First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) (4 page)

“
You know, police
involvement aside, I had fun tonight, too,” she said. She wiggled
her foot on the sidewalk. “Would you want to do it
again?”

I’d do it, again, right
now,
my brain shouted, but that was a scary
line on a first date, wasn’t it? “Oh, I suppose I could stomach
it.”

She beamed at me. “Well, good. I think you
should be old fashioned and call me.”

“
No texts,” I swore. I hated
texts. I wasn’t even old fashioned about that. I was just old. I
felt the beginning of an idiotic grin, and I suppressed it as much
as I could. I wanted to punch the air like Judd fucking Nelson at
the end of
The Breakfast
Club
.

“
Thanks for a really… Let’s
go with memorable. A really memorable night.”

“
It was my pleasure.” I
stood there with every intention of watching her walk away, but she
didn’t. She turned then turned back as if it were an afterthought.
Grabbing my tie, she tugged me down and kissed me on the
cheek.

“
Have a good night,” she
said, and she blushed but probably less than I was
blushing.

I waited until she unlocked her door and
gave me a little wave. I felt like I’d been smacked in the forehead
by a cartoon cupid’s oversized arrows. I bet little stars and birds
were going around my head in a cartoon concussion halo.

I got a cab on Lafayette,
glad to be off my feet. I reached into my pocket and took out the
slip of paper I’d lied about keeping.
The
love of your live will step into your path this summer.

This was either going to be an insane amount
of trouble, or the best worst date I’d ever had.

Chapter Three

As a
lifelong Catholic, I’ve always vaguely resented Sunday mornings.
Especially when I’d spent my Saturday night with six idiots fixing
a fucked up drawing. Intelligently, I knew I didn’t
have to
go to mass.
Emotionally, I’d be looking over my shoulder all week if I skipped
it. Every time I stepped off a fucking curb I’d hear my mother’s
voice in my head, taunting me from beyond the grave: “If you don’t
have an hour for our Lord, maybe he won’t have an hour for you when
you’re in need.” So, even though I’d had a late night, I found
myself tying up yet another tie, preparing for spiritual battle
with myself.

I’d spent the night at the office. There was
always something to do, and there was a couch that was surprisingly
comfortable to sleep on. These days, I liked it more than my
apartment, which remained a minefield of hurt feelings. I still
found bits of my marriage strewn all over. When we’d opened the
firm, we’d renovated a floor in a midtown skyscraper that had
excellent big windows and amazing daylight exposure. I stood beside
my drafting table and clicked the lamp on and off. So, it was a bit
bleak, with the light gray walls and sparse interior decor, but
that hadn’t been my choice. Gena had done that.

God, I couldn’t get away from her.

In the light of day,
especially the light of a Sunday, reality was starting to intrude
on my high from my date with Penny. What the hell had I been
thinking? She was thirty years younger than me. Thirty years, not
ten or hell, I would even take twenty. And she moved
slow
. What would she
think of me if she knew all the kinky things I’d got up to in my
past? And what did slow mean to a twenty-two year old?

I needed advice, and I needed it from
someone younger than me. I rang my nephew, Danny. He was
twenty-six. He would know what slow meant.

“
You realize it’s Sunday,
right?” he said in lieu of a hello. “It’s kind of our rush
hour?”

“
I know, I’m heading out the
door myself,” I glanced at my watch and patted my pocket to check
that I’d remembered my rosary. Still had plenty of time to make it
to mass, but I would miss confession.

“
You’re just leaving the
house? Uncle Ian, we start in like thirty minutes.” Danny’s accent
had all but faded since he’d come to America when he was ten years
old, but I heard loads of Scottish exasperation in it.

I scrubbed my hand down my face and braced
for more shame. It’s a hell of a thing when your nephew holds
ecclesiastic authority over you. “I was planning to go to St.
Andrew’s, this week.”

“
Tell me you’re not at the
office. Tell me you went home with that girl you were seeing,”
Danny groaned.

