Sweet, Sweet Wine

by Jaime Clevenger

  Ana arched her eyebrow. “I could hit much harder than that. I might still.”

  “Why did you decide to come home with me?”

  “Why’d you ask me to come?” Ana countered.

  “Because I fell for you in one weekend. One weekend. It should have been a rebound.” Riley set the mug down on the coffee table. She rubbed her forehead. “I’d been with Lisa for two years and never felt what I felt with you. In some ways, being with Blair, the girl I was with before Lisa, came close. And I still love both of them, in different ways. They drive me crazy, but you know, I don’t want them out of my life entirely. But that weekend with you was different.”

  “What was it about that weekend?”

  “I thought I had met someone who, if our living situations had been different, I could be with for longer than a year or two. I knew even then that it was a stretch, but you made me think it was possible. I don’t know why.” She stopped and looked at Ana. “I guess I was your distraction for the weekend. But why did you play it up so much? Why not just be honest and tell me you wanted to fuck around on your boyfriend?”

  Ana shook her head. She was silent for several minutes, sipping her tea intermittently and not looking at Riley. Finally she said, “You wanted to know what happened next? I went looking for you. Where did you go? You didn’t go back to Sharon’s house. You weren’t in the cottage.”

  “I went to a café. Remember the guy who made me cookies?”

  “I remember the cookies.”

  “He was standing out on the street when I crossed the road. I nearly walked right into a car. I was so pissed I wasn’t really paying attention to anything. He pointed to me like I was in trouble for something. Then he pointed to the café. I guess I must have looked like I needed an intervention. I followed him inside and soon had spilled the whole story. We weren’t alone. There were four or five other random people who were there waiting for a guitar player who never showed up, and so they listened to my story and gave their own bits of advice. They got my story instead of the song they were hoping for. The really strange thing was, I had a good evening. I laughed about it. I laughed about how you’d played me, and all these strangers laughed along with me. I left the café feeling as if I didn’t give a damn whom you slept with, but I didn’t want to see you ever again. That was how the story ended.”

  “But did you start at the beginning?”

  Riley was puzzled by her question. “As in, when we met?”

  Ana shook her head. “You know that wasn’t the beginning. When we met in Sharon’s kitchen, you already had baggage. And isn’t there always more to a story than girl meets girl?” She set her mug on the table next to Riley’s and took off the blue blanket. She shifted her place so she was closer to Riley and held out a hand.

  Riley clasped her hand. She felt a tremor race from her belly to her chest. Ana’s hand was soft and warm. They stared at each other. “I’m still not sure why you are here.”

  “I wanted a chance to tell you my end of the story. For weeks, I was angry. I didn’t waste any time thinking about how it would be nice to hold you again. I just wanted you to call so I could yell at the top of my lungs. I was too damn mad to even think that I might have fallen for you.” She shook her head. “But I did fall for you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have cared that you left before I could explain.”

  “You can yell now.”

  Ana smiled. “No, I just feel sad now.”

  “Why?”

  “I think you are right. I don’t see how it could work for us without one of us taking a very big risk or the relationship fizzling out in some sad, long-distance way. I don’t really want that. Maybe it needs to be our one fabulous fling.”

  Riley reached out and wrapped her arms around Ana. Ana moved closer to her, resting her head on Riley’s shoulder. It felt so good to be holding her that Riley didn’t care anymore about what had happened before. She wanted to say, “Let’s pretend this is the beginning,” but even as she said the words in her head, she knew it couldn’t be true for them. Ana was right. They didn’t meet in the beginning. They both had history.

  “I went back to Catori in early November for work and stayed with Sharon. She said you were doing okay. She even gave me your address here so I could stop by on the way to the airport, but I never did.” Ana exhaled. “Tom’s my boss. We’d been together going on five years. In fact, we were engaged. But we never set a date.”

  “So you figured you didn’t really need to mention him then? Since there was no set date?”

  Ana pulled out of the embrace and squared her jaw at Riley. “I’m nowhere near done unless you want me to be.”

