First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) (12 page)

Well, not twenty. Twenty is a shit age. She
made me want to be mid-thirties again. At the very least, my
erection was strong mid-forties.

She pulled back, gasping for breath, a
droplet of water hanging from the end of her nose, but she kept
just as tight a hold on me as before. There was palpable chemistry
between us, so heavy and full of promise it terrified me to examine
it. Maybe her superstitious belief in fortunes wasn’t so laughable,
after all.

I couldn’t tear my gaze away from hers. If
there was something appropriate to say, I certainly couldn’t think
of it. She leaned in, again, but this time, when her tongue slid
against mine, her legs wound around my hips. It was obvious it was
an unintentional, instinctual move, but there was no way she would
miss the fact my cock was a fucking iron bar up against her.

Her eyes flew open, and she immediately
pulled back, gasping, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, that was really
forward of me.”

“
No, it’s fine.” I scratched
the back of my neck and looked away. “A bit embarrassing, is all. A
good, solid school book would be very helpful right
now.”

She covered her face with her hands,
laughing. “Okay, I think the water is acting as an aphrodisiac. We
may need to get out.”

“
Agreed. Although, I hate to
cut our adventure short.” If the water was dangerous, the
suggestion that came immediately to mind wasn’t much better. But I
was going to say it anyway. “Why don’t you come to my place and
have dinner?”

That sounded rather lecherous, didn’t
it?

“
Let me guess, you’re going
to cook dinner to lull me into a false sense of security, then bam,
five years from now, we’re married and you’ve never cooked since.”
She raised one eyebrow in challenge.

“
No. I’ll be upfront about
that right now. Marriage or not, I don’t cook. But I’ll have
something delivered,” I promised.

Wasn’t I required, as a single man, to
recoil in horror from a dirty word like “marriage”? Maybe having
been married once, I didn’t have a reason to be afraid of it. It
wasn’t some horrible trap set with fun and breasts and the promise
of regular sex that closed a man in a cage the moment he was
shackled with a ring. Despite the way things had ended with Gena,
I’d liked being married. It shamed me to think I’d once been so
immature I’d actually feared the institution.

Penny quirked her lips to the side as she
thought. “Okay. I’m really curious to see what the inside of that
clock tower looks like.”

At least she hadn’t assumed I was planning
to seduce her. I held back a sigh of relief at that. “Oh, it’s all
gears and pulleys. You’ll have to be very careful about where you
put your shoes, or they’ll rotate off and you’ll never see them,
again.”

Pointing over her shoulder with her thumb,
she said, “I’m going go get changed.”

I watched her as she climbed up the ladder,
the soaked material of her bikini bottom clinging just a little too
close. Totally un-self-conscious, she stepped onto the pool deck
and slid a finger on each side of the small triangle of fabric to
adjust it. Women did that on purpose, I was convinced.

So, Penny was going to come back to my
place, and we were going to behave.

Hand to God, we were going to behave.

* * * *

I spent the drive to my
place wondering what incriminating evidence I may have left lying
about the living spaces. I hadn’t taken out the recycling in a
while…Would she judge me on the number of beer bottles in it? I
hadn’t left my laptop open with some porn site prominently
displayed on the screen, had I?

“
I’m so excited, right now,”
she said with a little bounce while we rode up in the elevator.
“You have no idea how often I’ve looked at this place and
fantasized about what it might be like inside.”

“
I hope the fantasy lives up
to the reality, but you have to remember, a very single, very
depressed man has been living here.” There was a pair of jeans
across the back of the couch, I knew there was. If I could sneak in
and hide them…

“
My mom used to tell people,
‘I’m here to see you, not your house,’ but then, she would bitch
about their housekeeping for the entire ride home.” Penny rolled
her eyes. “I promise I won’t do that to you. As much as I want to
see the inside of your apartment, I really am here to see
you.”

The doors opened, and we stepped out of the
entry elevator into the open floor plan of the first level.

