Bad Sex & Good Scotch: A Reunion Story

Chapter 18 - Now

Carrie and Daniel were staying at the hotel in the Alumnae House, but she decided to walk with me back to the dorm. I wasn’t drunk, exactly, but my vision had softened, the criss-crossing cement paths and uplit trees covered in a gauzy vignette. 

We were in full reminiscence, laughingly recalling the professors we had shared, the courses we had in common. We had both been psychology majors, so we had occasionally found ourselves trapped in the same classrooms, never speaking to each other directly, but exchanging occasional, oblique jabs through class participation. 

There were disagreements about Maslow and Skinner, DSM3 diagnoses and Schedule 1 drugs, biochemistry and personality. Carrie was more prepared, having actually done all the reading, but I was more intuitive, faster on my feet, and no clear winner emerged.

There was a time, apparently, when I was really smart. I was lazy, yes, but I also possessed a luminous, knife-edged intellect that stood in stark contrast to the dull gray thoughts of middle age.

I shook off the feeling of loss, of wasted potential, as we arrived at my weekend dorm room. I pulled the brass key out of my pocket, the words “Do Not Copy” stamped on it, which made me smile, because in my day, those words meant absolutely nothing to the local locksmiths. 

It took a fair amount of concentration, but I managed to steady my hand and insert the key in the lock.

“Well,” she said. “This was really fun.”

“It was,” I agreed. I regarded her for a moment. “This is probably the last time I’ll ever see you,” I said, “so let me ask you.”

“Uh-oh.” She knew what was coming.

“That phone call to my mother.” She closed her eyes and shook her head, amused and embarrassed in equal measure. “What was that about?”

She shook her head again. “It was not my finest moment,” she admitted.

I laughed.

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “I just... I loved you so much... and I wanted what we did together to be perfect.”

I was surprised by the poignancy of her explanation. I realized that what she did wasn’t simply crazy, but crazy fueled by a deep emotional need. At that point, she was convinced that she would be spending her life with me, convinced of that because that’s what I had let her believe. Made her believe. And maybe I believed it myself. Or wanted to.

“So you called my mother?” I pressed.

“As I said, not my finest moment.”

“You know, if you had just been cooler about the whole thing, it would’ve been fine.”

“Yeah,” she nodded.

“Well,” I said, “you really missed out.”

“No,” she countered, with a surprisingly sexy smile, “you did.”

“No,” I insisted, with Scotch-induced confidence, “you did.”

“Well,” she said, a little flustered. “This was really fun.” She didn’t realize that she had said that already. 

“Take care, Carrie,” I said warmly and hugged her.

When we separated, she didn’t immediately turn to go. Instead, there was an expectant pause, where our eyes met and I felt it, the desire to take things further. I had never cheated on my wife, and I never intended to, but here was the opportunity to heal a wound that had been with me more than half my life.

I leaned in and kissed her.

“We shouldn’t,” she said. And then kissed me back.