Thoughts Left Unsaid
by Alex Exley
Copyright © 2011 Alex Exley and Humburger Publishing, Inc.
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Names, characters, places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
If you enjoy the quality of this story and are interested in erotic fiction with similar quality writing and storylines, check out Alex Exley’s collection of short stories, “Tales of Love & Lust.” Select erotic stories also sold individually.
Feel free to contact the author at thehumburger@yahoo.com with any comments or questions. And ratings and reviews are always appreciated.
Thoughts Left Unsaid
I sat on a bar stool near The Agora’s only pool table, one hand gripping the thin end of a pool cue, its base on the floor. I was meeting my friend Phil to watch a baseball game and have a few beers, maybe play some pool. I looked absentmindedly at a TV mounted high on the wall as the Red Sox took the field for the start of the first inning. I wasn’t paying close attention; I had something else on my mind, a secret I had been harboring for many months, a secret I wanted to tell Phil, though I knew I shouldn’t.
“Phil! Over here!” I hollered across the bar after seeing my friend walk through the door.
A few of the patrons looked at me as if I’d yelled out in the middle of a church service. The Agora’s that kind of place. More of a lounge than a bar, it’s dimly lit with tall ceilings and an eclectic décor, featuring modern art on the walls and an ornate marble fireplace. Dirty jazz or blues bleeds from the speakers, but never so loudly that you have to raise your voice to have a conversation. A lot of the traffic The Agora gets comes from the nearby colleges. It’s common to see law or grad students and their professors having informal discussions while sipping dark-colored pints. Phil and I started coming here when he was teaching in the math department at one of the colleges, though he’s since moved to the private sector. We liked the place, or at least we were used to it, so we kept coming.
Phil wound his way through the maze of tables and joined me at the pool table sequestered in the back of the place.
“Hey, David. How you doing?” Phil removed his jacket and hung it on a coat hook on the wall.
“Can’t complain. You’re looking good, rested. Maine treat you well?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.” He took a deep breath and expanded his chest, as if he were inhaling the fresh air of a beautiful morning, a reminiscence of his recent vacation swelling inside him.
“What’s this?” I knitted my eyebrows in overstated curiosity and approached him, patting his distended stomach that had heretofore conformed to his beanstalk frame. “Time catches up with all things, eh Phil?”
He laughed, partially at my jest, partially because he had tensed up at my sudden approach, unsure of my intentions, caught off guard by the physical contact. The laughter helped diffuse his constricted muscles.
That’s how Phil’s always been. Not necessarily a tense guy, but rigid, reticent. The first time I met Phil he stumbled into my dorm room drunk, and after several minutes of incoherent rambling vomited all over my floor. I passed him several times in the hallway after that, but despite my approaches, my attempts to make light of the situation, he never said much. My initial thought was that he was peculiar, if not a bit of a jerk. It wasn’t until the next semester that I actually got to know him. We were in the same chemistry class and had been selected to work together on a group assignment. His reserved and serious demeanor had put me off at first. I guess I had always been more the gregarious type, a kidder, someone who, though having been a resolute student and later a successful entrepreneur, didn’t take myself too seriously. But I soon found that when Phil has something to wrap his mind around, he can be as engaging as anyone. One thing led to another and there we were, still friends twenty years later.
“There was this one restaurant,” Phil said, explaining his added heft. “The Crab Shack, it’s called. The best clam cakes I’ve ever had. We must have eaten there four or five times. I gained six pounds that week.”
I whistled in acknowledgement of the hefty number. “It’s about time your metabolism started acting its age and stopped making the rest of us look so bad.” I rubbed my own voluminous girth which, for me, had started to take shape around my sophomore year in college.
I hadn’t seen Phil in several months. We usually got together for golf or racquetball or to grab a beer at least once every couple of weeks. But Phil had been having marital problems. He didn’t come right out and tell me, but he hinted at it, made indirect references while looking uncomfortably at his shoes. Phil’s not one to discuss sensitive, personal issues. It took some prodding, but I finally extracted a few details.
