First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) (20 page)

That hit me like a physical punch to the
chest. Ian was the one good thing I had going for me? I hadn’t
realized it, but yeah, I really did think of him that way. And that
was depressing, because my life should have been way better than
just, “yay, one person!”

Where had I gone wrong?

Ian came back with a dark green merino wool
sweater and some gray flannel sleep pants. He handed them to me,
and all I could do was stare up at him.

“
Go change,” he ordered
gently. “I’ll get you a drink. What’s your poison?”

Crappy boyfriends.
“I have no idea.”

“
Okay. Well, I’ll
improvise.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead, and my arms
tightened around the clothes he’d given me. It was second best to
hugging him, which I badly wanted to do, but I was pretty sure
would make me cry again.

When I turned on the bathroom light, my
reflection scared me. I looked like I’d just shuffled in from the
set of a zombie movie. My hair was stringy, and I was pale. My eyes
were bloodshot and ringed with dark circles. At least my nose was
an attractive shade of raw red. No wonder Ian thought I needed some
kind of John Wayne-esque treatment for shock.

I took off my top and shorts and pulled on
his sweater. I’d kind of expected it to smell like him, but it just
smelled like laundry. I had to cinch up the drawstring waist and
roll up the legs to make the pants fit, but there was something
comforting about wearing clothes that were way too big, especially
when I felt so emotionally small and fragile. It was like armor;
hurt would have to penetrate a lot of cloth folds.

All the clothing in the world wouldn’t have
made me feel less naked on the walk back to the living room.
Vulnerability was the worst, because people expected it of me.
Especially men. Being little and blond and cute was fun when people
were underestimating me and I got to turn the tables. It sucked
when I just wanted to have a human moment and not be treated like a
kid whose birthday got ruined. I rolled the ends of the sweater
over my clenched fists and tried to ignore the pity in Ian’s
expression as I joined him on the couch. He’d left a glass of
something for me on the coffee table, beside another that I assumed
was for him. I took mine and tossed it back in one gulp. It burned
on the way down, but I carefully composed a blank face. It was
embarrassing to look…broken.

My eyes flicked down to the glass in his
hand, and he offered it to me. “I’ll go get the bottle.”

Was I trying to act tough? I didn’t know. I
did know that I wanted my head to be as numb as my mouth was from
the alcohol, which I was pretty sure was whisky. I finished it off
as he came back, and he refilled both of our glasses.

“
Do you want to talk about
it?” he asked. The genuine sympathy in his voice made me ashamed of
myself. I was acting so…not the way I wanted to be
acting.

I nodded, but I said, “No.” Then I launched
right in, because it seemed like maybe it would justify why I was
there and why I was behaving so oddly. “Brad and I broke up in May.
And today I ran into him with his fiancée and their four-month-old
baby.”

I paused to give him a moment and watched as
the realization dawned on him. “Jesus, Penny…”

“
I know. And god knows how
long it was going on.” But I sort of did know, now that I was
saying it out loud. “I think they might have been living together.
Maybe in January? We suddenly stopped going to his place then. He
said his roommate was off his meds.”

How could I have been so stupid? Why would he
have stayed in that situation if Jeff had been so dangerously
unhinged? Brad hadn’t been coming over as often as he had in the
past, and it seemed like he would have wanted to be out of the
apartment as much as possible if he was having so much roommate
difficulty. He hadn’t even mentioned finding a new place, beyond a
non-committal, “Uh huh,” when I’d suggested it.

I was pacing, but I couldn’t stop. “I keep
going over it in my mind. I was standing in the shower, trying to
think of every little thing, every way I should have known what was
going on, and none of this came up. I feel like such an idiot.”

“
You’re not an idiot,” Ian
said, almost before I was finished saying the word. “Sometimes, we
want to love a person more than they deserve to be loved by us. And
we’ll do a lot of rationalizing to fool ourselves into believing
that they deserve it.”

