Ashton, Kris and Seventeen Years of Wine.

Ashton

I should have known this was going to go badly. The signs were neon-green two weeks ago when we started chatting but I was blinded by how hot she looked in pictures. Four days into chatting, I knew I wanted to meet up with her. Coaxing her into having the date in my house proved harder than expected – she thought it was “too fast”. I had my mind on one thing but clearly she wanted more. Easing her mind became my life’s mission over those next few days. We went from chatting on the app to talking on the phone about her dog, her work, her family, her exes. Information wasn’t volunteered unless I asked, questions were never reciprocated. By Monday, she’d finally agreed to meet for dinner in my place come Friday. By day before yesterday, I was out of questions to ask. I needed a way to get conversation started again and my friend Martin suggested a brilliant game idea I could try.

Yesterday, I shot Kris a text saying, “Can I ask you a couple of questions? There’s a prize at the end and it’s wine!” She texted back, "I'm in. Ask away."

I sent her six screenshots of questions Martin sent to me. He told me they were pulled from a BrightCellars quiz and that there was no better way to know a person than by asking questions that would eventually tell you what kind of wine they are. It was a genius idea and boy was he right. I knew A LOT more about Kris after she was done taking that quiz. I knew immediately that she and I were a HORRIBLE match!

What sort of woman loves dark chocolate so much she’d eat it for the rest of her life, what kind of woman drinks scotch as a preferred drink, what kind of person likes cranberry?

A sociopath – that’s who!

Still, did that bring me to my senses? Force me to send an “I don’t think we should keep talking” text? Nope! I was so close to the finish line, I could taste her.

I sent her answers over to Martin and he told me to go pick up a bottle of something he called a Humdrum Cabernet Sauvignon 2018. I didn’t know what any of those words meant so I shot him a text back saying, “Mmm, don’t know what that is, I’ll stick to the Merlot I have.” He texted back “Your funeral” – I should have taken his words more seriously.

Finally after weeks of texting, it was Friday. I woke up happy. I cleaned my house from top to bottom, I shaved, my sister dropped off a home-cooked dinner by 4. By 7, Kris texted that she was on my street.

My heart was racing already but once the doorbell rang, I think it did a flip. I smoothed out my shirt, I re-adjusted my tie and I headed straight for the door.

Kris

A lot has changed about dating. After losing Stephen three years ago, I finally decided it was time to put myself out there again. I called my friend Rashida and asked her for tips on setting up a dating profile. She said to me, “Men want a fantasy. The whole thing’s a game now. Don’t take it too seriously. Everybody puts out who they want to be not who they actually are on the internet.” I listened and dare I say I think I did a bang-up job about it.

The girl I put on my profile was in her 20s, she had great boobs, a fantastic smile, she was what I looked like thirty years ago. I talked with so many gentlemen on those apps but oh wow have things changed. The kinds of things they said, how forward they were. I’m a lady, you don’t talk to a lady that way. That’s why I was so taken when I came across Ashton’s messages. Throughout the conversation, he was polite and patient. Eventually after a lot of coaxing I agreed to meet up with him. I was so excited to finally see the man behind the pictures he put up.

The Date.

When Ashton opened up the door, he was slightly relieved that the woman he was waiting for hadn’t shown up yet, he wasn’t quite sure yet of what to say.

“Hello?” he said to the woman at the door, “How may I help you?”

Kris was in shock when she saw Ashton. Immediately, she knew she had followed Rashida’s advice all wrong. Ashton wasn’t a fantasy, he wasn’t playing any games. He was real and he was standing in front of her. She was tempted to lie, tempted to say she was somebody else and leave. She could have but she decided what the hell and said, “I’m Kris and before you shut the door, can we talk for a moment?”

Sitting across from Kris on the dinner table, all Ashton could think about was how he didn’t see the signs? A woman who loved dark chocolate, drank scotch, and loved cranberry was a woman who had experienced a lot of life and was set in her ways regardless of what society dictated to her. That woman was Kris.

What Ashton didn’t expect as the night went on was how much he’d enjoy Kris’ company. She opened up about the advice she got from Rashida and he couldn’t stop laughing about how much she had fumbled with it. Over Merlot they talked about a lot of things – his work, her son Stephen who she’d lost in a car crash when he was five on his way back from school, his mother who died when he was only nine, and the agonizing loneliness that living alone can sometimes bring.

Before Kris left that night, she asked Ashton for his phone number. He gave it to her but went a step further and asked for her to call him so he’d also have hers.

On that Friday night Kris and Ashton drank Merlot together. The following week, they drank Humdrum Cabernet Sauvignon in Kris’ house, and by the third week they made a pact to always bring a new bottle of wine to try out every time they met. Ashton never begged his sister for a home-cooked meal again. Kris' loneliness became less agonizing.

Kris and Ashton remained friends and although they never became lovers, Ashton was the one who read Kris' eulogy on the day she was finally laid to rest, seventeen years later.

The End.

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