First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) (21 page)

I was even more sure when he put his hand on
the small of my back as we walked up. The floating staircase took
less concentration than I thought it would while drunk.

“
You must be desperately
tired, if you’re willing to brave these stairs,” he said as we
neared the top.

I laughed. “I was never afraid of the
stairs.”

“
You lied about hating my
brilliant stairs?” He pretended to be offended, gasping, “How dare
you!”

“
At the time, I didn’t
really know you,” I explained, as we walked into the darkened
bedroom. “I thought it might have been a trick.”

In the dark, I made out the shape of three
tall windows that slanted into skylights. The city twinkled beyond
them, and from its lights I made out the shape of Ian’s bed and the
rumpled duvet on top of it. My throat went dry.

“
I hope I didn’t make you
afraid or—”

I stumbled a little and pressed my hand to
his chest to steady myself. “If I’d been worried about that, I
wouldn’t have come here in the first place. And I wouldn’t have
come back. But I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t try some clumsy seduction
technique.”

“
Hey. When I’m clumsily
seducing you, you’ll know it,” he said, and stepped away to turn on
a light. It was a metal sconce set against the wall above his
built-in nightstand. I was dating a guy who could literally make a
house. I’d never been able to pull off a decent house in
The Sims
.

I tagged along after him, hoping constant
bodily proximity would induce him to touch me. “I just really like
you, and I didn’t want to give you the chance to disappoint me. I
know that’s probably not the smartest relationship strategy.” When
he didn’t answer, I changed the subject. I plucked the front of the
sweater he’d loaned me. “This is a little hot. Do you have anything
more night-shirt-ish?”

Like a T-shirt I could put
on and, whoops, get into bed without anything on underneath
it?
God, I was doing all the work here, and
I was the drunk one.

Ian went to his dresser and came up with a
T-shirt. “I’m going to let you borrow this, but on one
condition.”

I squinted at him, to keep him in focus.

“
You can’t look sexier than
I do when I’m wearing it,” he joked, and tossed it to me. By some
miracle, I caught it and probably looked a lot more sober than I
was, which would work in my favor. Ian seemed like the kind of guy
who would feel bad about sleeping with a drunk girl, even if she
was totally in her right mind about wanting it.

I pointed to the door on the other side of
the room. “Bathroom, then?”

“
Yeah, in there.” He went in
ahead of me and gathered up contact solution and a case—I hadn’t
realized he wore contacts, so clearly I needed to look into his
eyes more often—and his toothbrush. Yikes, I probably needed one of
those. I hadn’t thought the plan through.

“
I’ll use the one
downstairs,” he said, and closed the door as he left, shutting me
in the long room. The ceiling was sloped in there, as well, and
three more windows slanted over my head. At the end of the room, on
a raised platform, an avocado-shaped black bathtub stood in front
of a wall covered in slate tiles. Another window, shorter to
accommodate the step-up flooring, lined up for the perfect view
during a long soak. Across from that window, behind the tub, was a
glassed-front shower.

I looked at my reflection in
the mirror over the vanity, above the vessel sink that matched the
tub. I did not look great. In fact, I looked a little worse than
when I’d arrived, because now my eyes were red from drinking
and
crying. My face wasn’t
just pale, it was sweaty. I looked like someone who—

Yeah, I looked just like someone who was
going to puke.

Thankfully, I got to the toilet in time to
heave up everything in my stomach in there, instead of in the sink.
It was touch and go for a moment. I prayed with everything in
me—which was evidently all just whisky, as I hadn’t eaten anything
since before my disastrous run—that Ian wouldn’t overhear. I clung
to the toilet bowl and laid my head on the seat, sweating and
shivering and mentally reassuring myself that I could still pull
off cute and sexy once I managed to get on my feet.

Eventually, I did get back on my feet, enough
to swish water around my mouth and strip out of my loaned clothes
and get into his T-shirt. I slipped off my panties but had the
presence of mind to rinse them out for the morning—I had to be
practical as well as sexually assertive. I hung them on a towel bar
and combed my fingers through my hair.