He was speaking from experience, I realized.
I didn’t really know what had gone down between him and his
ex-wife, aside from what he’d told me at the park. I had a feeling
it went deeper than a few tossed off sentences, or else she
wouldn’t be his ex-wife. Maybe he would tell me, someday.

At the moment, I chose to selfishly wallow in
my own pain. I nodded in agreement with him and took another drink.
I didn’t bother to hide my reaction to the taste this time. The
worst part of the entire thing was, I wanted to be mad at the other
woman—I didn’t want to think of her name or admit to myself that I
even remembered it, even though it would be burned into my brain
forever—but I just couldn’t muster up the will to hate her. “This
girl was so totally into him. She looked at him like he was every
dream come true. I keep thinking I should have warned her, but why?
What if they’re actually meant to be together, and he never does
anything awful or hurts her at all?”

“
Then you’ve ruined their
happiness for nothing.” From the look on his face, Ian didn’t see
it the same way I did. Honestly, I didn’t see it that way, either,
but it was the only thing I had to make me feel better about how
things had turned out. If Brad was someone else’s destiny, then
there was a destiny out there for me, too.

“
It’s not up to you to help
her realize what he is,” Ian went on gently. “If you’d told her, do
you think she would have believed you?”

“
No. I would have been the
psycho ex-girlfriend.” It smarted, but it was true. Brad would have
been able to wriggle out of whatever I might have said. I drank
some more of my whisky, but it was almost gone. I held it toward
Ian. “This stuff isn’t expensive, is it?”

“
No.” He handed me the
bottle. “Just don’t get yourself alcohol poisoned.”

I knew what that meant. “Or vomit in your
apartment?”

“
Ah, Penny. There aren’t
many people I’d let vomit in my home, but you’re one of
them.”

It was an oddly sweet sentiment, and it made
me laugh. I tried to pour myself another, and the liquid ended up
teetering right on the rim of the glass. I stopped it from spilling
just in time. “I shouldn’t have run over here to tell you all of my
ex-boyfriend problems. That’s not fair. You’re trying to be the new
boyfriend.” Oh, shit. Was I so drunk that I was really going to
start spilling my feelings everywhere?

Yes. Yes, I was.

“
I mean, I think you were,”
I went on. “I got the impression that you were interested in the
position.”

“
Definitely. I hope I’m
still in consideration.” He kept a nervous eye on my glass.
Pff.
I wasn’t going to
spill it.

But I drank about half of it, just to be
sure, then put it on the table and wobbled over to sit beside Ian
on the couch. “I think it was because I made him wait too long. Two
years, you know…”

“
So you were supposed to
have sex with him to keep him from cheating on you?” Ian sounded
outraged at the idea. Oh my gosh, his outrage was so cute. “That
wasn’t your responsibility. If he wanted to go off and fuck
somebody, he should have fucking well broken up with you
first.”

“
You’re swearing a bunch.”
That was so hot. I could barely even get my voice to rise above a
whisper. It was nice to have someone swearing on my behalf. Or
maybe it was just the whisky. Mostly the whisky.
Probably.

“
I can stop,” he
offered.

“
No, you can’t.” And I
didn’t want him to. I never thought I would really want a guy who
would get mad and punch another guy to defend my honor. And Ian
wasn’t offering to. But he was saying all sorts of angry, offensive
words about the guy who hurt me. It made me want to text Brad and
tell him,
ha, look! This guy wants me
enough to fight for me.

But Brad wouldn’t care. That just made me
feel hollow.

Ian sighed. “This prick… He’s the kind of man
who’ll sleep around on you whether you’re sleeping with him or not.
This other woman was sleeping with him, and he was still seeing
you. He was just—”

I knew what he was going to say. Brad had
wanted to be the first. He’d wanted to get to the end of the level
and defeat the final boss.

All I could do was nod in defeat and say, “I
know. I know why he was still with me.”

The fact that Ian had figured it out somehow
made things ten times worse. It was humiliating. When he put his
arms around me, I couldn’t hold back my tears. I leaned on his
shoulder, taking comfort in the solid warmth of his body. There was
also a sort of pain in it, a feeling of intimacy that defied the
newness of our connection, making me ache for more.