“
Oh my God,” Penny said
breathlessly. “You made this.”

“
I designed it,” I
clarified. “Many people who are far more skilled than I am built
it.”

I was being modest, but I knew the apartment
was impressive. Three floors surrounded a private glass elevator,
the shaft freestanding and wrapped by flights of floating stairs.
Both led all the way up, beyond the second and third stories, to a
modernized, partially enclosed deck. The entire apartment had great
views; three-hundred-and-sixty-five degrees that included the
Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges, and on clear days, the Statue of
Liberty off in the distance.

Penny walked cautiously down the shallow
steps into the living room, where a U-shaped sofa rested in front
of the first of the four big clock faces.

“
And they really work?” she
asked, stepping timidly over to the window, as though she were
afraid of falling.

“
They do. There is a very
nice service technician by the name of Andrew who comes by every
now and then to inspect the machinery and make sure it’s all
running properly. There’s a room where all of the clock-related
equipment is. I don’t go into it.” I eyed the jeans laying across
the back of the couch. There was a knitted cotton throw there, too,
so I quickly lifted it up and stuffed the jeans beneath it while
she was still captivated by the clock.

She turned and came toward me, trailing her
fingers along the back of the couch in such a way that I couldn’t
tell if she were being intentionally flirty or just feeling the
upholstery. “Your decorator really knew what they were doing.”

Ah, fuck.
I looked down, because I knew I wouldn’t be able
to hide the sudden shock to my system. I hadn’t realized until that
horribly inconvenient moment that I had never brought a date back
to this apartment. Gena and I had moved here together. This place
was a timeline of my failed marriage.

That could have occurred to me at any point
before I’d asked Penny over.

Against my own will and
every instinct screaming through me to not say a fucking word, I
stammered, “My—” and just caught myself before I said
wife
, “Gena. My ex-wife
Gena, excuse me. She did all of this.”

If my slip had bothered Penny, it didn’t
show. “Did she? Well, it looks fantastic.”

As long as Penny was
pretending things were fine, I would, also. “She’s talented.” In
many areas. Several of which she had pursued relentlessly and
dropped easily when they no longer challenged her. “Unfocused, but
talented.”
Stop talking about your
ex-wife, you complete and utter cock.
“And
I’m not saying that to be bitter, I—”

This was ridiculous. I couldn’t possibly
start a new relationship if I went on pretending the end of my old
relationship didn’t bother me. Penny knew I was divorced, and she
had gone through a breakup of her own recently, as well. I rubbed a
hand over my face, which suddenly felt very tired. Perhaps that was
just dryness from the pool. “I’m sorry. I have to confess
something. You’re the first woman I’ve had over here, since Gena.
Besides her and our female friends at parties and the like. You’re
actually the first date who’s come here. I hope I’m not out of line
telling you that.”

“
No, I don’t think that’s
out of line,” she assured me. “Thanks for telling me instead of
being weird all night about it.”

I had to touch her. Maybe it was relief at
how accepting she was of the six-piece luggage set of personal
baggage I’d just deposited at her feet. She hadn’t acted offended
that I’d brought up Gena, or the fact we were standing in the home
I’d once shared with her. Penny had now seen my messy emotional
compound fracture, and she didn’t seem eager to run.

A curled wisp of hair had fallen out of her
braid to lay against her cheek. I stepped closer and tucked it
behind her ear, aching at the too-brief contact. “I didn’t see the
point in being weird. Honesty worked well enough yesterday.”

“
For what it’s worth, I’m
glad I’m here.” She swayed toward me, perhaps unconsciously, and I
couldn’t resist. I brushed my fingers down her jaw to cup her
cheek, and leaned in. Did I want to kiss her properly, until both
of us had to come up for air? Of course I did. But, if I did that,
we might never order dinner. So, I kissed the corner of her closed
lips then put my hands in my pockets to physically remind myself I
shouldn’t touch her. “So. Dinner.”

