First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) (2 page)

“
I hate to sound old
fashioned,” he began, and the crushing discomfort of the moment
increased ten-fold, “but when it comes to some things, I am. Since
I picked this restaurant, dinner is on me.”

“
Well, thanks.”

He tapped the top of my menu. “Just so you
know, that’s not me angling for sex.”

“
I didn’t think it w-was,” I
stuttered.
Oh god, get that under
control.
The embarrassment train had
derailed and spilled toxic embarrassment waste all over the place.
I tried to make a joke of it, saying, “That was mortifying,” but it
didn’t land.

I wasn’t just embarrassed. I
had second-hand embarrassment for
myself
.

Worst of all, he seemed to take my remark
personally. “I know, I’m sorry. I heard it as it was coming out,
and I couldn’t stop it.” He paused and muttered, “damn,” under his
breath. “I haven’t done this in a long, long time, and I just
didn’t want you to get the wrong impression. I tried to look all of
this up on the internet and—”

“
You researched how to date
on the internet?” I interrupted. That was so adorably vulnerable.
Under all the weirdness and self-deprecating humor, he seemed like
he was probably a very confident guy. I guess you’d have to be, to
try and re-enter the dating pool with a complete stranger. I almost
suggested he try this over, but with someone he knew well. Then I
found myself becoming a little defensive and prickly over his
imaginary next date, like she was moving in on my turf.

So…that was strange.

He winced slightly at my question. “I did.
I’m not sure how great the advice was…”

“
Tell me some of it. I can
coach you,” I offered. I put my menu down—I think I’d decided on
what I wanted, anyway—and leaned my folded arms on the table. And,
what the hell, I’d try to flirt a little. “I’m excellent at dating.
I do it all the time. Sometimes even twice with the same
guy.”

Oh. My god. Who the frick am I, Mae West?

“
Then, you sound like quite
the expert.” He was still deciding on food, so I couldn’t tell what
he was thinking. I hoped he didn’t think I meant I was going on
another date later and wasn’t invested in this one. He set the menu
aside, sat up straight, and said, “All right. Well, the first
suggestion was ‘don’t talk about your exes’.”

“
That’s definitely good
advice. Don’t talk about that until… Well, I don’t know when. But I
don’t want to hear about it,” I blurted.
How are you still doing this?
I was
never this disoriented around a guy. I like guys. And I know I’m
cute and fun to be with. I’ve had enough men tell me that. But my
game had totally deserted me the second I’d gotten out of the
cab.

“
Oh my god, that sounded so
rude. I’m so sorry,” I apologized. Sophie had even told me he was
newly divorced. I’d probably opened up some awful wound.

He started to wave it off, saying, “Don’t
worry about—” but our waiter came to the table, and he seemed a
little impatient.

“
Have you made your
selections, then?”

Rude.
I thought they were supposed to be nicer in fancy places like
this.

Ian gestured to me. “If the lady is
ready.”

I’d totally forgotten what I’d wanted. I’d
been concentrating on how much I was messing up this date. He was
staring at me, probably wondering why I couldn’t function like a
human being, so I stalled, saying, “Oh, you go first.”

“
Sir?” the waiter addressed
him.

“
I’ll have the warm octopus
eschabeshe, I think.”

Of all the characteristics
that define me as a person, the one that I truly believe will be
mentioned not only in my obituary, but my eulogy and the engraving
on my headstone is my unwavering passion for octopods. They’re one
of the most intelligent, if not
the
most intelligent, invertebrate. They can solve
puzzles and navigate mazes. They’re incredible escape artists. Of
all the creatures in the sea, they are by far my favorite.
Actually, of all the creatures on the planet. I’d take a pet
octopus over a pet dog, any day.

So, when this previously
charming stranger announced his intention to
eat one
, every instinct I had was to
flip the table and shout, “No!” at him like he was a puppy who’d
gotten into the trash.

Instead, I made a high-pitched noise that was
completely out of my control.

He raised an eyebrow and leaned slightly
forward. “Is there something wrong?”

“
No, it’s nothing.” The
smile on my face felt like when you’re waiting forever for someone
to take a picture. “I just really, um. I really like
octopods.”

In a split second decision, I made up my mind
to walk out of the restaurant if he tried to correct me with
“octopi”.

Instead, he looked a little impressed and
said, “Really?”

