The Truth is in the Wine (10 page)

“It's a nice mood for us to enjoy this great wine,” he said.

Ginger did not respond or resist. Her husband gave her a glass and he sat next to her on “her” bed. He cracked open the bottle. “I waited for you to be here to open it,” he said.

She smiled. After pouring each a glass, Paul lifted his and proposed a toast: “To my wife. I am thankful that you are here with me in the one place I really wanted to visit. And to be here now, on Thanksgiving, really brings it all together because I am really thankful that you are my wife.”

Ginger smiled. She was touched. She tapped her glass into his and they both smelled the wine, then swirled it around in their glasses, sniffed it again to see the difference from the oxidation and then took a sip.

“Oh, man,” Paul said, a smile developing on his face. “What do you think?”

Ginger smiled, too. “Excellent,” she said. “There is no aftertaste in this wine.”

“And it is smoky with dark fruit flavors,” Earl said. “Wanna hear some history on Pinotage? Remember, I studied it.”

“Sure, why not? What else do I have to do?” Ginger said.

“Keep sippin' while I kick the knowledge,” Paul said.

“Kick the knowledge?” Ginger said, shaking her head. “Anyway, go ahead.”

“Pinotage is a unique South African grape variety that only grows well in South Africa,” Paul explained. “Most wine drinkers have less experience with it than other red wines. And guess what: Some South Africans love it, but some don't like it so much because it is not European enough. It does not possess any of the flavors of French wines.

“The Pinotage grape is a combination of a Pinot Noir grape and Hermitage grape that was created in 1925 and is one of the younger red wines Thus, Pinotage. Last thing: They actually grow Pinotage in a few places in California and Virginia.”

“Interesting,” Ginger said. “You really should do something with all this knowledge. I mean, I've been thinking about it. With all the layoffs in the last years, many people have decided to pursue their passion, to do what they really want to do. I realize you like heating and air conditioning repair. But you love wine, Paul.”

That confirmed Paul's earlier thoughts.

“I do, and I'm really surprised you said that because I actually have been thinking the same thing,” he said. “Maybe, in time, we could open up a wine store and host wine-tastings. Make it really nice. Educate people.”

“That sounds nice, Paul, but that costs money,” Ginger said.

Paul poured more wine in her glass. “Well, you never know. Things could turn around for us. They
will
turn around for us. And when they do, that's something we can explore. I'd like you to be my partner.”

“That's a long way off,” Ginger said. “A long way.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Paul said, smiling. “You have to put it
out in the universe for it to become reality… But I'd rather talk about us.”

“What about us?” Ginger said.

“Well, we've made some progress since we hit rock bottom—since I hit rock bottom,” he said. “I think we have. We are talking. We made love. We are here in California. Two months ago, I wouldn't have expected any of this.”

“Me, either, and that's why I'm trying to figure out what changed,” Ginger said.

“I changed,” Paul said. “I got off my ass and finally stopped feeling sorry for myself and realized nothing happens unless I make it happen.”

“And that's it?” she asked.

“No,” he said. Paul sipped more wine and shook his head. “No. When I took inventory, I realized that I was ruining our marriage. You're not perfect and neither am I. But you're perfect for me. I believe that.”

Ginger's head was spinning. Literally. The wine took hold and Paul's words did, too. And so, when Paul slid beside her on the bed, she did not resist. He went for it.

“I love you, Gin,” he said. “I will apologize every day if I have to, to get you to understand how badly I feel about the things I said. And I will kiss you right here on your neck every day, too. You like me to kiss you right there, don't you?”

Ginger did not want to answer, but her body was all his now, as if all the months of trouble and pain and concerns did not happen. Anger, disappointment, sadness…none of that mattered in that moment. When her body spoke, she listened and acquiesced to its needs.

Paul knew this, and he turned his wife's face toward his with a gentle tug. She was breathless. Between the wine and the signals
her brain sent through her body—and the love she tried to suppress for Paul—she was defenseless. He kissed her on her lips, which were moist with anticipation.

His lips were thick and soft, and they met hers as two wineglasses would meet to climax an intimate toast. Ginger closed her eyes and Paul closed his, and they delighted in a deep, passionate kiss that made Ginger woozy when their lips finally parted.

The small portion of her brain that was not covered in passion tried to resist. She stood up to catch her breath, but Paul stood up, too, to restrict her breathing by kissing her again as he wrapped his arms firmly around her.

Paul's heart beat as if he had been sprinting. It was the combination of unmitigated passion with his wife and the intensity of the kiss that heightened his desires. And so, he leaned away from Ginger and, while looking into her eyes, slowly unbuttoned the front of her shirt.

As each button came loose, Ginger breathed in, until Paul got to the end and slowly pulled off the blouse and discarded it like a piece of tissue into a wastebasket. Ginger stood there, staring at her man, feeling like she did when they first met, when they had sex as if their survival depended upon it.

That was such a joyous time in their lives, and to feel like that made Ginger finally release any inhibitions and meet Paul's desires with her own passion.

So as Paul fumbled slightly with unhitching her bra, Ginger politely took his hands and placed them over her firm breasts and she reached behind her back and released the strap in an instant. Paul knew his wife, and that maneuver meant the resistance was over. They could not dance to their rhythm.

Since winning the lottery and regaining some self-esteem, Paul dropped significant weight, making him look more like the man
she married than the man she loathed. He had only had sex with his wife once in the previous two months, and she had not seen his new body in the flesh.

Paul, eager to show it off, pulled his shirt over his head and stood in front of his panting wife as if to say, “This is all yours. What you gonna do with it?”

Ginger read her husband's look and she slowly, seductively unbuckled and unzipped her pants, never taking her eyes off Paul's, who was unbuckling and unzipping his pants, too. When their underwear dropped to the floor, it was like the starter's gun to a race went off.