That was a dangerous line of thinking. It
felt too much like a rebound. I pulled away and reached for my
glass, finishing it so I could speak again. “I’m sorry. I’m a mess.
I showed up here a mess, and now I’m drunk and a mess.”

“
If you think this is the
only time anyone has gotten drunk on this sofa and cried hard, I
have some news for you that will come as a bit of a shock,” he
said, nudging me with his elbow. “Don’t feel sorry for coming here.
I’m thrilled to death it was me you wanted.”

“
Yeah?” Being with someone
who was so willing to be open with his feelings, feelings that most
people would have tried to play it cool about, was nice but a
little intimidating. Probably because it gave me the dangerous
sense that I could be just as open and honest with him, and I
didn’t know how far I should go down that road tonight. I inclined
my head toward the bottle. “Can I have some more of whatever that
is?”

He considered. “How about a beer, instead?
Just to slow down?”

Oh. He thought I was too drunk. That was
embarrassing. I gave him a thumbs up and said, “Liquor before beer,
in the clear!”

It was pretty obvious from his expression
that he didn’t think I was in the clear, at all.

I tried to be more sober when he came back.
And way less depressing. “Is it weird to feel a little relieved
about this, too?”

“
How so?” he
asked.

“
Well, for the last few
months that we were dating, Brad was really distant. Now I know
why. But, at the time, I had this feeling…” I took a deep breath.
Because even though I’d already acknowledged it, it was difficult
to say the words out loud. “I had a feeling things were falling
apart between us. And that maybe he was with me because he was
waiting it out. Like, he wanted to be the winner.”

Ian nodded thoughtfully.

“
It’s nice to have that
confirmation. To know that I wasn’t crazy. I mean, it sucks, and it
hurts, but it’s nice.” I shrugged. Maybe it would make it easier to
move on, now that I knew it wasn’t my fault. Maybe Ian would make
it easier to move on. “And I’m glad Brad broke up with me.
Because…I got to meet you. You’ve already been way better to me
than he ever was.”

“
Is it selfish of me to say
that I’m glad the two of you broke up, as well?”

My heart fluttered. If Ian could make me feel
so special, and so valued, even through the pain and the whisky,
then Brad hadn’t been the one.

He couldn’t have been.

“
No, I think you made out
like a bandit in the deal.” I leaned against Ian, and he let me. We
fit so perfectly my chest hurt. It had been months since I’d lain
this way with anyone. Even when Brad and I had still been together,
he’d felt far away. Ian was present. In the room with me. His aura
just clicked with mine, and I felt warm all over.

That could have been the alcohol.

Neither of us said anything.
The thrum of his pulse under my ear fell into a slow, steady
rhythm, hypnotizing me into a loop of thoughts that went,
am I falling asleep? I think I’m falling asleep.
Is he falling asleep? Is it okay if I fall asleep, too?
that circled around and around until he was gently
shaking me awake.

“
Penny? Open your eyes,
Doll. We fell asleep.”

He’d called me Doll. I wasn’t out of it
enough that I didn’t recognize the thrill that sent through me
every time I heard it. But it was the only word I’d caught, because
sleep had made his voice rough and his accent ten times thicker. I
said, “I can’t understand you when you mumble.”

“
Do you want me to take you
home?” he asked, and I supposed that was my cue to
leave.

I didn’t want to go home. Everything felt
right. Really, really right.

“
Can I stay
here?”

“
Certainly. I don’t think
the guest bed is made up, but I—”

Seriously? This was the biggest signal in the
handbook, and he wasn’t getting the hint? “Can I sleep with you? I
could really use the snuggles.”

I want to fuck
you
, I mentally shouted at him.

“
Fine. No funny business,
though. I know your type,” he said, with his typical dorky
humor.

“
Come on, before I fall
asleep while I’m walking.” I yawned to cover up my nerves. I was
going to go upstairs and have sex with Ian. He knew that, right? It
was why he made that joke, I was sure of it.