First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) (25 page)

She could barely get the words out as her
chest hitched with sobs she tried to repress. A couple walked past
us. I’d subjected Penny to enough embarrassment for one night, so I
took her into my arms to shield her from their stares. “Hey, hey.
You don’t deserve to be treated the way they treated you in there.
And they don’t deserve you. You are so much more than a bank
account or a job.”

I stepped back and placed my hands on her
shoulders, like a coach giving his star athlete a much-needed
pep-talk. “You’re Penny-Fucking-Parker, all right? A whole person
who has thoughts and feelings and ideas that impress me every day.
God handed them a gift when He gave you to them, and they’re
fucking miserable and ungrateful for it? Fuck them. I love you. And
I want you to love you as much as I do.”

She blinked up at me but said nothing.

I put my arm around her shoulder. “Come on.
We still need dinner, and you need cheering up. I’ve got an
idea.”

I really didn’t, but I was good at thinking
on my feet. I walked her to the car, wondering what kind of terse
conversation Mr. Parker and Mrs. Smythe-Parker were having in our
absence. What I wouldn’t have given to be a fly on the wall of that
particular crime scene.

I drove toward Penny’s neighborhood, my plan
unfolding in my mind. I would take her to that little Chinese
restaurant she’d taken me to on the not-so-bad half of our first
date. When she recognized the buildings, she quipped, “Are you
expecting me to cook for you at my place?”

She sounded a bit happier, and I couldn’t
have been more thankful. “I thought you could use some profound
spiritual guidance.”

I turned onto the street, and she said,
“They do have the best fortune cookies,” with a laugh.

This time, she didn’t order the spicy dish
she’d picked the last time. Which apparently meant I was going to
be kissed tonight, which was nice to know. When we got our food, I
suggested, “How about we take this back to my place? I have
something I want to show you.”

“
Okay. But first.” She
stopped mid-sentence and reached into the bag, coming up with our
fortune cookies. “Let’s see what these say.”

We opted to open them in the car, where the
air conditioning could save us from the city’s humidity. I didn’t
expect anything so earth-shattering as the last time, so when I
opened mine, it might as well have come out with a spring-loaded
boxing glove attached. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“
What does it say?” she
asked. I handed it to her, because she wouldn’t have believed me if
I read it aloud. I barely believed I’d gotten it, myself. “‘An
unexpected relationship will become permanent.’ You planted
this!”

“
I swear I didn’t. But I’m
not complaining about the contents,” I said. We could be as
permanent as Penny wanted. I nodded toward her cookie. “Go
on.”

She opened hers and deftly removed the
paper. “‘Stop searching forever. Happiness is just next to
you.’”

Fuck me. I knew it was true for me. I hoped
it was true for her. But I didn’t want to push her to say something
she wasn’t ready to say yet. “You know, we’re going to have to stop
doing this. They’re not always going to line up this well.”

“
I think it’s a sign.” Her
throat sounded dry. I hoped it was due to emotion, and not just the
full-blast air conditioning.

I put the car in gear. “I think you’re
right.”

I hoped she was right.

* * * *

The ride back to my apartment was mostly silent, charged with
a crackling energy between us that didn’t feel comfortable but
certainly wasn’t unpleasant. A threshold seemed to have been
crossed, but into what, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know Penny well
enough to tell what her silence meant; I only knew that, for her,
it was far out of the realm of the ordinary.

“
I’m sorry I’m not
talkative,” I said as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. Though I’d
thought I was speaking softly, the sudden break in the quiet was
deafening. “It feels like I should say something
profound.”

Perhaps because our moment on the sidewalk
had seemed profound. Like a separate beginning in the middle of a
story we already both knew the end to, or would like to.

“
I know what you mean,” she
said, but she didn’t share that meaning with me.

Back home, we scraped our dinners out of the
cartons and ate like real human beings off plates at the dining
table. Our conversation was stilted and too polite until she said,
“I want to apologize.”

“
For what?”

She frowned slightly. “For my parents.”