He told me about the distance that had grown between him and his wife, about the disconnect that, try as he might, he just couldn’t figure out. It was discomfiting watching him struggle to come up with a reason for why it was happening, to deduce a solution that would make everything all right. Phil’s problem, and this was what I told him, was that he analyzed everything like a goddamn math problem, like there were definite rules and principles to be followed. If he did A, and his wife did B, then they should arrive at C. It would be nice if things were that easy, I said, that if we did as we thought we should, everything would be okay. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. The best you can do is pay attention to how you feel and hope for the best.
“Any score yet?” Phil asked while closely examining the pool cues.
“Just started.”
“Who’s pitching? Wakefield?”
“Yup. Means they probably won’t score any runs.”
“He’s seventeenth in the league in ERA,” Phil said, “and has only two wins.”
“Terrible run support.”
“Two point six nine per nine innings.”
Phil the mathematician. He knew the numbers, the data. It could be interesting having a knowledgeable guy like him around. The details make life interesting, and Phil was good with details. But I wondered, at times, what it was like to live with him. Wouldn’t it get dull? I think Phil’s a great guy, but when he told me things weren’t going so well at home, I wasn’t that surprised. As if I’d been expecting to hear it.
We played a leisurely game of pool, occasionally stopping to watch the Sox or talk about baseball, work, or other random bits of information extracted from our lives. I guess I took a little of my own advice that afternoon, because I intended to tell Phil about an affair I’d recently had. Sixteen years as a faithful husband to a beautiful and intelligent woman, two lovely children, a family life that, for all intents and purposes, was as rewarding as I’d hoped for, and I had come within one blood test of abandoning it all. My wife still doesn’t know. And there was no logical reason to tell Phil. Nothing good could come of telling him, but somehow I couldn’t help myself. I felt compelled.
Phil beat me handily the first game. He removed the balls from the pockets on his end of the table, rolled them to me, then turned to watch the game. I hopped off a bar stool and, as loser, racked the balls.
He stood with his arms folded watching the action as if he were a drill sergeant watching his troops conduct maneuvers. I was going to ask him about a player the Sox had recently traded for, a guy I knew nothing about, but whose lifetime batting average and on-base percentage I’m sure Phil could rattle off like his kids’ birthdays. He seemed in a good mood, wasn’t showing any residual effects of his recent troubles. I hated to ruin it, but I couldn’t help it. I steered the conversation in another direction.
“So, you didn’t tell me about the trip. How was it?”
I carefully lifted the wooden triangle off the racked balls.
Phil paused for a moment to watch the batter strike out, then turned towards me. “You don’t trade solid pitching for a career two-fifty hitter. Worst trade they’ve made in years.” He hesitated, let my question sink in. “Oh, the trip. It was wonderful. We had a great week.”
“Bar Harbor? Is that where you went?”
“Yeah. Got a nice B&B on the water, an English Tutor-style house built in the late 1800s. Beautiful gardens and estate all around it. Couldn’t imagine a better place.”
He told me about the good time they had hiking in Acadia National Park, whale watching, visiting museums and, of course, the requisite shopping excursions. We laughed at the latter activity, both being well versed in the role of obligatory male tagalong.
“Everything’s going well on the home front then, I take it?” I said hesitantly, not sure how to phrase my question or what tone to deliver it.
The question caught him off guard. He was feeling good and, I could tell, didn’t want to relive the recent problems he’d had. Probably didn’t want to recollect his admission of them.
“Ah, yeah. Yeah, everything’s great.” At first he sounded defensive, as if to say, Why wouldn’t they be? But although Phil could be reserved about certain subjects, he wasn’t unreasonable. He knew my question wasn’t unfounded, so he added, reluctantly, “A week alone. Privacy and relaxation. It does wonders, you know?”
He pocketed several balls in quick succession.
“Sure. Me and Liz, I don’t know when we last had a vacation without the kids.” I stopped, then said in the gravest tone I could muster, “We could use some time away.”
A pregnant pause filled the air between us. Phil looked at me with apprehension.
“I’ve never told anyone this,” I said, “but about six months ago, I… I had an affair. I was seeing another woman.”
Phil tensed up, a result of his being surprised by my disclosure and at the same time not wanting to hear it. I could hear him swallow hard, see his Adams apple jump. “Jeez, David, I—“
“I’d known her for a while, seen her at parties and things. I really don’t know how it started.”
That wasn’t true. I knew exactly how it started, could envision it perfectly.
