I Definitely Didn't Need the Extra Glass

There is a specific kind of light in Western Massachusetts in late October that looks like a dying fire. It’s a low, amber glow that catches the dust motes in my office, highlighting the spines of the books I haven’t touched in a decade. I’m thirty-eight now. I have tenure. I have a golden retriever who sighs when he sleeps. And I have a Gmail folder, archived and tucked three layers deep, labeled with the name of a place I haven’t visited since the summer I turned twenty-eight. I was a different man in Napa. I was thinner, more anxious, convinced that the world owed me a masterpiece. I went there to hide from a failed dissertation draft, and instead, I found a woman named Sloane who moved like a slow-burning fuse. We didn't exchange phone numbers at first. We exchanged emails, sent from our phones while we sat at opposite ends of various tasting rooms, watching each other through the stems of crystal glasses. I just opened the thread for the first time in five years. The dates are all wrong now, timestamps of a life that feels like it belongs to someone else. But the words—they still have a pulse. *** **From: thomas.c.hale@email.com** **To: sloane.mccarthy@email.com** **Date: July 14, 2014, 2:14 PM** **Subject: The guy in the linen shirt** I’m currently three seats down from you at the Stag’s Leap bar, and I’m about sixty percent sure you’re grading my posture. You’ve been looking at your glass of Chardonnay like it’s a disappointing student essay, and then you look at me with that same clinical skepticism. Is it the shirt? It was a gift. I know I look like I’m trying too hard to be a man on a mid-life crisis tour ten years early. But if you’re as bored with the sommelier’s lecture on 'terroir' as I am, maybe we could skip the final pour and find somewhere that serves a drink that doesn't require a vocabulary list. — Thomas *** **From: sloane.mccarthy@email.com** **To: thomas.c.hale@email.com** **Date: July 14, 2014, 2:22 PM** **Subject: Re: The guy in the linen shirt** It isn't the shirt, Thomas. It’s the way you keep checking your watch. You’re waiting for something to happen, or you’re afraid it already has and you missed the bus. And for the record, it’s not Chardonnay. It’s a Viognier that tastes like a perfume counter exploded in a peach orchard. It’s terrible. I’m at the wedding at the Estate tomorrow. Tonight, I am solo, and I am deeply uninterested in 'tasting notes.' I’m at the hotel bar at the Archer at 9:00 PM. Don’t wear the linen. You look like you’re vibrating out of your skin in it. Wear something that makes you look like you might actually stay in one place for more than five minutes. — S. *** I remember reading that email in the bright, blinding heat of the valley. I remember the way the sun felt like a physical weight on my neck. I wore a dark t-shirt that night. I wanted to be easy to find. I wanted to be the thing she looked at instead of the glass. When I got to the bar, she was already there. She was wearing a dress the color of a bruised plum, dark and deep, with thin straps that looked like they would snap if I even breathed near them. She didn't look like an academic’s dream; she looked like a complication. We didn't stay at the bar long. The tension was too thick, a physical density in the air between us that made it hard to order a second drink. We ended up on her balcony, the air finally cooling, the smell of lavender and dry earth rising from the valley floor. I wrote to her the next morning, before she left for the wedding. *** **From: thomas.c.hale@email.com** **To: sloane.mccarthy@email.com** **Date: July 15, 2014, 4:48 AM** **Subject: (no subject)** I can still feel your teeth on my shoulder. I’m back in my room, but the air conditioning feels like an insult after the heat of yours. I’m trying to write down what happened, but I keep losing the thread. My brain is stuck on the way you moved when I finally got that dress off your shoulders. I keep thinking about the way you tasted. Not the wine. You. Like salt and something fierce. I’m not going to be able to look at a vineyard again without thinking about the way you arched your back against the railing. You’re going to be a very distracted bridesmaid today. *** **From: sloane.mccarthy@email.com** **To: thomas.c.hale@email.com** **Date: July 15, 2014, 8:12 AM** **Subject: Re: (no subject)** You’re a writer, Thomas. Describe it better than that. Don't just tell me you remember. Tell me what you see when you close your eyes. I’m sitting in a hair and makeup chair being turned into a version of myself I don't recognize. Give me something real to hold onto while they