First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) (10 page)

After most Sunday dinners, I would spend a
polite amount of time watching some kind of seasonally appropriate
American sport with Bill. Today, I was on the fence. Annie had let
the subject lie during dinner, but there was a palpable air of
brewing conflict between us.

I ducked out the back door for a cigarette.
Annie had “quit” a year ago, but the rumpled pack of Marlboro Reds
stuffed into the ceramic frog beside the stoop told a different
story. I took a dollar from my pocket, quickly rolled it up, and
slipped it into the pack to replace the cigarette I’d bummed. She’d
thoughtfully left a lighter in the frog. That was my sister, always
prepared for any eventuality.

I took a long drag and had to stop myself
from moaning at the comforting familiarity of both the action and
the toxins speeding into my lungs. I’d quit—actually quit, not
Annie-quit—over a year ago, but every now and then, I had one. It
was stupid; I’d done this dance before, and I knew that one would
lead to another, and another, and another, until I was up to a pack
a day again.

“
I thought you were done
with that.” Annie’s voice startled me out of my blissful
contemplation of nicotine and ritual. She went to the frog, grabbed
a smoke of her own, and the dollar I’d put in the pack. She pressed
the bill into my palm. “Keep it. Let’s call that a peace
offering.”

“
And good cover, right? You
can just tell Bill I was the one out here having a lapse in
self-control.” I knew her game.

“
You caught me.” She lit up
with a backward glance at the door then sat on the stoop, plucking
at the front of her t-shirt in reaction to the heat.
“Ian…”

“
No.” I shook my head. I was
too tired for round two. “Just don’t. I know you don’t approve of
my choices, all right? I understand that, honestly I do. But this
is my life to fuck up. If I’m having a midlife crisis—”

“
I never said that,” she
interrupted, stern but calm.

“
But I’m saying it.” I took
another blessed inhale and released it before I went on. “I’ve been
on two dates with her. I like her. But it’s far from
serious.”

“
Do you want it to be
serious?” she asked, with the same confusing,
condemning-yet-concerned tone our mother had employed so many
times.

And that was the real question, wasn’t it?
Could I see myself in an actual, committed relationship with Penny?
Could I see myself in love with her? Marrying her? I’d imagined
having sex with her, but could I imagine waking up beside her every
morning? And was it too soon to even think about such things?

I gave Annie’s query a thought while I took
another lungful of tar and chemicals. “I do. I don’t know that it
will be, but I think I would like it if it was. She’s…”

“
Young?”

I rolled my eyes at her. “It’s not about
that. Believe me, I don’t feel younger when I’m around her.”

“
What do you feel?” she
asked, like a fucking psychoanalyst.

But damned if it wasn’t a powerful thing to
think about. “Comfortable. I know everyone says things like this,
but I feel like I’ve known her for a lot longer than two
dates.”

Annie narrowed her eyes as she inhaled. When
she exhaled, she asked, “Have you slept with her?”

“
I haven’t.” There was no
need to act outraged or offended at being asked. It would only make
her suspicious. “She doesn’t have sex with anyone, actually. She’s
never found anyone she’s wanted to have it with.”

Was that too personal a thing to confess to
my sister? In hindsight, I should have considered if sharing would
have offended Penny.

Annie’s dark eyebrows shot up. “And how do
you feel about that?”

“
I want to sleep with her.
Of course I do. But, if I’m not the guy, I’m not the guy.” The
thought made my shrug a little heavier.

“
I think you’re getting into
something very foolish. You’re not as young as you used to be. You
might not be able to keep up,” she warned. But her heart wasn’t in
it the way it had been earlier. “You’re a grown man, and you’re
capable of making your own choices. Just don’t mess her about.
She’s very young, and young girls can have a difficult time turning
a man down. It feels like an obligation.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to think too deeply
on that. If Annie were speaking from experience, if some awful
prick had pressured her into having sex she hadn’t wanted to have,
I would have the irrational urge to punch him. It wasn’t likely I
would be able to find him to satisfy that urge, but my siblings and
I had very deep protective streaks when it came to each other. At
least, those of us who were still living did.