* * *
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 door 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.
* * *
Yeah, I remembered how it had started with Cheryl; I’m sure I would never forget. But I didn’t think Phil needed to know the details.
“I don’t know what to say,” Phil said, appearing uncomfortable. “Was it…serious?”
I shot him a quizzical look.
“I mean, of course it’s serious,” he said. “But was it, were you, serious about her, I guess is what I mean.”
I paused and took a deep breath, recollecting the time we’d spent together.
* * *
When I woke the next day, I did feel guilty about what I’d done. My hangover, mixed with my guilt, made me doubly nauseous. I decided to give it a day or two, to let my head clear before deciding what, if anything, I should say or do.
But then I got a call from Cheryl the following day at work.
“David, I want to talk to you. Can I see you?”
The emotions of that night came rushing back to me. Her voice in my ear summoned memories of her smell, her touch. I tried to feel guilty; I truly wanted to, but the carnal sensations coursing through my body left little room for guilt.
“I could leave work early,” I said. “Say four-thirty? I could meet you somewhere.”
“Can I come to your office?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m downtown. Just tell me where it is; I could be there in five minutes.”
“101 Federal Street, nineteenth floor. Give me fifteen.”
She walked into my office just over ten minutes later wearing a dark skirt and white blouse. She looked unassuming—her business attire flattened her better features—but good. Seeing her in the flesh, my heartbeat quickened.
After we greeted each other, she said, “I hope I’m not bothering you. Were you busy?” She looked briefly into my eyes, then coyly to the ground.
I felt like a schoolboy in the midst of his first crush. It was invigorating.
“Busy? That’s what I hire other people for. I’ll say you’re a potential client and no one will be the wiser.”
She smiled warmly, then became more serious. “The other night… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come on to you.”
“I’m as responsible as you are. It was my decision, too.”
“I know, but I should never have followed you downstairs. But I couldn’t help it. I’d thought about you over the years, and, I don’t know, I just couldn’t help it.”
I nodded my head. “I’ve thought about you, too.”
We gazed at each other for a moment in silence. This silence wasn’t at all uncomfortable. I calmly walked to the door, closed it, and locked it. I returned to Cheryl and laid my hands on her shoulders. I kissed her gently at first, feeling the soft ridgeline of her lips, the moist hollow of her mouth. We kissed passionately as I unbuttoned her shirt, my shirt, grabbed her breast through her bra, then under it, her bare skin in my grasp filling me with energy, with life. Soon she was sitting on my desk, her skirt up, my pants down, and I was inside her, the workings of the office outside my door a world away.
“Is this how you pitch all your clients?” she said afterwards while buttoning her blouse.
“First time, actually. How do you think it went? From a marketing standpoint?”
“You definitely sold me.”
She appeared more serious, and I held her in my arms.
“Should we really do this?” she said.
“Probably not.” I bent my head and kissed her. “But I don’t know if that will stop us.”
We met a half dozen times over the next month, usually at a hotel during lunch or immediately after work, as long as we could explain the absences to our spouses. At first I was consumed by the visceral thrill. I’d been married for 16 years. Things weren’t bad at home, but they’d sort of leveled off. Seeing Cheryl—not only for sex, but to learn about someone new in an intimate way—lifted the drudgery that had accumulated in my routine over the years. I suddenly felt like I was gliding around on roller skates. I didn’t stop to consider what the long-term result would be, how it would affect us emotionally, or how it would end.
The initial thrill began to subside after the first month, but it didn’t disappear completely. Instead, it evolved into something more stable, more meaningful. We were no longer meeting for just sex. We would get together for drinks or dinner or walks in the park. We took afternoons off from work for trips to museums or boat rides on the harbor. Tickets to a game with coworkers was really time spent with her. We did everything we could to see each other. The hooks that had initially lured me in had dug deeper and taken root.
* * *
Phil looked from the ballgame to me, then back to the ballgame.
I drank my beer and nodded my head. “Yeah, I guess it had gotten pretty serious.”
He looked at me again.
“I mean, at first it was…I won’t lie to you…it was exciting, having an affair, making love in secret, a new woman after all those years. But then, I think I might have fallen in love.”