Are you sure this is what
you want to be doing?
My conscience
confronted me. It sounded a lot like Rosa.
You might just be drunk and sad, right now.
I was. I was drunk and sad, and my brain had a
point. But I didn’t want to listen to my brain. I wanted to listen
to the desperate landslide of hormones and anger that was burying
me.
You could always just wait.

And I always just couldn’t. And I wasn’t
going to.

I stepped out of the bathroom to see Ian, in
his boxers, pulling on a T-shirt. I almost jumped right back and
slammed the door. Maybe it was because, besides the day at the
pool, he’d always been fully clothed around me, even when we’d been
fooling around, but I felt like I was in completely over my head.
We were in his bedroom. I had barely any clothes on. And whether he
knew it or not, I was just waiting for something to happen.

He didn’t say anything. He just went to the
bed and got under the blankets quickly, like he was calling
shotgun.

“
So, that side, then?” I
asked, laughing. “You don’t have to defend your
territory.”

“
You say that, now. But I
know women. I’ll wake up on the floor, with you sprawled out like a
starfish in here,” he said, all grumbly and cute as I got in beside
him.

“
This is a pretty big first
for me.” I reached up to click off the light. “I’ve never slept
over before.”

“
Well, I can see why not,”
he said as I snuggled against his side, in the crook of his arm.
“You look fucking hideous without makeup.”

Rude!
I knew it was a joke, but it didn’t do much for my confidence.
“Here I am, breaking one of my cardinal relationship rules, and
you’re being mean to me.”

“
Never.” He kissed my
forehead and hugged me close. “I love you, and you know
it.”

All the brakes screeched. I was suddenly
overcome with what could only be described as rigor mortis. “No… I
didn’t know that.”

The silence that followed was more brutal
than the final slashing in a graphic horror movie. Then he said,
“When I say ‘love’, I mean—”

“
You mean you love me.” I
hoped the darkness hid my crazy wide smile.

“
Well, it’s out there.” The
noise he made could have been a laugh or a cough, I wasn’t sure
either way. “I would have preferred a more romantic venue to make
such a pronouncement, but here we are.”

“
Here we are…in your bed…and
you say you love me.” Under any other circumstances, I would have
found it extremely sketchy, but Ian seemed to have surprised
himself with the revelation as much as he’d surprised
me.

“
No! No, no. That’s isn’t
why.” There was a rustle of sheets as he moved, but I couldn’t see
what he was doing. “I love you. I’d love you if I was driving you
home right now. Or, maybe not as much, since I’m dead tired. But
the point I’m trying to make is—”

“
Ian? I’m just fucking with
you.” The rush of excitement I got from hearing that word from him
finally couldn’t be contained, and I laughed.

“
Well, thank you for turning
my declaration of love into a heart-stopping anxiety
episode.”

He loved me. This soon. Was that insane? Was
it too fast? Were things careening out of control? Had we just
doomed ourselves to a quick flare up and burn out?

In the moment, I couldn’t really force myself
to care. I just wanted to be swept away from all the other awful
stuff I was feeling.

I rolled onto my stomach to lean over him.
“I’m glad you said it.”

We met each other halfway in a kiss. The
touch of his mouth sent darts of electric want through my body.
This was it. Now or never. I slipped my hands under his shirt and
raked my fingers through his chest hair, digging my nails in. I
slid my knee between his legs and sat up, so he could feel that I
was absolutely bare, and surprisingly wet. And he did feel it,
because his chest hitched beneath my palms.

But he grabbed my hips and groaned, “Wait,
wait. No.”

“
What?” I rocked against his
thigh. The heat of his skin sent pulses to my groin, and I clenched
hard.

“
I can’t. Not like
this.”

His words penetrated the fog around my brain
like a knife slicing through me. “You… You don’t want to do
it?”