  Riley felt the distance between them double with her words. “I’m sorry.”

  “You.” Ana pointed her finger at Riley. “Have no idea how sorry I was.” The nails were manicured and a ridiculous dark red, but her hands were beautiful all the same. “Just listen, okay? Give me the benefit of doubt for the next five minutes. Tom wanted to help. He flew in, thinking he’d surprise me. He surprised me all right. Joe and his wife were glad he came. They were old friends. He was the one who finally convinced Joe not to throw in the towel after the flood.”

  “I don’t want him to be the good guy in this story.”

  “There is no good guy. Just a series of shitty things that all happened to ruin something I had convinced myself might be amazing. I know better now.” Ana brushed her hand across Riley’s cheek. “We had been on the rocks off and on for several months leading up to that trip. We both knew we were close to done. Tom and I had talked about it right before I flew out to Colorado, in fact, but we had agreed to wait until after that trip to finish the conversation. Tom thought he’d try and sweep me off my feet once and for all. Instead, I pulled the carpet out from under him.”

  Ana reached for her tea. She took a sip and kept her hands wrapped around the mug as she continued. “We broke up that night. Remember that restaurant up on the hill that we went to? It’s one of Tom’s favorites. He insisted we go there, even though I was too pissed to even talk to him. We got the same terrible waiter. I have no idea what he thought of me. When we first walked in, he said, ‘Back again? You stay busy.’ Tom heard and asked what the waiter meant as soon as we got our menus. So I told him. But I started at the beginning.”

  “Which was?”

  “My first girlfriend. She started the story.”

  “What was her name?” Riley asked, feeling on steady ground now that she knew Ana had in fact broken up with the man she’d been so jealous of for months.

  “Marcelle. We were high school sweethearts. I mean, we never told anyone, you know. I thought we were going to grow old together. She had other plans. She has five kids now and a husband named Bruno. Whenever I go back to Lodi, I try to stop in and bring presents for her kiddos. They call me auntie. I think that secret will go with Marcelle to her grave. She calls me once in a while to complain about Bruno, and she always asks if I’ve found a woman.”

  “Was she the only one?”

  “The only girl?” Ana nodded, answering before Riley could respond. “Until you. But the story isn’t just about Marcelle and you, with Tom in between. There are five others that deserve mention.”

  “Do they really all deserve mention?”

  “Yes.” Ana set the mug down. “After Marcelle, there was Craig.” She held up her index finger. “Craig was my college crush who ended up being a total asshole, but it took me two years to figure that out. I met Randy when I had a tire changed at Sears.” She held up a second finger. “He still works at Sears in the tire department. You should see his forearms.”

  “No thanks.”

  Ana grinned. She was clearly enjoying this. “Seth was a friend with benefits that I met in my MBA program.” Three fingers. “I thought everyone needed to have one of those, but I realized one night in a bar that Seth was holding me back. That was the night I met Terrell.” Four fingers, raised higher. “He played basketball and the stock market. And women, as it
turned out. Terrell knew how to spend money, but he somehow made more than he wasted. He was handsome. Too handsome, in that catch-your-breath sort of way.”

  Ana reached up to her neck and touched a pendant that hung from a gold chain there. Diamonds encircled a bright ruby teardrop. “From Terrell, with love. But he loved a few too many women at the same time. I couldn’t deal. So I moved to Napa chasing the dream of my own fortunes and met Ernie. His real name is Ernesto, but he hates to be called that. Ernie got me into places that I needed to be and helped me make the connections.” She held up all five fingers.

  “What happened with Ernie? You know, you’re missing a diamond.”

  “I know. One fell out right after I got it. I retraced my steps but I never found it. Terrell said he wanted to replace it. But like most things with him, he never really planned on following through and I knew it. Anyway, I think it’s pretty even missing a diamond, and no one notices unless they are close enough to kiss me.” Ana sighed. “Tom was the reason I’m not with Ernie.”

  “You fell in love with Tom and broke Ernie’s heart, didn’t you?”