“
No, I didn’t go home with
her. I saw her on Friday. What kind of priest are you, anyway?” It
was no good lying to him. Lying to a priest was probably worse than
lying to a regular person, on the sin scale. “I’m at the
office.”

Danny sighed. “I would rather you’d spent
the night with your date.”

“
Well, that’s what I called
to talk about, Danny.” I stressed his name, so he’d know we were
strictly off the record with the Lord. “Oh, but I also can’t make
it to confession, so I’m going to need an indulgence.”

“
We can’t just hand those
out, and you know it. Say a rosary for my mom, and I’ll absolve
you. Just tell me about your date.” Daniel was slightly out of
breath. He was headed in to get all vestmented up, so I wouldn’t
keep him too long.

“
It started off bad, but it
got a lot better. But there’s a problem.” I couldn’t dance around
it and waste Danny’s time. “She’s twenty-two. And she says she
‘goes slow’.”

“
Goes slow? What does that
mean?” he asked.

“
I don’t know. I was hoping
you’d know the answer.”

“
You realize that I’m a
priest, right?” he reminded me with the patented Pratchett
sarcasm.

“
You weren’t always a
priest,” I countered. “And I suspect you leave that collar at home
on Friday nights.”

“
Thursdays,” he
muttered.

“
I don’t know how to do
slow,” I went on. “And she’s so… I don’t want to say pure, I don’t
want to make it weird. But she’s this little piece of cotton candy
fluff. She has a dimple in one cheek when she smiles. Just the one.
She’s like fucking sunshine.”

“
Oh, then, you’d better not
go near her again,” Danny said. “I’ve heard your confessions
before.”

“
Well, that’s the thing. I
told her I would call her.” For clarity’s sake, I added, “She
actually said she would like it if I called her. I know that I
would like it if I called her. So, do I?”

“
Do you what? Uncle Ian, I’m
saying this as your nephew and not your priest: you are not going
to be able to be with someone that much younger than you who goes
’slow’. That probably sounds judgmental and short-sighted, but in
terms of sin, you’re in the majors, and she hasn’t even filled out
her Little League paperwork yet.”

“
I’ll have you know that I
haven’t had sex since Gena left me.” I checked my watch, again.
“Look, I think I’m going to do what you do. The whole celibacy
thing.”

“
Oh, yeah? Let’s see how
that shakes out.” Someone called for “Father Daniel” in the
background. His response to them was muffled, then he returned to
our conversation “I have to go. But I’m adding to your penance. You
need to sit down and think about how strange it is for a man your
age to be considering a relationship with a twenty-two year old,
let alone asking your nephew for advice about it.”

“
Okay, that’s what my nephew
thinks. What does my priest think?” I pulled on my jacket and
headed through the main floor of the empty office.

“
Your priest thinks it’s a
bad move to get involved. And you need to pray. A lot.”

“
Oh, in that case,
absolution rejected. I think I will call this girl. Not just to
prove you wrong, either.” I punched the code into the security
system to lock up. “I like her. I might see what
happens.”

“
Whatever you do, be honest
with her from the beginning,” Danny warned. “That’s your nephew,
not your priest speaking. Or…no, actually, it’s both.”

“
Are you going to your mum’s
for dinner?” I wasn’t sure I was going to my sister’s house today.
She’d know that I’d been out on a date. She had a supernatural
sense about other people’s business.

“
No, one of my confirmation
students has a band concert or something at East River Park, and I
said I’d go. You want to grab some food and meet me there at two?
Your treat?”

“
Sure.” I hit the button for
the elevator and said, “Look, I’m about to leave. Have a good mass.
Break a leg, yeah?”

“
Sure. Try not to get hit by
a bus on the way, because you’ll go immediately to Hell,” he
advised before we disconnected.

I headed out to the street and flagged down
a cab, because I’d rather pull a tooth than fight for parking. I
spent the ride to St. Andrew’s mulling over what had Danny said. I
should think about what it meant to pursue a relationship with
someone so much younger than I was. I definitely needed to consider
how important the sexual side of said relationship would be to
me.

