Red flags are supposed to catch your attention. Sometimes they don't. Seemingly innocent or innocuous things come and go, and you don't realize that they are actually dots that will later be connected.
These were the thoughts that ran through my head that night as I gazed wide-eyed at my computer screen.
My beautiful wife of three years (we were each other's first loves) was attending a seminar on how to increase your Internet presence. She had lost her job as a substitute teacher when the pandemic ended in-person school in our district. She is a smart and energetic woman, so rather than be discouraged, she started doing on-line selling.
Calling her business Ginger's Online Boutique, she would scour the net for bargains on women's clothes, household items, and anything else that tickled her fancy, buy them, then market them on her site with a bit of a mark-up and some clever descriptions. Hardly a day passed without the FedEx truck stopping in front of our apartment building to drop off or pickup up packages. Over time Ginger developed a pretty good customer base, and her business continued to grow. Since bargains have to be cheap to be bargains, her mark-up on each item was small - but the profits added up with volume. Every once in a while she would turn up an on-line steal where she could really jack up the price. Designer purses were sometimes gold mines.
Ginger and I had met in college, dated for two years, then married soon after graduation. She is pretty, vivacious, and sweet. I fell head over heels for her, and she seemed to have taken to me as well. I was a business major, and after graduation entered a management training program at one of the big anonymous corporations whose name in big letters on the front of a glass-and-steel office building tells you nothing about what goes on inside.
We were doing well. I was performing and advancing at work, and although her district was not hiring full-time teachers, she became a popular substitute and got called in three or four days out of a typical week.
Her work at school dried up when the pandemic hit, but mine didn't. We set up a home office in the second bedroom of our apartment, and I worked remotely with a company-provided laptop, and a phone. Because I spent many hours each day on the phone, Ginger set up a desk in our bedroom. She bought herself a very capable computer with enough capacity, speed, memory and features to support her business plan. It was kind of odd for us both to be working in the same apartment and sometimes barely seeing each other all day. Maybe we'd both run out to the kitchen for a coffee refill or a snack, but then we'd be back at it in our respective "work stations." Those accidental encounters usually ended with a hug and a kiss. Ginger is a very physical woman. She likes to touch and to be touched. Hugs and kisses make her happy. I'm not as touchy as she is, but I enjoy her attention just the same. She likes sex too. We're on the same page with that.
It got so we were pretty casual about how we dressed for work. I usually had to wear a dress shirt, or at least presentable polo for Zoom calls, but it was usually shorts or sweats below the waist. One day I walked past the bedroom when Ginger was working and noticed she was sitting at the computer in just a bra and panties. I gave a little teasing wolf whistle, and she spun around. She explained that she was wearing them to see how to best describe them on her website - she hoped to make a deal and become an on-line distributor for a line of lingerie.
She looked pretty damn good, so I moved up behind her and gave her a hug from behind. As I kissed her neck I copped a feel. She squirmed a bit, but tried to stay focused on her work. I let her go, and wore a big smile as I grabbed my coffee in the kitchen and got back to the important tasks awaiting me back at my computer. Well, somebody thought they were important.
It went on like that - we'd have breakfast together, work separately all day, then reconnect for dinner. Because she controlled her own hours, Ginger was able to make the time to explore recipes and do some very creative and delicious cooking. We moved aside some furniture in the living room and put in a treadmill and an exercise bike, and quite often we'd spend evenings watching TV while running and riding in place. With the regular exercise we stayed trim despite confinement, and working with some dumbbells Ginger was working on shaping her figure. Which I didn't think she really needed to do, because her shape was pretty damn pleasing to begin with.
We had sex. We had a lot of sex. We both enjoyed sex, and we were young and in love. Sometimes between Zoom meetings I would go into her office/bedroom and try to seduce her away from her computer. Sometimes it worked.
Eventually I got called back to work in person in the office, but when in-person instruction resumed at school, Ginger had found that she was doing enough business on her computer that she could retire from teaching, so she let the school know they didn't need to call her anymore.
Ginger's birthday was coming up, and she asked me for a video camera as her big gift. She had picked one out from an online seller, and told me that it would help her to build her business. She had a deal in the works that would require this upgrade.
Well, we were pretty pleased with the income she had been bringing into the household, so it made perfect sense to me to upgrade her technical capabilities to enhance her business. I bought her the camera, and on her birthday she ripped off the giftwrap and opened the box with great enthusiasm. "Oh Paul, this is perfect, thank you!" she gushed as she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a warm, wet kiss. "With this I can really up my online game," she assured me.
A couple of weeks later I came home to find a large shipping box sitting open in the middle of the living room. Ginger very mysteriously asked me to sit down in my easy chair, and handed me a tumbler of Scotch. "That big deal I told about has finally come through," she told me. "This is why I needed the camera. My friend Ashley from high school has launched a new company selling sexy lingerie. She designs everything herself. It's the highest quality, and she has signed me up as one of her primary sales outlets."