“
Yeah. Well, she’s a sweet
girl. I’m going to do whatever I can to avoid hurting her.” That
brought a different protective urge to the surface. I didn’t want
to think of the guy who might come along after me, and how he might
break Penny’s heart.

Jesus. I was pretty far gone, wasn’t I?

I had a powerful need to talk to Penny. This
discussion had somehow made her more real to me, what had passed
between us more tangible. I wanted to tell her, but of course I
couldn’t. That would make me seem desperate, at best, freaky and
scary, at worst.

“
Look, tell Bill I’m not
going to stay this afternoon. I’ve got a bit of a headache.” I
stubbed out my cigarette on the concrete driveway then tossed the
butt over the chain-link fence and into the neighbor’s
postage-stamp sized yard. There were already butts stomped out all
over their driveway. I wondered if Annie had some kind of
neighbor’s agreement worked out between them.

I gave Annie a kiss on the cheek, thanked
her for dinner, and headed to my car, parked in the alley. As I
pulled away, I glanced at my phone in its clip-on cradle on the
dash. I held down the button until Siri asked what she could help
me with.

“
Dial Penny.” I took a deep
breath as the phone methodically moved through its steps to do my
bidding.

“
Is it too early to give you
your own ringtone?” Penny’s voice came over the car speakers,
startling me. I’d been expecting a “hello”.

“
Were we having a
conversation I don’t remember being in the middle of?” I asked
cautiously. Or maybe she had been on line with someone else.
Someone who deserved
their
own ringtone.

God, I hoped it wasn’t that.

“
Seriously?” A spring
squeaked. Maybe she was in bed.

Maybe she was lounging in bed in the type of
panties that look like very small shorts, and a white cotton tank
top with no bra underneath.

“
You do that to me all the
time.” Her accusation jolted me out of my lecherous
thoughts.

“
Me?” I couldn’t clear my
head enough to remember what we’d been talking about.
Starting conversations in the
middle
, I reminded myself. “No, I don’t. My
sister has a habit of doing that, but I don’t think I
do.”

She laughed. God, her laugh was fucking
fantastic. “Trust me, you do. I can’t believe no one has ever
mentioned it.”

“
They probably thought it
was cool and charming. You just don’t appreciate it,” I said, and
my usual playful charm somehow didn’t make it through, falling flat
and pathetic to my ears.

She must have picked up on it. “Hey, are you
okay? You sounded kind of…different.”

I sighed. This was not how I’d wanted this
call to go. My plan had been to flirt with her a bit, test the
tenuous chemistry happening between us. Instead, there was no
chemistry at all. Just raw, emotional exhaustion. “It’s been a hell
of a day already. And it’s really good to hear your voice.”

It took her half a beat to respond. “It’s
good to hear yours, too.”

I hoped that was sincere, and not a
knee-jerk response to me overstepping my bounds.

“
What are you doing, right
now?” she asked.

“
Driving home. Where I will
probably drink a few beers and nap on the sofa.” And try to
convince myself not to panic about the fact I was rapidly
developing a troubling amount of affection for her.

“
Hey. Do you have a pair of
swim trunks?”

A man could get whiplash from the way she
changed subjects.

“
I do… Why?” It was a rather
odd question to ask.

She giggled. “Go home, get them, and meet me
at my place. We’re going to have an adventure.”

“
And this adventure entails
water?” I hoped it wasn’t some hip young pool party with obnoxious
dance music and drunk college-aged kids causing a very real
drowning danger.

“
Yes. It entails water. And
taking your shirt off in front of me, so no talking about ‘gory
wrecks’. Because I looked at your Facebook pictures. You look
fine.”

I thought back to how a shirtless photo of
me could have ended up on Facebook. Then I remembered the trip to
Greece that Gena and I had taken. The last-hurrah-before-the-baby
trip.

I’d been so fucking oblivious.