spray-tan my soul. *** I took a breath. I leaned back against the headboard of my cheap motel bed, the sheets still smelling of the lavender soap she used, and I let myself go back there. *** **From: thomas.c.hale@email.com** **To: sloane.mccarthy@email.com** **Date: July 15, 2014, 9:30 AM** **Subject: What I see** I see the way you looked when we first closed the door to your room. You didn't even wait for me to say anything. You just backed me up against the wood, your hands flat on my chest, pushing me until my spine hit the grain. You looked at me like I was a problem you were finally going to solve. When I reached for those straps, my fingers were shaking. I’m a professor of rhetoric, Sloane. I deal in the structured, the argued, the deliberate. But when I slid the silk down your arms, and the dress pooled at your feet, I forgot every word I ever knew. Your breasts were heavy, your nipples already dark and tight from the cool air coming off the balcony. I remember the way they felt when I finally cupped them—the weight of you in my palms, the heat of your skin against my calloused thumbs. I leaned down and took one into my mouth, and the sound you made wasn't a moan; it was a command. You gripped my hair, your nails digging into my scalp, pulling me closer, harder, like you wanted to pull me right through your skin. I dropped to my knees. I wanted to see all of you. I pushed your legs apart, my face level with the dark hair between your thighs. You smelled like the end of a long, hot day—musk and honey and the faint, sharp tang of the gin you’d been sipping. I didn't hesitate. I used my tongue to find you, sliding through the folds of your labia, finding the little pearl of you that was already weeping. You tasted like the very center of the earth. When I flicked my tongue against you, your hips bucked, slamming against my face, and you gasped out my name like it was a prayer or a curse. I didn't stop. I used my fingers to open you further, sliding two of them deep inside you, feeling the internal walls of your vagina pulse and clench around me. You were so wet, Sloane. So slick and hot. I could hear the sound of my own mouth against you, the wet, rhythmic slap of skin on skin. I stayed there until you were shaking, until your knees started to give way. And then I stood up, and I stripped out of those clothes you hated so much. When I was naked, you didn't look away. You watched my cock as it hardened, the way it strained toward you. You reached out and wrapped your hand around the base of it, your palm cool, your grip firm. You ran your thumb over the head, catching the bead of pre-cum that was already forming there, and then you put that thumb in your mouth and sucked it clean while you looked me dead in the eye. I thought I was going to come right then. I picked you up. I sat you on the edge of that heavy oak table near the balcony. I pushed your knees up toward your shoulders, exposing everything. I guided my head into you slowly. I wanted to feel the stretch. I wanted to feel the way you took me in, inch by inch, until I was buried so deep I could feel your heartbeat against the tip of my cock. Your eyes were wide, your mouth open. We didn't talk. We just breathed the same air. I started to move—long, slow, deliberate strokes. I wanted to be the architect of that moment. I watched your face as I pulled back until I was almost out, and then I slammed back in, over and over. Your heels were dug into my lower back, pulling me in, demanding more. I remember the way the sweat made our chests stick together when I finally leaned over you. The sound of our bodies hitting each other was the only thing I could hear. I reached down between us, my thumb finding your clitoris again, grinding against it while I hammered into you. That was when you broke. Your entire body went rigid. Your internal muscles clamped down on me so hard it was almost painful, a rhythmic, frantic squeezing that sent me over the edge. I felt the heat building in the base of my spine, and then I was coming, deep and heavy, filling you with everything I’d been holding back since I saw you at that first tasting. You cried out, your voice catching in your throat, and you bit my shoulder so hard I knew it would leave a mark. I wanted it to leave a mark. I wanted to carry you with me. Is that real enough for you? Or should I try another draft? *** **From: sloane.mccarthy@email.com** **To: thomas.c.hale@email.com** **Date: July 15, 2014, 11:45 AM** **Subject: Re: What I see** I’m at the reception. I’m holding a glass of champagne, and my hand is shaking so much I’m worried I’ll drop it. I’m wearing a mark on my shoulder, too. I