I finished chewing the bite I’d taken then
took a drink of water. There were so many things I wanted to tell
her, reassure her that my feelings about her hadn’t changed just
because her parents couldn’t exhibit basic human decency. “Why
would you apologize for them? You can’t control the fact that
they’re—”

“
Assholes?” she finished for
me, either because she didn’t want me to say it, or she thought I
wouldn’t. “I know it’s not my fault they act that way. But I’m
sorry I exposed you to them and how toxic they are. And I’m sorry I
didn’t leave with you.”

I mentally cringed. I’d blindsided her by
leaving the restaurant. She’d had to choose between angering her
parents—arguably more permanent fixtures in her life than I was—and
our relationship. Whether I’d intended it or not, I’d forced that
choice on her. I couldn’t look her in the eye, so I looked out the
window, instead. “I shouldn’t have put you in that position. It was
an ultimatum. You deserve better.”

“
I do,” she agreed, but
after a pause, she added, “I deserve you.”

How she’d come to that conclusion, I
couldn’t say. I wanted to believe her, but I wasn’t sure I was
capable—or anyone was capable, for that matter—of living up to what
she deserved. All I knew was that I never wanted to see anyone do
to her what her parents had done tonight. I never wanted to see
that sadness and self-doubt on her face, again. If it fell to me to
be the man who protected her from that, I would take the job and
perform my duties as thoroughly as possible.

We finished eating and took our dishes to
the kitchen, still not saying much, either of us. It made me
nervous, and it showed in the way I practically shouted, “Hang on a
second, and I’ll wash these.”

I wasn’t about to run the behemoth
dishwasher for a set of plates and glasses, so I would hurry
through the washing up by hand.

“
How about I wash, you dry?”
she offered. “You paid for the food, the least I can do is help
with the manual labor.”

“
Sounds like a deal.” The
mention of food, and the place where we were standing, triggered
half of my purpose for bringing her back here. “I remembered what I
wanted to show you.”

Her face animated, probably out of relief
that we would have something to talk about besides the emotional
carnage at dinner.

I opened a cupboard door, proudly displaying
the contents, the result of my recent shopping expedition. I’d
bought staples like soup and pasta and oatmeal, as well as a few
things for a recipe I’d taken the initiative to look up online.
When I figured out how to pronounce “quinoa” I would make it for
her.

“
You went grocery shopping!”
she exclaimed, much in the same way a person would congratulate a
toddler who’s used the potty for the first time.

I hadn’t realized she’d viewed me as so
helpless.

“
And look at this.” I opened
the refrigerator to display the eggs and orange juice, steak and
Swiss chard inside. “Now the beer won’t get lonely.”

“
I’m so proud of you!” Penny
rose on her tiptoes to throw her arms around my neck. The hug was
far too brief for my liking. After the night we’d had, physical
contact reassured me that we were still as into each other as we
had been last week.

“
I thought you might be.” I
grabbed a dishtowel and slapped it over my shoulder in anticipation
of impending wet dishes. Then, I pulled my phone from my pocket.
Music. Music would keep us from lapsing into another bizarre
silence. I hoped. I pulled up iTunes and dropped my phone into the
dock that connected to the intercom system via Bluetooth. I had
absolutely no music she would recognize, I was sure of it. I was
suspended eternally in the 1980’s.

Music was better, back then.

“
Oh, wow. I haven’t heard
this in ages,” I said, whistling under my breath as the opening
bars of a song started. “My iTunes library is too big.”

“
Stop trying to impress me,”
Penny quipped dryly. “What song is this? He sounds like Paul
McCartney.”

“
Close, it is a Beatle.
George Harrison.” I predicted there would be many times in our
future that I would have to explain some relic of days past to her.
“‘I’ve Got My Mind Set On You.’ It’s so fucking catchy you’ll still
be listening to it in your sleep this time next year.”

I caught a flash of her smile in profile. I
wondered how many nights we would spend in this kitchen, doing the
washing up, smiling together about one thing or another. Just
enjoying each other. I imagined us as we were now, but tired; her
with her hair pulled up messily, and toys strewn across the floor,
me exhausted from work but grateful to be home with her and
whatever little monster we had sleeping upstairs.

