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

“
No.” Then I realized that
he’d felt the goose bumps on my arm, and possibly the slight shiver
that had gone through me when he’d put his hand on my bare skin. I
had to cover for myself. I rubbed my arms to feign a chill, even
though the city night was like an oven. “Or, um. Yeah? A little
bit?”

He took off his suit jacket before I could
answer him when he asked, “Would you like my jacket, then?”

The last time a guy had done that for me, it
had been at Dunkin’ Donuts after senior prom. It had made me melt
then, and it made me melt now. “Thanks. That’s very chivalrous of
you.”

He put the jacket over my shoulders—it was
warm from his body and smelled like his cologne, and I had to
restrain myself from openly sniffing the lapels—and said, “Aye, I
learned it in the thirteenth century.”

He’d said “Aye.” Not “yeah”
or “yes.” “Aye.” Like Jamie from
Outlander
.

An older, less muscular,
graying Jamie from
Outlander
, but still. If I could get
him to call me
Sassenach
just once, I’d be happy.

He gestured to the cartons and cups on the
bench. “Let’s get out of here before Officer Friendly comes
back.”

We grabbed up our stuff and
found a garbage can, and I realized too late that I hadn’t kept my
fortune for the jar.
Crap
. It wasn’t like I was going to go
back and look for it in the trash. That seemed like the way to
assure there would be no second date, and I was really, really
hoping there would be one.

We made it to the sidewalk without being
arrested. “I assume we’re safe here. Try not to solicit sex from
me, though.”

Or, you know.
Do
.

“
I already promised I
wouldn’t. I’m a man of my word.”

I had to get myself under control. I reminded
myself—as I often found myself reminding myself—that I’d waited
this long for a reason. But damn, it was really hard when everyone
around you was having dessert and talking about how good it was
while you were on a diet.

Ian reached into his front trouser pocket and
pulled out a slip of paper. “Here. Hopefully, this rings true.”

It was my fortune. He must have saved it for
me when we picked up all our garbage.

I said, “We’ll look back on tonight and
laugh,” because I couldn’t think of anything original to say. He’d
actually listened when I’d said I believed in fortune cookie
messages. That was so sweet it was like sugar poured into the gas
tank of my brain, and I couldn’t make anything start up again. So I
automatically asked, “Did you keep yours?”

I couldn’t believe I said
that. I might as well have asked him if I was the love of
his
live
.

“
Nah,” he responded, and I
could barely look him in the eye.

“
Well, won’t you be
embarrassed when you meet the love of your live tomorrow and you
don’t have the proper paperwork.”
Humor
usually works at the point of awkwardness
.

The corners of his mouth lifted, and he said,
with obvious reluctance, “Let me walk you home?”

I didn’t have to check my phone to know it
was getting late. At least tomorrow was a Saturday, and I could
sleep in. But the night had gone so fast; I didn’t want it to
end.

We walked around the corner. My building was
the second down the block, with the heavy gray door slashed with
lines of a sloppy spray-painted anarchy symbol. As we went, we kept
that careful cushion of personal space that exists between people
who have been flirting, but weren’t ready for purposeful physical
contact yet between them. “This is me.”

Ian might have thought he’d covered up his
horror at my living arrangement, but he’d failed. I’d challenge him
to find rent lower than twelve-hundred a month without going to the
other end of the of borough.

I remembered I was wearing his jacket and
took it off. When he took it out of my hand, he did that thing guys
in suits do, where they hold onto their jacket over their shoulder.
Guys doing that? Did something to me physically. Something that
involved a lot of throbbing.

“
So…thank you. I wasn’t
joking when I said I was having fun. Even after the cops came,” he
said.

Then he looked at my mouth. He was going to
kiss me. Oh my god, he was going to kiss me. My toes curled in my
shoes. He was going to kiss me, a real, actual kiss, not just a
peck on the cheek or an awkward first date hug. He leaned down, I
took a breath and…

My breath! I jerked backward. “Nope! No. No,
sorry, it’s not you. It’s just that my breath is really, really bad
from dinner. I actually did that on purpose. I thought I might be
tempted, so I went with spicy and full of cabbage.”