Gena was the past. Penny, presumably in a
bathing suit, was my immediate future. “I’m still not thrilled at
the prospect of my own partial nudity. However, I assume there will
be partial nudity on your part, so you have my attention.” I
chuckled at my own joke.

“
Just get here,” she
ordered. “Trust me, this is going to be perfect.”

We hung up, and I considered what kind of
adventure she could have planned. Did her building have a rooftop
pool? That wasn’t exactly an adventure. Did she want to hijack me
to the beach? It seemed unlikely. She was comfortable with being
spontaneous with me, at least, and I loved that.

Canarsie to Dumbo to Little Italy was a
frustrating, long trip, so I only stopped at the house long enough
to rummage through my drawers and find my trunks. I ducked into the
bathroom to brush my teeth and scrub the cigarette smell from my
face and hands. Then, it was back in the car, praying I didn’t
smell too sweaty from spending all day in the shirt and trousers
I’d worn to church.

I spent the drive idly wondering about
Penny’s swimsuit. I would have bet money that it was what Gena had
called a “tankini”, or even a one-piece suit that looked like
something out of the 1950’s. I pulled up beside the building, went
to the dodgy-looking intercom at the door and pressed the button,
hoping I wouldn’t receive a fatal electric shock.

“
On my way down!” Penny
called over the crackling line. I walked back to the car and
waited, leaning against it. The building was four stories, and
probably a walk-up. Odds were good that I had a moment to
wait.

The wait was worth it. Penny stepped out of
the door, sliding sunglasses down from her hair like a model in a
1990’s music video. She was dressed the part, as well, in tiny pink
shorts and, God bless her, that white tank top I had fantasized
about. She did have a bra on, and the sight of the strap peeking
out from beneath her top was almost more tantalizing than my
imaginings.

I realized I was staring at her legs,
probably at the exact moment she realized I was staring at her
legs. I jerked my gaze guiltily upward, and decided to play it off.
“So, where is this adventure that requires swim trunks taking
us?”

She lifted her glasses, batting her long
lashes at me. “To trespass.”

Maybe Annie was right. Maybe I couldn’t keep
up with this woman.

Chapter Seven

According to
Penny, the swimming pool at the One UN hotel was the easiest to
infiltrate in all of Manhattan. I had to hand it to her; when I’d
been a young man in New York, sneaking into a pool would have never
crossed my mind. I had always sprung for a thirty-five dollar pool
pass, which had probably inflated to three hundred by now. For
Penny, sneaking may have been a necessity.

As we approached the building, Penny laid
out her plan, once again. She was the Pink Panther of stealing time
in hotel pools. “Walk through the lobby like we’re supposed to be
there. We’re going to go up to the fitness center. We’ll split up
at the locker rooms, but from there, you can go right to the pool,
no hassles.”

“
You’ve robbed a bank
before, haven’t you?” I asked. I hoped the hotel was just named for
the UN, which was nearby, and not affiliated with it in a way that
would end in terrorism charges if we were caught.

“
It’s going to be fine,” she
assured me. “I do this all the time. I like to break rules if
they’re ones I know I can’t get into actual trouble for. My teenage
rebellion was really boring.”

I’d seen a bit of a rebellious streak in the
way she’d snapped at the women in the park. That had happened only
the day before, and the realization stunned me. It felt as though a
whole week had passed, in terms of how much I’d missed her.

Praising God for his holy miracle of
air-conditioning, I walked in step with Penny while also trying to
follow her. The lobby was probably the most confusing, ugly
structure I’d ever seen. If a mid-1980’s shopping mall and a
decrepit off-strip Las Vegas casino had a one-night stand resulting
in an accidental pregnancy, the baby would look like the lobby at
One UN.

“
This place is what the
Epcot designers probably imagined the future would look like back
in the 1970’s,” I said, keeping my voice low. I assumed criticism
of the venue might result in the attraction of undue attention,
should I be overheard.

A faint smile passed across her face. “If
you come here often enough, you’ll grow fond of it.”