I wanted that with Penny. I’d prayed on it,
I’d begged God for a sign that I should be with her, that I
shouldn’t be with her… I didn’t think the Lord dealt in fortune
cookies, but he’d done stranger things in Bible days. When I
pictured my future family, Penny was by my side.

She was by my side, now, running water in
the sink, standing there with her sophisticated new haircut and her
tight black dress that looked like it would come completely undone
if I just tugged the belt at her waist. All I wanted, the only
thing in the world, was to be able to hold her and see a future
beyond the scene at the restaurant tonight.

I swung the dishtowel onto the counter and
said, “Come on. Dance with me.”

She shook the water from her hands. “In the
kitchen?”

“
Humor me.” I didn’t wait
for a rebuttal but pulled her to me with an arm around her waist,
and clumsily dragged her about in a fast half-waltz.

“
I always do.” She kissed my
cheek then pushed away from me, our hands still joined, so I could
spin her under my arm. She stomped on my toes accidentally. It was
a mess.

I caught her before she could fall and
laughed. “We’ll have to take lessons sometime. We can’t be a truly
chic and sexy couple if we can’t dance like we’re making love on
the floor.”

She blinked up at me. “That would be some
really terrible dancing.”

“
That’s not what I meant,
you pervert.” Although I could now add that to my mental bank of
potential memories; Penny and me christening some new, suburban
house and getting rug burn the whole while…

Her face went over all dreamy, and I worried
she might actually need me to physically support her. “Did I make
you swoon?” I asked. “Because if I did, I need to call some people
and brag.”

She laughed, her eyes widening with
surprise. “No. It’s just…you. Being you.”

Just me. My body flooded with confused
hormones of fear and joy. I didn’t know what she meant by that, but
I knew that I wanted her to always feel about me exactly the way
she was looking at me now.

“
You’re the one, you know,”
she went on. “You’re my forever. I want it to be you.”

“
I want it to be me, too.” I
could barely feel my face, I was in such shock, but I knew I was
smiling.

She licked her bottom lip. I wanted to lick
her bottom lip, too.

“
I mean it,” she said. “I
love you. And I don’t really care about some artificial, socially
constructed timeline that’s supposed to guarantee forever. Even if
we broke up two months from now—”

I couldn’t stand the
thought, let alone hearing it spoke aloud. I cupped her face in my
hands and leaned down to kiss her. And a kiss wasn’t enough; I held
her face, tilting her chin up so she couldn’t look away. “Never
going to happen. So, there’s no sense in talking about us ever
breaking up.”
You’re going to sound insane
if you say what you’re going to say
, I
warned myself, but really, it was no more insane than saying I
loved her after four dates. “As long as we’re discussing
artificial, socially constructed timelines, I’ve known for a while
that we belonged together. It just wasn’t the sort of thing I felt
like I could say without it sounding like… Jesus, I just didn’t
want to sound like I was trying to get into your
knickers.”

She didn’t run screaming from the building,
so that was a good sign. She rose up for another kiss and draped
her arms around my neck. “I have to tell you something, just so we
can be totally clear.”

Her lips were soft and warm against mine,
and they were all I could think of. So, all I managed in response
was, “Mmhm.”

Her fingers threaded through my hair and
pulled slightly. That got my attention. “I want to. Tonight.”

“
Want to what?” It wasn’t
that I didn’t know what she was talking about. It was that I was
the one all light-headed and swooning now, mostly from the
southward rush of all the blood that should have been in my brain.
“What, now?”

“
Yeah. We could wait until
after we do the dishes, but—”

“
Fuck the dishes.” I gripped
her butt and lifted her onto the counter, standing between her
legs. Her skirt pushed up a little, baring her thighs. She grabbed
the open collar of my shirt and jerked at it as though she would
rip it off, and I thought,
All I would
have to do is unzip, push her panties to the side, and have her
right here.