“
I do. Believe me, I do.” He
rose up on his elbows. “But I won’t.”

My heart squeezed in my chest. “But you said
you loved me.”

“
I do. Ah, Doll, I would do
just about anything for you. But having sex with you when you’re
stoned out of your mind on too much whisky and emotionally rattled…
That’s not how I want it to be.”

I might have been stoned out of my mind on
too much whisky, and yes, emotionally rattled, but there was still
some piece of me that could recognize his rejection as a good
thing. But it sure didn’t feel good in the moment. I wasn’t proud
of myself.

“
I’m sure Brad said he loved
you, too,” Ian went on. “And whoever came before him. You wouldn’t
have been happy with yourself if you’d slept with them, and you
won’t be pleased in the morning if you fuck me, now.”

“
I’m sorry.” I swung my leg
over him and scooted to the edge of the bed. I should have put on
my clothes, apologized, and went home. If I could find home, as
drunk as I was.

While I sat there, tears streaming down my
face, trying to keep him from noticing the sobs I was holding back,
he put his arms around me and pulled me back into bed to lie beside
him. In that one gesture, in the strength of his arms around me, my
pain and confusion melted into a peace that dulled the sting of the
day.

As I drifted into drunken exhaustion, I
realized that I hadn’t said those three important words back to
him. I slipped my hand beneath his shirt and pressed my palm over
the beat of his heart, hoping it was enough, for now.

* * * *

I woke with a split second of where-am-I? panic.
More accurately, oh-god-there’s-a-hole-in-the-ceiling panic. The
skylights over Ian’s bed were disconcerting.

My head hated me. The daylight hated me. I
hated me.

How could I have come on so strong, after
pouring my heart out to him about Brad? How could I have… Well, I’d
tried to use Ian, plain and simple. He must have hated me, too,
because I was alone in his bed. I didn’t even know if he was in the
apartment.

Then I heard his footsteps in the short hall
outside. I combed my fingers through my hair and held my hand in
front of my mouth to smell my breath. There was no chance it was
just my hand that reeked.

Ian knocked softly on the half-open door. He
knocked, in his own house, his own bedroom. What kind of person did
that, if not someone who was way, way too good for me?

“
I’m awake,” I croaked,
pushing myself up against the headboard for support.

“
Good morning.” He came in
wearing sleep pants and a T-shirt, his hair wet from a shower, and
carrying a glass of water. That was so unfair, when I looked like
an extra on
The Walking
Dead
.

He sat on the edge of the bed beside me and
handed me the glass. “I expect you’ll be needing this.”

I squinted up at him. “Not to be ungrateful,
but do you have any orange juice?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I think you know the
answer to that already.”

“
Right.” The thought of
drinking water nauseated me, but I knew I needed it. I just hoped I
wouldn’t throw up in his bed. That would compound the
embarrassment.

“
You’ll need these, as
well.” He pulled a small bottle of ibuprofen from his pants
pocket.

He was being so nice to me I almost burst
into tears. I didn’t trust my voice, so I just smiled with closed
lips and nodded.

“
Oh, and one more thing…” He
reached into his pocket ,again.

I didn’t fully understand what he handed me,
even as I set the water on the bedside table and my fingers closed
around the slip of paper. Which was weird, because I’d seen enough
fortune cookie fortunes in my life. I glanced up at him as I
unfolded it. My hands started shaking when I read the words.

The love of your live will step into your
path this summer.

My head jerked up, and my brain throbbed from
the movement. “You said you didn’t save this.”

“
I lied.” There wasn’t a
hint of remorse in his admission. His mouth bent in a small smile.
“Happy Labor Day.”

Labor Day. The official last day of summer.
Well, not official, that was around the twenty-first of September.
But I wasn’t about to be Pedantic Penny over something like
this.

“
I…” Crying hurt. Probably
because I didn’t have a single drop of moisture left in my body.
But that didn’t stop my chest from heaving and my shoulders from
sagging.