  “And he’s the one I thought about after you left. After I’d sent Tom back to his hotel room alone, left you three voice mails and a very long, probably pathetic text, which I hope you deleted before reading, I called Ernie. Funny, huh? It’d been five years since I had even thought about how things had gone between us, but I called him that night. He still lives in Napa. He’s the head chef at a four-star restaurant. When I called, he asked if it was because I wanted to get a table reservation. They book four or five months in advance unless you know someone. He’s helped me before when I had to woo clients. I told him I just wanted to hear his voice and that I wanted to say I was sorry. Sorry for everything. And that I wanted to see him sometime to say hi. He said his wife wouldn’t want him to be having that sort of conversation and he hung up. I felt terrible. I knew I’d broken his heart and at the time that it happened, he’d been no big deal to me.”

  “I didn’t read your text or listen to the voice mails. I didn’t want to hear any excuse. Why didn’t you think about the other girl? Marcelle? Why Ernie instead?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know. I think I needed to say sorry to someone.” She glanced at the fire with a faraway look in her eyes. “But that’s what I mean. They’re all part of the story but not the whole story, of course. All of the things that had happened between Tom and me…you know, I had just gotten off the phone with him when I walked into Sharon’s kitchen that morning we met. He had really pissed me off, but I was determined to let it go. You helped.”

  “You didn’t look like you hated his kiss.”

  “And, finally, this is how you are going to ask about that kiss. Tried to slip it in, huh? A bit underhanded, maybe.”

  Riley shrugged. “I felt like I’d been slapped across the face. I’m not trying to slip anything past you.”

  Ana stared at her for a long moment. “I’m sorry. I bet you hated me at that moment. He took me by surprise.”

  “You kissed him back.”

  Ana sighed. “Yeah, I kissed him back. I’d planned on talking to him about everything but…Not right then. Not in the winery. Not in front of Joe. And then I saw you standing there. I saw the look on your face, I knew what you’d seen, and I knew you weren’t going to hear any explanation. I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  Ana caressed Riley’s arm and then rested her hand on Riley’s neck. “But we don’t have a chance, do we? And it really has nothing to do with what happened.”

  “I don’t really believe in chance or luck. I think I saw you kiss him for a reason, and I think we were both at the airport today for a reason as well. But this might be how our fling was supposed to end.”

  Ana leaned close, and Riley moved into the kiss automatically. Ana’s lips were warm and full, pressing exactly the right amount to make Riley need more. They kept kissing until Ana shifted on the sofa and pulled Riley down on top of her. The room had warmed now and their clothes came off easily. Riley looked down at Ana once they were both naked. Ana’s tan skin was a beautiful contrast to the dark brown sofa. Ana shivered and Riley pulled the blue blanket over them. She lay back down slowly, feeling every point of contact that their naked skin made. She wasn’t ready to make love to Ana, but she had no desire to stop caressing all of her parts, the smooth parts, the parts with short trimmed hair and the well-muscled parts. She was familiarizing herself with Ana’s body all over again. It could take the rest of the day for all she cared.

  Ana was curled up against Riley’s backside with one arm draped over her. Riley remembered suggesting that they go upstairs to the bedroom but didn’t recall exactly how they got there. She hoped Ana had fallen asleep as quickly as she had. Riley shifted Ana’s arm and climbed out of bed. She squinted at the clock. Five a.m. She went to pee. When she got back, Ana was propped up on her elbow and she’d turned on the nightstand light. Ana pulled the covers down and Riley slipped back into the warmth. Riley settled onto her pillow and closed her eyes.

  “Don’t try and go back to sleep,” Ana said. “You can keep your eyes closed, but we need to talk.”

  “When’s your flight?”

  “Three o’clock,” Ana answered. “You said you wanted twenty-four hours.”

  “Then we’ll have plenty of time to talk in two hours. Let’s just sleep until seven.”

  “No sleeping,” Ana repeated, tickling Riley’s ear and neck until Riley was sitting upright in bed trying to keep her hands away.

