Thoughts Left Unsaid

by Alex Exley

  * * *

  It was at Robert and Melinda Cohen’s New Year’s Eve party the previous winter. The usual crowd was there, all our friends and acquaintances. I was there with Liz. Phil was there. The wine was flowing, the atmosphere festive and high spirited. We weren’t as wild as we had been twenty years earlier in college, but a couple times a year when everyone got together without their kids, those uninhibited tendencies seeped back in, if only for a few hours in a watered-down form.

  The evening progressed as expected, everyone getting a little drunker as the New Year crept upon us, conversation becoming more and more forgettable. In the midst of one of many haphazard and disorganized exchanges, someone made a comment about our getting older; someone else retorted that they felt as young as ever; someone said our bodies weren’t as young as ever; someone else said her breasts certainly weren’t as young as ever. Everyone laughed.

  Shortly thereafter, at about twenty minutes to midnight, I finished my wine and went looking for a refill. Every bottle I found was empty. Then I ran into Melinda Cohen in the kitchen, pulling a tray of hors d’oeuvres out of the oven.

  “Any more wine around, Melinda? The bottles in the living room are empty.”

  She placed the tray on top of the oven, scanned the counters and checked inside a few cabinets. “You know what, David,” she said, peering into the refrigerator. “I didn’t know this crowd could put it away like they used to. They must have gone through everything I brought up. But we have plenty in the cellar. I’ll go down and grab some. What would you like?”

  “You want me to get it? You look like you’ve got your hands full.”

  “If you don’t mind, that would be helpful. You know how mobs can be. They may start to riot if they aren’t kept satiated.” She had lined a basket and was placing flaky pastries into it. “You know where the wine cellar is, right?”

  The Cohen’s are proud of their wine cellar. It’s the final stop and highlight of the tour of their home. It had progressed over the years from a spare room with a few wine racks to a finely crafted, temperature-controlled cellar complete with slate flooring and matching countertops, dark cherry wood racks and cabinets holding, I would guess, at least a thousand bottles, and a stained glass window on the entrance door picturing a vineyard encircled by grapevines.

  “Yup,” I answered. “How many should I bring up?”

  “Oh, how about three, just to be safe. A couple reds and a white. I don’t think anyone’ll be too picky at this point in the night.”

  “You got it.” I rounded the corner and opened the basement door, found the light switch on the wall and went downstairs.

  “Any red but the Gaja!” Melinda’s voice chased me down the stairs.

  I examined a few bottles. Knowing as much about wine as I did the sport of curling, which is to say only the basics, I picked out a Merlot and a Shiraz and set them on the counter. I was about to grab a Chardonnay when Cheryl appeared at the wine cellar door.

  I’d known Cheryl for about twenty years. I knew she was married; I was in her wedding party. When I’d first met her, she didn’t strike me as anyone exceptional. She was plain looking and shy, too shy to get to know very well. But she was only twenty, maybe twenty-one then. As time went by she grew more confident in her personality and out of the baby fat that padded her edges. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in our mid to late twenties I found myself stealing glances at her, even having occasional thoughts about her that, if found out, would have earned me at least a few nights on the couch.

  As one who likes to joke around, I tend to elicit the same behavior from others, which makes it hard to tell if a woman is flirting with me or just kidding around. More than once Cheryl had made suggestive remarks that were probably innocent, but which could have contained a tinge of sincerity. I never knew if my own desirous imagination was playing tricks on me.

  “Need a hand with those?” Cheryl asked.

  I felt tipsy from the wine and was slow to react. “Hi. Yeah. You could grab one.”

  She stepped into the wine cellar and surveyed her surroundings. “When did they finish this? It really looks great.”

  “I think about a year, year and a half ago. Bob put a lot of it in himself, did a hell of a job.”

  She lifted the Merlot off the counter and looked at the label. Her other hand brushed back her reddish-blond hair.

  “How’s my selection?” I asked.

  “This one’s a little fruity for my taste.” She put the Merlot down and tilted back the neck of the Shiraz to examine its label. “But this one’s nice. Has a kind of black peppery taste.”

  “I’m just the delivery man. I make no guarantees on taste or quality.”

  She leaned a hip against the counter, her eyes again canvassing the room. “It’s kinda nice down here, quiet. My ears are actually ringing from all the noise upstairs.”

  “They’re a wild bunch.”

  “I cannot believe Meredith. I never thought she could be so…nutty.”

  “Yeah, well, a little alcohol goes a long way.”

  “You’re not kidding. Can you imagine her talking about her breasts? Ever?”

  I laughed at the recollection and Cheryl smiled, the mildest hint of mischief hooking the edge of her mouth.

  “It’s not the kind of thing you want to think about as another year goes by,” she continued, “that your best parts are that much closer to the floor.” She paused, and I was about to say something when she looked down and added, “I hope mine aren’t aging too badly.”

  The comment was obviously flirtatious, but she had applied an ambiguous tone in which to disguise her intentions, to leave its meaning up to me. She had created a fork in the road. I could play it off—like a good wine, Cheryl, we’re only getting better—and hand her a bottle to carry upstairs, rejoin the crowd, the brief flirtation innocuously blending into our shared past of cocktail parties and holiday gatherings. Or…

  I never should have let my line of sight to drop below her neckline, but there I was, openly gazing at her breasts. I looked back into her eyes. Silence lingered a moment too long, a flood of desire filling the space where harmless banter should have been. I tried to speak but my vocal chords were paralyzed. I felt myself being pulled towards her. I laid my hand on the counter, tried to resist.

  “I, I’m sorry,” she said, looking to the floor then back to my eyes, trying to find the right words to allay an uncomfortable situation, words that didn’t exist. “I shouldn’t have said that, about my… I shouldn’t have even come down here.”

  “No, it’s me. I shouldn’t have been…” I paused, embarrassed to say what I’d been doing, what I’d been thinking. We laughed awkwardly. I cleared my throat and thought about what I should say, what I should do.

  “But anyway,” she said, lifting words out of her mouth and putting them in the space between us, as if she were she were hoisting a box onto a shelf. “How are…things? How’s Liz?”

  “Fine, I guess. Good. You know how things go.”

  She nodded her head. “Yeah, I know how things go. If there’s one thing you can say with certainty, it’s that things keep right on going.”

  “And going,” I added.

  Neither of us said anything. Cheryl glanced around. I swallowed hard, loud. It seemed to echo around the room.

  “So we should probably head back upstairs,” Cheryl said.

  “We probably should,” I said.

  Another pause. Another silence filled with longing and desire. Then, finally, I took a step towards her, our lips pressed into one another, our arms entwined.

  I knew I shouldn’t be doing it. I was in free-fall, and the momentary flashes of resistance, like flimsy branches I tried to grab onto, weren’t strong enough to overcome her smell, the curve of her neck, her blouse opening to show her bra, the bulge of her soft breasts, which were like gravity pulling me inexorably downward.

  I didn’t realize how long we’d been down there. The wine cellar d
oor was closed, but we could still hear the muffled roar of the crowd upstairs when they began counting down the seconds to midnight. Our expressions turned from ecstasy to surprise as I pulled away from her and we hurriedly got ourselves together.

  She adjusted her bra and dress, quickly fixed her hair, grabbed a bottle and walked a few steps ahead of me toward the door. “Holy shit,” she said. “They’re probably wondering where we are.”

  I wiped the sweat from my brow and snatched the other two bottles, following right behind her. “Hey, I’m very picky about my wine. You can’t rush the selection process.”

  She stopped at the door and turned towards me. We kissed, at first long and hard, then a few brief pecks. She wiped lipstick from my face and we rejoined the party upstairs.