Chapter 11: Spirits
She buys a bottle and shoves it in the very back of her liquor cabinet without even giving it a sample. It was to support Paul, she tells herself, but the amount of embarrassment she is feeling tells her otherwise. She cracks it open one evening when she's feeling particularly caught up in the melodrama that is unfolding in her life and she is immediately caught off guard by how much it tastes like him.
She knows it's just her mind playing tricks on her, of course. Her first time ever sampling bourbon, she was with him. Before he came into her life, she was only accustomed to cheap beer and watery margaritas. It hadn't taken very long for him to refine her taste.
Out of all their adventures, it was the wineries she liked the best, lazy afternoon tastings in the vineyard, learning how to be a Hollywood starlet while falling hopelessly in love with him. As much as she hates to admit it, so much of who she is today, she owes to him seeing, caring, and believing in her.
She nurses the glass in her hand absentmindedly like she's seen him do countless times, running her fingertip around the rim and letting herself sink deep into the tresses of how much she misses him as the alcohol clouds her conscious. It's all a charade of the mind, but she gives herself over to it nonetheless, imagining all the impossible ways they could find their way back to one another.
He tries her wine for the first time at Paul's, and his first mistake is not thinking of a good excuse before pouring himself a glass. "You don't even like wine…" Paul laughs from his place seated on the couch where he pinned its creator beneath him less than a month ago.
"I was curious," he smirks, and it's not a lie. He's been dying to try this particular brand of booze. When the flavor of it hits his tongue, he is able to feign apathy on the outside, but on the inside, he's reeling. It's bold and rich and decadent. It's everything he loves about her. He coughs when he realizes he's taken it too far yet again. "In terms of competition, we've definitely got her beat."
"That's not really the point, you know." Paul responds, deviating from his usually goofy personality to drive home the message. "It's good wine with an entirely different audience, you should wish her well."
He simply nods and knocks back the rest of his glass like a shot, savoring the exquisite flavor as it burns his throat on the way down. "Sorry for being a dick. I just don't know how to react to her anymore."
"It's not that you don't know how to react, you just fight your instincts."
He stops and buys three bottles for good measure on the way home.