  Riley was completely awake now. Ana grinned back at her. She was still naked. Riley had to consciously stop her hand from reaching out to touch Ana’s nipples. “I don’t think I’ve ever spent this much time naked with someone I wanted to have sex with and not done anything more than kiss.”

  “You were pretty clear that you didn’t want to go there last night,” Ana said. She reached for Riley’s hand and guided it to her breast.

  “My body and my mind disagreed.”

  “And this morning?”

  Riley shook her head. She could feel Ana’s nipples responding to her touch. “This isn’t fair.”

  Ana found Riley’s other hand and moved it to her other breast. “Some things aren’t fair.”

  Riley encircled the nipples with her fingertips and then moved to straddle Ana. Ana kissed her and moaned softly when Riley pulled away. Riley shifted down to brush her tongue over Ana’s nipples, then took her time, moving up and down the length of Ana’s body with soft kisses, her lips barely brushing over the places she knew Ana wanted to be touched. Ana let her play this game for some time before reaching down to slip her hand between her legs. Riley felt a surge between her own legs as she watched Ana. She pulled Ana’s hand away and sat upright, still straddling her, then moved Ana’s fingers to her own swollen clit.

  “You’re wet,” Ana murmured.

  Riley nodded. She let Ana play until she could feel the start of an orgasm, then shifted away from Ana’s hand. Riley reached down to find Ana’s warm center, moving her fingers inside, and Ana pressed her hips upward at Riley’s touch. Riley matched Ana’s rocking, watching her all the while. Her eyes were closed and her head was pressed back against the pillows, chin tilted up. Riley could hardly believe Ana was in her bed, could hardly believe they were again pushing each other to the edge, and even as she doubted that she should have brought Ana here, she wanted her all the more. Ana pressed down on Riley’s hand as she climaxed, then reached for Riley and pressed her finger against Riley’s clit. Riley didn’t try to quiet the sounds that came with the rush.

  A moment later, she rolled off Ana and lay on her back with her eyes closed, thinking that she might easily slip back asleep if Ana would let her. What happens after this doesn’t matter, she thought. She had needed the release of an orgasm and guessed Ana did as well. Maybe that was all they would get.

  Ana’s hand was under her nose. “Smell that?”

  “Pussy?”

  “I l
ove it.”

  “You’re weird,” Riley said half-heartedly.

  “No, I’m weird for falling for someone I barely knew in one weekend. And I’m weird for wanting to find a way to have you in my life after today.”

  Riley was silent.

  “You’re going to leave me hanging with that one, aren’t you?”

  Ana climbed on top of Riley and crossed her arms. Her chin rested on her fists and she stared at Riley. “Do you remember the last day we were together? That Sunday morning?”

  Riley nodded. “I remember waking up late. I didn’t pick up Sharon’s pastries like I was supposed to. Some girl had me distracted.”

  “That morning I whispered, ‘I love making love to you,’ in your ear. You were sleeping, but I saw you smile. I have a realtor friend in Napa. I called her that afternoon and asked her how much she thought I could get if I rented out my condo. I told her I was thinking of renting a place in Denver for a while. She said she had a buyer who was interested in my neighborhood and she thought I could get a pretty good price if I wanted to sell. That gave me cold feet, so I told her I’d think about it and hung up. I knew I wasn’t really ready to sell my place. I probably wasn’t ready to rent a place in Denver, either, but I did consider it. Doesn’t really matter what city all my stuff stays in anyway. I’m always traveling through to somewhere else.”

  “Denver? You really thought about moving? You know you’re crazy, right?”

  “In retrospect, yes, it was a crazy idea.”

  Riley shook her head. “You said I was crazy moving states for a girl I knew for two months. You were thinking about it after one weekend?”

  “Well, I’d been thinking about moving closer to an airport for some time. As it is, I commute from Napa to the San Francisco airport or to Sacramento once or twice a week, and nearly all of my flights are eastbound. I thought I could route everything through Denver or move there and save the commute. Besides, I thought I was ready for a change.”

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t really know then either. I was just thinking about possibilities.” She touched her fingertip to Riley’s lips. “How long are you in Seattle?”