* * *
Central Park’s trees had already thickened with green. Joggers and walkers populated the pathways. A trio threw a frisbee in a nearby field. I sat on a bench with my arm around Cheryl, her hand wedged between my legs, basking in the mild spring air. We’d thought for a while about taking a trip together and had finally decided on a few days in New York City, an anonymous couple blending in with the crowd. For me it was a business trip; I never asked what her excuse was.
“How long do you think we can do this?” I said.
She leaned a shoulder into me and I held her close. Her voice was soft, distant. “I don’t know.”
“I’d leave Liz… to be with you.”
She tilted her head up and looked into my eyes.
“I mean it,” I said. “All this sneaking around. Sometimes I just want to see you, without waiting or hiding or whatever hoops we have to jump through.”
“I know, David, so do I.” Our fingers intertwined. “It’s just all happened so fast. I didn’t think, at first, how we’d grow to feel about each other. We’re both married. We have families, kids.”
“It happens.”
“I know, but it’s a lot to give up. I just want to be sure.”
Another month went by. We talked about it again, about divorcing and starting a new life together. She agreed that we couldn’t go on like this, and she didn’t want to live without me.
Several days later she called me at work. “I have to see you.”
“I’m heading into a meeting. Can I meet you after work?”
Silence.
“Cheryl?”
“I’m pregnant.”
My heartbeat shook my whole body. Another silence.
“Is it…”
“I don’t know,” she said.
I drove her to the hospital the following week. I waited in the large foyer just inside the main entrance, restlessly flipping through an old issue of Time magazine while she saw her doctor. After what felt like hours, she walked towards me across the wide open space of the main hallway, her arms folded across her chest. I could tell the result by her sober expression.
“It’s his,” I said.
She nodded.
We rode the garage elevator and walked to my car in silence. Inside the car she turned and looked at me with the same sober expression. “I’d thought about it,” she said. “If it was yours or his.” She took a deep breath. “We can’t keep seeing each other. Not with a baby, with his baby. Emotionally, and practically, I just can’t do it.”
* * *
At first Phil looked surprised at my admission of having fallen in love, then more discomfited. He fidgeted with the pool chalk. “David, that’s...I don’t know…does Liz know?”
“I was going to tell her, but then, about three weeks ago, we broke it off. Circumstances, stuff happened, made it impossible to continue. I haven’t told Liz. I don’t know if I will.”
He appeared visibly strained trying to think of something to say, but I could tell he was trying.
“Maybe…I don’t know. Remember what you told me?” He dropped the pool chalk, picked it back up, cleared his throat. “You know, about paying attention to how you feel and just doing the best you can?” He looked towards the floor as he selected his words, but as he gained momentum he looked back at me. “I think you were right, you can’t plan everything out. I mean, life, it can throw curveballs at you. You never know what’s going to happen. Just look at me. A month ago my marriage wasn’t going so well. We were distant, not getting along, not like we used to. Then we took the trip to Maine to see if we could get back on track, and, well, we weren’t going to tell anyone this, not for a couple months anyway, but when we were in Maine, Cheryl told me she’s pregnant. We’re having another baby. It’s like, within the span of a couple weeks, everything’s changed. We somehow got our lives back.”
I tried to look surprised. “Hey, that’s great Phil. Congratulations.”
“I don’t mean to make this about me. All I’m saying is, life has its twists and turns. You just never know what’s going to happen.” He maintained a serious countenance, though his face had taken on an undeniable glow. He wasn’t used to talking so personally, and I could tell he was proud of his oration, of the trinket of clichéd wisdom he’d strung together.
I wanted to tell him, to scream it at him. I loved his wife. I had loved his wife. For a few hopeful, expectant days, I thought the life growing inside Cheryl, the life that had somehow rejuvenated his relationship, his own life, might have been mine. I thought about it and I almost did it, but it wouldn’t have done any good now. It would have only created a mess.
As Phil bent over to take a shot, I leaned back against the wall and stared absent-mindedly at the baseball game.
***Thanks for reading this free copy of “Thoughts Left Unsaid” by Alex Exley. Please consider rating this story or writing a review. If you enjoyed the quality of this story and are interested in erotic fiction with similar quality writing and storylines, check out Alex Exley’s collection of short stories, “Tales of Love & Lust.” Select erotic stories also sold individually.***