“
Oh.” He felt rejected, that
was clear enough from his surprised expression. Usually I wouldn’t
have felt bad; guys need to learn to live with disappointment. But
I actually wanted to kiss him, more than I’d anticipated, and with
a clearer head.

I had to learn to trust myself.

But I also had to be honest, right off the
bat. If this became anything, I had to prepare him for the fact
there wasn’t going to be any third date sex. Or fourth or fifth.
“It’s just that… I like you, Ian. And you know how you said you
were old fashioned about paying for dinner? I’m old fashioned about
this. I move really, really slow, and I think it’s only fair that
you know that, if you were thinking about…calling me?”

“
I was actually thinking
about how much pepper spray was going to hurt,” he
joked.

The night had had its rough
spots, but not
that
rough. “Why would I pepper spray you?”

He chuckled. “Because this entire date has
been a disaster, and I thought going in for the kiss might have
been the last straw.”

“
It wasn’t a total
disaster.”

He cleared his throat. I wondered if it was a
nervous tick. “I’m a bit out of practice with dating, and I
overstepped my bounds. But slow doesn’t bother me. Slow, I can
do.”

I really wanted to believe that. On the other
hand, I wanted to believe that I could manage to be slow with him,
too.

“
You know, police
involvement aside, I had fun tonight, too.” I twisted the toe of my
shoe on the sidewalk. “Would you want to do it again?”

“
Oh, I suppose I could
stomach it.” How was he so cool and dorky at the same
time?

I couldn’t be cool, not when I was thrilling
to my toes about all the possibility packed into the conversation.
“Well, good. I think you should be old fashioned and call me.”

“
No texts,” he swore, and I
almost swooned. I hated texting. Everyone else on the planet seemed
to love it, so I did it when I had to. It was nice to meet a
kindred spirit who would rather talk on the phone.

I didn’t want to go inside, but it was
perfect to end it right here. “Thanks for a really… Let’s go with
memorable. A really memorable night.”

“
It was my
pleasure.”

I stepped away, but every cell in my body
wanted to stay. I turned back and moved fast, grabbing his tie and
pulling him down to kiss him on the cheek. There. That was cute,
and just the right amount of aggressive. “Have a good night.”

My face was burning as I unlocked the door.
Actually, it was probably flashing on and off like Rudolph’s nose.
At least it didn’t make that weird noise.

I couldn’t resist a look back at him. He was
not the kind of guy I was usually attracted to. But in the
flickering glow of the nearly-broken light over my door, everything
seemed unusual. This didn’t feel like a usual date, at all. It felt
like the start of something important, and I couldn’t convince
myself that it was my overactive imagination telling me that.

It was August twenty-first. I guess I would
get my answer in a few weeks.

Chapter Three

My roommate, Rosa, would be on me the second I
came through the door, and she would call me out if I was breathing
hard and blushing, so I waited in the tiny vestibule at the bottom
of the stairs, leaning against the mailboxes.

There was also no way she was going to miss
the fact that my high-beams were definitely on. I had never in my
life kissed someone on the cheek and had a physical reaction like
the one I was feeling at the moment. The skin on my neck
tingled—no, ached—from imagining his mouth there.

Then, there was the fortune. I didn’t want to
get my hopes up; it would be silly when we’d only gone on a first
date. But cookies have never steered me wrong. Was I destined to be
the love of Ian’s life? Did I want to be? Was fate giving me a
choice in the matter?

I climbed the four flights of narrow stairs
to my apartment and slipped the key in the door. Our place is so
small. Two teensy bedrooms on either side of a cramped living space
with a weird, bay window-shaped end, despite the criminally steep
rent we paid. I entered through the small kitchenette and saw Rosa
had beat me to the dishes, again.