checked in the mirror before I put on the dress. It’s a small, purple bloom right where your thumb pressed down. I don't want another draft, Thomas. I want the original. Come to the Estate. The wedding is over at 8:00. The guests are staying in the cottages near the lower vineyard. I’m in number four. The door will be unlocked. Bring a bottle of something heavy and dark. I don't want any more white wine. I want something that stains. *** I went. Of course I went. I remember the walk through the vineyard at dusk. The rows of vines were like ribs, holding the earth together. The air was thick with the smell of fermenting fruit and the cooling dust of the road. I found cottage four. I found the door unlocked. She was waiting in the dark. She hadn't turned on the lights. The only illumination came from the moon, casting long, silver shadows across the floor. She was still in the bridesmaid dress, but she’d unzipped it, the silk hanging precariously off her hips. We didn't speak for an hour. We didn't need to. I pushed her onto the bed, and this time it wasn't about the architecture or the rhetoric. It was about the desperation. It was the feeling of two people who knew that at sunrise, they were heading in opposite directions—me back to the cold, intellectual gray of New England, her back to whatever fast-paced, high-stakes life she lived in San Francisco. I remember the way she tasted that second night—of expensive champagne and the salt of her own skin. I remember the way I entered her from behind, my hands gripped tight on her hips, pulling her back against me while I buried my face in the crook of her neck. I wanted to memorize the scent of her, the way she smelled like woodsmoke and expensive soap and raw, unadulterated need. I remember the way she arched her back, her ass pressing against my thighs, her hands reaching back to grab my hair, pulling me deeper. The friction was incredible—the wet heat of her, the way she seemed to melt around me. Every time I thrust into her, she let out a low, guttural sound that vibrated through my own chest. We came together that time, a crashing, messy collision that left us both gasping for air in the dark. *** **From: thomas.c.hale@email.com** **To: sloane.mccarthy@email.com** **Date: July 16, 2014, 10:15 AM** **Subject: Flight** I’m at SFO. My flight leaves in an hour. I keep looking at my hands. They feel different. They feel like they’ve actually done something worthwhile for the first time in years. I don't know what we’re doing, Sloane. I don't know if people like us are allowed to keep things like this. *** **From: sloane.mccarthy@email.com** **To: thomas.c.hale@email.com** **Date: July 16, 2014, 11:30 AM** **Subject: Re: Flight** We aren't. That’s why it’s called a vacation, Thomas. If it lasted, it would just be life, and life is never this focused. Go home. Write your book. Tell your students that the most important thing they can learn is how to recognize when a moment is perfect, and how to let it go before it starts to rot. I’m going to go for a swim and try to forget the way your voice sounds when you’re coming. Safe travels. *** I close the laptop. The amber light in my office has shifted to a deep, bruised purple. It’s the color of her dress. It’s the color of the wine we never finished. I did write the book. It wasn't the masterpiece I thought I owed the world, but it was enough to get me here, to this chair, to this life. I’ve had other lovers, other nights that were heated and honest, but none of them ever felt like that week in the valley. There’s a bottle of Cabernet on my desk. It’s from a small vineyard near St. Helena. I bought it three years ago and I’ve been waiting for a reason to open it. I look at the last email again. *How to recognize when a moment is perfect, and how to let it go before it starts to rot.* I’m thirty-eight. I’m a professor. I know that nostalgia is just a form of editing, a way of cutting out the boredom and the heat-stroke and the awkward silences to leave only the highlights. But as I reach for the corkscrew, I realize that some things don't rot. Some things just age. They get more complex. They develop notes of leather and tobacco and regret. I pour a glass. The wine is dark, nearly black in the dim light of the office. I take a sip, and for a split second, I’m back on that balcony, the linen shirt discarded on the floor, the smell of lavender in the air, and the weight of a woman in my arms who I knew I would never see again. I definitely didn't need the extra glass. But I’m going to drink it anyway.

I Definitely Didn't Need the Extra Glass

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