They attacked each other, kissing and groping in a furious fashion that somehow was in rhythm, a seductive dance that extended from one side of a queen-sized bed to the other.

Finally, the foreplay turned into lovemaking that they had not experienced in years. About two months before the trip they had a sexual encounter that was more about them having a need than having sex. This was passion. This was intense.

Ginger allowed Paul to lead the family, but she, at times, liked to be in charge of certain situations. Intimacy with him was one of them. She liked to be on top so she could control the passion: How deep Paul entered her, how rapid the thrusts, the angle of penetration.

All Paul had to do was hold on. Ginger was at her dick-riding best, squirming her saturated vagina on his hardness in swift counterclockwise rotations, which allowed for pleasure along multiple areas of her inner walls.

Paul tried to thrust upward, but Ginger's pace was fast and did not allow much for his participation. She rocked her hips and enjoyed his joystick with abashed pleasure. The wine made her feel uninhibited, and her actions spoke the truth about how she felt.

She kissed Paul deeply as she changed her sexual attack. Now she bounced up and down on his manhood. Paul stroked upward to her cadence, creating a smacking sound as they challenged each other on how deep he could get and how much she could take.

Well, she took everything he had to offer and he offered a lot. He held her by her waist and pulled her down to meet his thrusts, making it almost a violent collision of passion. Ginger moaned with each thumping, but there were moans of pleasure and pain coming together as only can happen in intense sex.

Paul grunted with each thrust, an indication of how intent he was on getting deeper and making sure his wife felt his intent. After two minutes of straight pounding each other, Paul began to sweat, and immediately he went back to their early sexual sessions that really solidified their bond.

Those experiences were few and far between over the years, but in that moment of feeling sweat develop on his forehead and slide down his face, he made a commitment to return their sex lives back to something sensual and passionate, romantic and lasting.

Losing his job diminished his sex drive, and he was embarrassed at the weak effort he gave Ginger in the first weeks after being laid off. Sex became less important because his manhood was threatened with being out of work. His erections were mild, or certainly unlike the pole-hard stiffness he banged Ginger with their first hours in Napa Valley.

Ginger noticed the difference—in how he handled her and the strength of his hardness. She might have been in control of the movements while being on top, but Paul was in control of the pleasure.

Ultimately, he won out on that battle; his forcefulness was unrelenting. He was too proud to let Ginger wear him out, and
so he kept feeding her until she exploded in herky-jerky body gyrations and weird sounds that had only one interpretation: ecstasy.

Her movements were so wild that all Paul could do was hold on until she gathered herself, which took another minute or so. It was then when he flipped her onto her back and began his pleasure quest by holding up her legs and spreading them as he threw his head back and pumped deeper and deeper into her.

She took his strokes with sounds of pleasure, and Paul felt like he was having an out-of-body experience. He and Ginger had not enjoyed that kind of relentless passion in some time, so long that he could not even recall.

And when he looked down and saw the pleasure on his wife's face—a look he had not put there in months—he became so excited that he stroked her harder and harder, generating a sensation that ran through his body and exploded out of the head of his penis and into Ginger's waiting canal.

It was his turn to yell something incoherent but translated into the ultimate pleasure. He collapsed his much larger body onto Ginger's and she took him without issue, hugging him firmly as he breathed heavily over her shoulder.

“My God,” Paul managed to get out after a few minutes. “I forgot how incredible we can be together.”

“It has been a long time,” she said.

Paul realized he was suffocating her, so he rolled over, and they both let out a sigh.

“This is how it should be all the time,” Paul said. He held her hand and turned toward her. “I messed things up, but I want us to get back to where we were. And I also realize it will take time. But I hope this is the start of us getting back to where we were when we were happy.”

Ginger's cautious side wanted to offer something negative, or at least something that would not indicate she was all in. And that made her mad.
Why can't I embrace what was good without second-guessing
? she wondered.

It was her nature to find the cracks and pounce on them. This time, though, her body told her to cut it out, to let go. She loved her husband and he had just put it on her in a display of passion and love that she missed—and needed.

That was the key. Ginger had girlfriends who insisted they did not need a man and could get by without sex in their lives. She did not understand that. She needed the physical aspect of lovemaking in her life and she needed the emotional connection that came with it. She wanted to believe she could have one without the other, but she could not convince herself of that.

She felt most emotionally connected to Paul when they consistently had sex. It was not the elixir to all things broken. But it was the foundation of holding things together.

So when Paul's sex drive diminished with his loss of self-esteem, their connection to each other slowly dwindled, too. Laying on her back after a vigorous round of passion with Paul made Ginger feel alive.

“I want the same thing, Paul,” she said. “I do. But I'm scared. I'm scared because I don't know what brought you around and if you'll go back to that place where you were depressed and cold and sometimes just mean to me.

“It has been a very rough last year or so with you. I felt like my family was falling apart. Thank God we were able to somehow shield our troubles from Helena.

“You don't know this, but I have gone through a lot because of this. It has been a very difficult time. And I couldn't even talk to you about it because we were so fractured. Still, I believed it was
a phase. I never expected to hear you say you wanted a divorce. That was very hurtful and it put me in a really bad place. I don't know. I am here, in Napa, because I want to save our marriage. And as great as it has been so far, I can't get out of my head how things have been.”

“I understand,” Paul said. “I do. But I was going through something that I did not know how to handle. They say you lash out at the people you are closest to when you're under duress. Well, I was under duress. I worked all my life. I provided for my family from Day One.

“To be let go after so many years and so much commitment to the job, it crushed me. And I won't even try to lie: My ego was crushed, too. We probably should have sought counseling then. Maybe it would have helped if I opened up. But I can't even say now, looking back on it, that I would have said the things necessary to heal.