“
I told you I would do those
when I got home,” I said in lieu of a greeting.

Rosa was sitting on the
couch, watching
The Mindy
Project
. Her dark, curly hair was pulled up
in a sock bun. The torn-out neck of her sweatshirt dipped on her
shoulder, and no bra strap showed. “Does it look like I had a lot
of exciting plans tonight?”

I smiled to myself as I slipped off my heels
and padded toward my bedroom. Rosa was too distracted by the
television to ask about my date. Thank god for Hulu. Thank god for
Mindy Kaling.

Of course I would tell Rosa
about my date with Ian, but I needed to process how I felt about
the whole night. The evening really did have disaster written all
over it, but it had been funny and exciting.
He
had been funny and
exciting.

“
No, no,” Rosa called after
me, pausing her show. “You’re not getting off that
easy.”

“
I know. You get the beer.
I’ll get my PJs.”

When I was comfy and changed and Rosa and I
each had a Bud Light in hand, I made a “bring it” motion. “Let’s do
this.”

She got straight to what had been her biggest
curiosity since the first time I’d mentioned that I was going out
with an older guy. “How did he look? Did he look rough fifty? Did
he look Brad Pitt fifty? What’s up?”

I held out my hand and flipped it back and
forth. “Business guy fifty? Is that a thing?”

She considered. “Hot dad fifty?”

I snapped my fingers. “Yes, exactly. But not
in bad way. He’s handsome.”

“
I’m going to need
more.”

I considered a moment. Altogether, he was
good-looking, but I couldn’t think of one feature that really stood
out. Then I realized that it had been his expressions, his face in
motion, that had made him so appealing. Without his goofy charm, he
would have been average. “He has really nice eyes, and his smile is
kind of… I don’t know. Like a naughty little boy.”

“
Hot. Hair?”

“
Black. With a lot of gray
in it.”

“
Nose? Ears?”

“
Eh. Ears just slightly on
the large side.”

Rosa nodded, with exactly the same expression
Oprah has when she’s interviewing Lindsey Lohan. Finally, she said,
“Okay. So you think he’s good-looking. How about the
personality?”

“
Really sweet.” I snickered,
remembering the way he’d said he came off as a “fucking prick” when
talking about his artwork. “He swears like no one I’ve ever
met.”

“
Even me?” Rosa sat up, like
she was accepting a call to protect her honor.

“
Yeah, unbelievably. But it
doesn’t even seem crass when he does it. Maybe it’s the accent.”
Ooh, that was gonna make Rosa jealous. She had such a thing for
accents.

Her eyes widened. “What kind of accent?”

“
Scottish. He grew up in
Glasgow.” I grinned at her from ear to ear. “Not gonna lie, it’s
pretty hot.”

“
So, the date went well,
then?” Rosa wriggled on the couch cushion. “You’re going to see
him, again?”

“
Oh, the date was horrible.
He took me to this crazy fancy restaurant and ordered
octopus
.” It made me sad
to even think about that, but he
had
changed his selection to avoid offending me
further, rather than telling me I was overreacting. “It was going
so not well he suggested we go somewhere else, so we ended up
eating Chinese takeout in the park.”

“
Okay, that’s kind of cute
and romantic,” Rosa insisted.

“
Yeah, it would have been.”
I paused. “Except for the part where we got busted for trespassing
and the cop assumed I was a prostitute.”

“
Nothing wrong with
prostitutes,” Rosa reminded me.

“
I know. But there is
something wrong with going to jail on a first date.” Still, I
couldn’t help my giddy smile as I said, “And he tried to kiss
me.”

Rosa took a sip from her bottle. “Did
you?”

I shook my head. “I kissed him on the cheek,
though. And he said he wanted to call me.”

“
So, you’re going to go out
with him, again.” She shook her head. “Okay. If that’s your
deal.”

“
What?” Here it was. I’d
been expecting this ever since I’d told her I was going on a date
with a much older guy.