot.”
I chuckled. “Well, this isn’t shooting whiskey. It’s Tennessee Sippin’ Whiskey,” I said, tilting my imaginary hat. I tucked my hands in my pockets, nodding toward the next barrel. “Take a little from that one.”
“I can pour it myself?”
I nodded. “Just twist that spout a little, not too much. You don’t need a lot to taste it.”
She was hesitant as she poured a sip into her glass, and her eyes lit up, a little squeal of joy popping from her mouth. “I did it!”
And for the next ten minutes, I watched Ruby Grace be a girl.
She was so far from the snotty woman who had offered me her hand like a prize when we first met. She was just a teenager, a soon-to-be sophomore in college, drinking whiskey, learning something new and having fun.
I wondered when the last time was that she had fun.
I wondered if she’d ever had fun at all.
The way she looked when she laughed, I hoped she had. I hoped it wasn’t the first time that laugh had been genuine, the first time that sound had made its way into the airwaves. She laughed the way the wind blew — softly, and then all at once, without an ounce of shame for how that sound might permanently shift the atmosphere around it.
When she’d decided on the barrel she wanted, Ruby Grace regretfully slipped back into her heels, and I tugged my t-shirt on before leading us out of the warehouse and toward the welcome center.
“So,” I said, walking slow so she didn’t kill her feet
