It was our first Valentine’s Day together, since we’d only been dating right around 9 months. Victoria and I had known each other since high school, but went separate ways when college and life pulled us in different directions. I wasn’t ever really what I would have called a friend to Victoria back then, even though we were in a couple of classes with each other, so the two of us never kept in touch. I always thought she was pretty, but I felt she was out of my league. But that obviously changed. 
	How did we end up together? A little bit of common interest and a whole lot of luck. We actually found each other again through one of those Internet matching services. She showed up on my profile after about six months in with a twenty percent compatibility rating. Even though it was low, I’d been having a terrible time with people I didn’t know with higher compatibility. I thought I remembered her from high school and it seemed that the time between then and now had treated her well. She had matured from a pretty girl into a beautiful woman. So I took the chance and sent a private message to her asking if she was indeed the same Victoria Mainswelle I knew from then.
	She was and, in fact, remembered me as well. We reminisced a little bit about our time together over private messages on the site and then I gave her my IM contact info. The following night was a long one as we caught up on each other’s history since high school and even a little previous. I even found out that we had both moved back to our home town, which made things more interesting. That night was followed by a couple more weeks of such nights. My work suffered a bit at the lab mainly from getting little sleep and having distracting thoughts about talking with Victoria later at night.
	One morning, before work, I decided to e-mail Victoria a message to call me, along with my phone number. We’d chatted a lot on the Internet, but I wanted take things a bit farther and wanted to be able to hear her. That evening, we talked on the phone. It wasn’t for as long as we had been talking over IM, but hearing her sexy, sultry voice and her laugh made it a lot more enjoyable. I knew she felt the same way, because her phone number showed up on my cell phone’s screen right after I got off of work the next evening. We talked until I started getting hungry, which I mentioned to her. She said she was as well, so I took a big chance, and asked her out to dinner. It took a little bit of discussion and encouragement from me, as it was our first time meeting face-to-face again since we reconnected, but she agreed.
	Needless to say, dinner went over well. We decided to meet at a good Italian place I knew of. I had little time to change, but I had had a major presentation due on the lab’s research, so I was fairly well dressed. Even though I had given her little time, when she arrived about ten minutes later than I did, she took me breath away. The few pictures she had kept on her profile did not do her the slightest bit of justice. 
	She had on a relaxing summer print dress that outlined her slender features. She wasn’t overly thin or waifish, but she was definitely lean in tone from heavy exercise. She was shorter than I remembered, maybe being around five-foot-two in height. Her face was thin, but the features were striking: those solid, strong green eyes with a piercing gaze looking over taut cheeks, descending down a thin nose into a set of lusciously full lips, all wrapped by long, silky midnight black locks that set off those bright eyes. Her tan skin poked out from under the dress in several places, especially at her chest, where a slight amount of her cleavage could be seen. From the looks, she wasn’t overly endowed, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the curves she showed.
	The evening went extraordinarily well for us both and we started to enjoy more time with each other. I found out that she did exercise heavily, mostly from the fact that she worked as a personal trainer at one of the local gyms. I didn’t mind in the slightest. We continued dating, seeing each other more frequently, until about four months into things, we decided to become a couple.
	This led to where we are now, Valentine’s Day. It had been a rough week for both of us, so I decided to keep the stress level down and offered for the two of us to just stay in, rather than go through the trouble of booking reservations. Victoria had agreed, thankfully. I had taken a couple of culinary courses as electives during college, and was prepared to delight Victoria with a dish of fettuccine alfredo. Hopefully it would taste as good as the dish she had on our first date.
	I brought Victoria to my condominium for an afternoon of snuggling and movie-watching before dinner. Neither of us enjoyed the cliché horror movies, the traditional Valentine’s staple, so we settled on a romanticky, action-adventure sort of thing. It didn’t really matter, as the better part of the evening was still ahead. We enjoyed being together and snuggling. About three-quarters into the movie, I fetched the first of my gifts to us as a couple.
“I’ll be right back, Love,” I mentioned while motioning her back off of me. 
	“Where are you going, Michael?” Victoria questioned me while adjusting her black skirt from sitting up.
	“Just up for a second.”
	“Do you want me to pause the movie?” she asked.
	“No, it’s not a big deal. I’ll be back in second,” I replied, slipping around the couch and towards the kitchen.  Victoria turned back around to the movie.
	I dug into the fridge, pulling out the bottle of Demi-sec Blanc de Blanc sparkling wine I found in an imported wine shop. Victoria and I both enjoyed a bit of alcoholic beverage now and then. At one point in time, Victoria had travelled to France on a study exchange and told me she missed the beautiful wines from there. I had found this one especially for her and had been saving it for the right occasion. Valentine’s Day should be right.
	A corkscrew and two glasses out of a cupboard later, I walked back in the living room. Casually, I set the glasses down on a couple of coasters on the table and started to pour Victoria a drink. I held the bottle label spun away so Victoria wouldn’t notice.
	“Champagne? Trying to get me drunk before dinner?” Victoria laughed. She turned towards me and accepted the drink.
	“I might be. It’ll make the food taste better,” I replied.I held my glass up high in front of me, the light from the television picked up the bubbles in the clear, yellow champagne. “To our first Valentine’s together!” I toasted.
	“May we have more in the years to come,” answered Victoria.
Our glasses clinked and Victoria raised hers to her full lips, daintily sipping out of it. Her eyes widened in surprise as the smoothly mellow taste with a slight hint of sweetness infused her sense of taste. 
	“Oh Michael!” she said surprised, “Is this a Tissot?”
	“It might be,” I replied again, “it says ‘Crémant du Jura’ on the label. Happy Valentine’s Day, Love.”
	“You know how I LOVE French wine,” she purred before taking another sip,