She blinked up at me as if in a daze.

Christ, did that do things for a man’s
ego.

I nodded toward the kitchen. “That’s where I
keep the delivery menus.”

Penny followed me to the kitchen. It’s the
one area of the apartment I truly dislike, because I hate galley
kitchens, but it was also the only design that made sense for the
space, and I’d had to compromise for the sake of flow. I’d managed
to keep it entirely open but for the hood over the stove, which I’d
designed a free-hanging enclosure for.

“
In the refrigerator?” she
joked, and I was glad she couldn’t see me wince.

“
You’re going to laugh at
me, but I do keep them in the cupboard.” I opened one and pulled
down the stack of pamphlets I’d amassed over the past few months.
If I ate at any restaurant in the area, I collected a delivery menu
on the way out. I shopped for them the way most people shopped for
groceries.

Penny noticed. Eyeing the contents of the
cupboard—a jar of peanut butter, a box with too-little macaroni to
bother cooking, and some pitted dates that may have moved into the
apartment with me, I hadn’t checked the expiration—she asked
hesitantly, “Ian… What have you been eating?”

“
Delivery, mostly.” I
realized how pathetic this must look, and there was really no
saving face. This was the most well stocked food storage area in
the house. “And peanut butter.”

Her brow rumpled as she looked around the
counters. “Do you even have any bread?”

My shoes became a point of great interest to
my eyes, much in the way they had when I’d been scolded by my mum
as a boy. “Not as such.”

“
God, I hope you are using a
spoon and not your hand,” she said. She sounded like someone
describing a disaster.

I suppose she was.

Still, I wasn’t going to stand for that type
of accusation in my own house. I had to defend myself. “Well, of
course I’m using a spoon.”

I pulled out the built-in rubbish bin,
displaying its contents: approximately sixty of the plastic spoons
from the one hundred-spoon box in the silverware drawer.

I was about to point out that some of them
had been used to stir coffee, but I realized that would only
compound the problem.

She laughed at me but not unkindly. “You’re
a mess.”

I had a chuckle at myself, too, because I
would rather do that than start openly weeping at what my life
seemed to have become. It hadn’t felt so pathetic until I’d brought
another person into the rubble of my imploded marriage. I’d really
become a textbook for how not to date women.

“
Ah, you were going to find
out soon, anyway.”

“
You’re right. So thanks for
once again not being weird,” she said.

Her fucking smile. Could anything be more
beautiful?

I wanted to see it again. Teasing her seemed
to be the most effective way of bringing it out. “You’re weird
enough for the both of us.”

It worked.

Deciding where we should order from was
slightly complicated by the fact that both of us wanted to be
malleable to the other person’s preferences. We settled on Italian
food, though I got the impression neither of us would have picked
it as a first choice.

While we waited, I gave her a tour of the
apartment. She’d already seen most of the first floor—it was
impossible to walk into the place and not see most of the first
floor—so I took her up to the second to see my studio.

In general, I didn’t like to take people
into my studio or mention the fact that I draw anything beyond
blueprints. It wasn’t false modesty that drove me to seek privacy
about my art. I knew I was good, and that was the problem; if
you’re good at something, people want to know why you’re not making
money from it. I’d done a few gallery shows to appease Gena, and
I’d sold a few pieces. It had been a nice ego boost, but drawing
had to remain a hobby. If it were my career, I would lose my
mind.

So, it came down to either showing Penny my
studio, or inviting her to see my bedroom, which would sound like a
come-on, no matter how it was meant. I chose the studio.

Any twinge of misgiving I might have felt
vanished as I watched Penny walk through the wide, mostly
unfurnished space with quiet thoughtfulness. She studied the
placement of my drafting table in relation to the windows in the
slanted ceiling and asked, “Why don’t you have lights up there, if
this is where your table is?” She walked around the desk and
gestured to it. “Can I look?”

My blood turned to stone for a painful
heartbeat. I’d forgotten the drawing I’d left there.