We pulled up to the curb, and I paid the
driver. Standing on the sidewalk in front of the church, I mentally
tossed around the advice I’d read online. Danny said to take time
and consider, but all those websites had said not to wait too long
or play aloof when you liked the girl. But none of those websites
had advice to give to a man who wanted to date a woman thirty years
younger. There were websites out there that did, as I’d found out
when I’d googled it the night before, but they were incredibly
creepy, and I sure as hell wasn’t taking advice from them.

Danny was probably right. I
needed counsel from a higher authority. Prayer had never steered me
wrong. Well, it had. With Gena. And my girlfriend before her. And
countless other times. But that was usually because I ignored any
insight it gave me, anyway.
I just need a
sign
, I told God silently.
Anything will do.

There were two old women ahead of me as we
entered the church, plodding along like the oldest tortoises in the
fucking turtle social security office line. I shuffled behind them,
not really walking, but taking a step and stopping until there was
room to take another without running them down. One rummaged in her
purse the entire time, muttering about the collection and how she
hadn’t put in as much the week before.

Then, it happened.

The old woman made a little “whoops” noise,
and a sandwich baggie of coin rolls flopped from her hands. A
red-striped wrapper burst apart as it hit the floor, scattering
pennies—fifty of them—at my feet.

Well, I had asked for a sign.

* * * *

“
So, to clarify,” I said slowly as I crumpled my
sandwich wrapper and pushed it into the deli bag with the other
trash. “You didn’t actually curse out Sister Beth.”

“
God, no, what the hell,
Uncle Ian?” Danny shook his head and took a drink from his soda. “I
would never swear at a nun, obviously. I could just imagine
snapping and doing it. She thinks she runs the church. And I don’t
mean St. Basil’s. I mean the big-C Church.”

It was a nice day to be outside, talking
about cursing at nuns. I rolled up my sleeves and looked out at the
river. The Williamsburg Bridge arched across, creating an extension
of the city’s skyline over the water. I’d been feeling slightly off
all day, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. I realized that for
the first time since Gena had left, I was actually optimistic about
the future. My life wasn’t over, just because my marriage was. I
was capable of meeting new people and rebuilding my life. There was
actually a chance I could be happy, again. If not with Penny, with
someone else.

But, for right now, I was
going to concentrate on being happy
near
Penny.

Danny checked his phone. “Okay, I’ve got to
go. You wanna walk with me?”

I shrugged. “It’s a nice day, why not?”

I threw my trash in a can as we walked, and
carried my jacket over my shoulder. I couldn’t say the summer air
smelled fantastic—we were in New York, after all—but the afternoon
sunshine matched my mood, and the temperature was surprisingly mild
for August. People were out walking and cycling and jogging…

A short blond with her hair in a ponytail
was running toward us, her fantastic tits held firmly in place by a
purple sports bra she hadn’t bothered to put a shirt over. Her tiny
running shorts were just tight enough that the rearview would be
spectacular. If I’d been paying more attention to her face and not
being the lecherous old man that I was, I would have noticed it was
Penny before she caught me staring.

She slowed down as she reached us and pulled
out her earbuds.

“
Penny,” I managed, exerting
Herculean effort to not look down at her chest. “This is an
unexpected surprise.”

“
All surprises are
unexpected. That’s why they’re surprises,” Danny said, and I
redirected all that superhuman effort into not elbowing a priest in
the gut in front of the woman I wanted to go on another date
with.

“
This sarcastic bastard is
my nephew, Danny,” I explained, and I hoped she understood it as a
disavowing of responsibility for anything he might do to embarrass
me.

Her eyebrows shot up. Danny had told me
before that many people are shocked to meet a priest and realize he
has friends and family outside of his parish. This was the first
time I’d really seen that in the wild. But she wasn’t rude, and
extended her hand to take Danny’s. “Oh. Nice to meet you.”