On a Willamette Pinot Noir.

Published in Medium’s P.S. I Love You, 10/9/20

I’m drinking the wine you left here, the one you picked out for us. You admitted to choosing the bottles for the evening based on their label and price, and I’ll admit: I looked up the price of this bottle before opening it tonight.

I’m not sure what I thought I’d solve by doing so. If the wine was cheap, I guess it would be easier to write you off, to discount your intentions even further than I’ve been trying to do since our last dinner. If the wine was expensive…well, with your job and lifestyle, I knew that wasn’t likely.

I found the price and my heart sank a little. It was perfect. Now each sip tastes like Oregon earth and berry jam, like late summer sunsets and your careful consideration.

I didn’t know you very well or for very long, but you strike me as someone who considers. You strike me as a man who thinks before he speaks and who lets others speak freely, who observes and takes in and who took in all of my words like soil absorbing a fine rain. Except I’m not a fine rain, I’m a swaying, swinging downpour, I’m a tropical storm in a cold coastal city. You seem like a lighthouse.

After I stood on my tiptoes to meet your kiss, you wandered over the hardwood floors of my apartment. I’d left all the blinds open, my walls a veritable sheath of endless sky and climbing hills. I hung back in the French doorways, waiting, until you turned to me and said, “It’s just like I thought it would be.”

“Yeah?” I tilted my head to the side.

“Yeah.” You smiled. “It’s artistic and beautiful and tasteful, just like I thought it would be.”

I praised you for bringing the Willamette Pinot Noir, but when I couldn’t find my one wine key, we settled for the twist-off Cabernet. We leaned into each other on my green sofa; the velvet was soft on my bare legs and I thought how badly I wanted your hands on them again. I let you sit facing the windows and I watched your face shift through the expressions I was already starting to know, the ones I hoped to develop a finer palette for. The setting sun behind Sutro Tower framed you in an honest, fragile light; as you asked me questions, ruminating in that quiet way of yours, I realized you had no idea how handsome you were.

As the evening went on, as we cooked and we spoke and as we ate reclining on blankets thrown onto my living room floor, I waited for signs. For something to spook you, to spook me, for some sign to emerge and show why everything about this moment wasn’t as perfect as it seemed.

We lay in my bed drinking our wine, and as I pulled myself in closer to you, a dark splash of Cabernet flew out of my glass. Was that the moment, was that the sign? But no, it was too quickly fixed, too easily remedied. I dabbed at my bruised linens with sparkling water and a light laugh; you watched with your hand on my back. Like the time before, we slept holding each other, without separating.

I heard the sigh escape you the last time you held me, when we said goodbye in front of my building, my apartment just a jewel tucked inside. I heard the sigh and for whatever reason, I thought to my sheets, to my bed, to that slight crimson blossom I didn’t even care to fully erase.

I almost didn’t want to open this bottle tonight, but I found my wine key in a spare bag and your Willamette Pinot was the only bottle in my place.

I almost didn’t want to open it because what if it was nuanced, what if it was discreet, what if it was subtly sublime? What if it was calming, what if it was like home, what if it was like all of those other things about you I had a taste of and never got to fully understand?

What if each sip was like you?

You remain on the tip of my tongue and the top of my thoughts; a perfectly priced Pinot with the slightest tinge of an unknown pain, a bottle begging to be poured and still leaving me wondering.