“
I do this donation thing to
conserve the habitat of the giant Pacific octopus.
Enteroctopus dofleini
?” I
glanced up at the waiter, whose expression said, quite
clearly,
please stop talking.
But I couldn’t. Conversational self-preservation
is not a skill I possess. “But I love all of them. I even have a
tattoo of one.”

For a long moment, Ian just stared at me.
Probably because he thought I was demented or that I had a little
bucket of red paint in my purse to throw over his dinner, right
before I ripped my dress in half to reveal a PeTA T-shirt
underneath. That might have been why he said, “Then, I revise my
selection, and I will have the lobster pappardelle, instead.”

“
And for you,
ma’am?”

I wasn’t sure if I should eat dinner since
I’d already filled up on butterflies. My hand shook as I gave the
waiter my menu. “The frog legs, please.”

“
Very good. Do we have a
wine selection?”

A smile flickered at the edges of Ian’s
mouth. “What goes with frog legs?”

I wanted to laugh or make my own quip back. I
would have settled for just reacting, at all. But I was still
stunned that he’d changed his order for me. I tried to imagine Brad
ever doing anything like that. He would have probably just made a
face and told me to get over it.

That thought had to leave immediately. I
wasn’t going to compare this perfectly nice guy to Brad. It wasn’t
fair to compare anyone to your ex on a first date. And in this
case, the comparison would have been extra tactless, because
Ian…

Ian was starting to seem better and
better.

But as he looked at me, his expression fell.
He asked the waiter, “Could you give us a moment?” and the guy
looked ready to stab both of us.

Oh great. Just when I’d relaxed and realized
this guy actually, astoundingly, had potential, he was ready to cut
out. I could sense it. I tried to hide my disappointment as he
leaned in and motioned for me to do the same.

“
This is, quite literally,
the worst date I have ever been on,” he began, and the butterflies
in my stomach dropped dead. But he continued, “And I think you’re
in the same boat with me. Do you want to start over? Somewhere that
we’re not so pressured to be on our best behavior, and actually be
ourselves?”

Maybe I shouldn’t have felt the enormous
relief I felt at his offer. Especially when I’d been trying to talk
myself out of meeting him less than an hour ago. But Sophie had
told me I would like him, and he would like me.

I was going to find out what she meant.

Chapter Two

A change of venue
was exactly what we’d needed. I’d suggested a restaurant near my
apartment, not because I thought I’d be taking him home or
anything, but because I always got the best guidance from their
fortune cookies.

With the way the date was going, I could use
all the help I could get. Ian was the trifecta of confusion for me.
My heart? Really, really liked him and wanted to get to know him
better. My brain? Thought it was a crazy idea and had no problem
listing off all the reasons why it was crazy, from our ages to the
fact that he would willingly eat an octopus. And my body…

Okay, being a virgin? Doesn’t mean I’m not
interested in sex. And it definitely doesn’t mean I have some iron
willpower. The only thing that held me back so far was my stupid
family superstition. Every woman in my family had found their true
love, and it had always been the man she’d first slept with. Which
was great and all, if they stayed together. But my great aunt Aggie
had fallen hard for her first, and he’d married someone else. She’d
been miserable for the rest of her life. My cousin Ashley had given
it up to her high school boyfriend, and while she fully believed
that he was her true love, the timing must have been crazy off,
because they broke up and she immediately got pregnant with some
loser football player’s baby. So while I’d been tempted before—and
oh man, had I been tempted—it wasn’t worth it to risk my future
happiness.

That said I’d almost jumped into Ian’s lap in
the cab. When he talked, he talked with his hands, and I’d somehow
gone from innocently appreciating their sexiness to actively
imagining them on me. Then I’d thought about how weird it was that
I’d even think of him that way when he was so much older than me,
which had led down the very dangerous path of reasoning that wisdom
comes with experience, and maybe the whole superstition thing had
more to do with coincidence than reality.

When we got our food, I
ordered guaranteed breath killers: kung pao chicken with extra
spice and pork egg rolls stuffed with lots of smelly cabbage. There
was no way we were doing
anything
tonight.

Getting out of that stuffy restaurant had
been a great idea. Now that we were alone, sitting on a bench in
the deserted little park down the street from my apartment, we
could really get to know each other. And maybe I was just a tad
overeager, because as I paused in my recounting of my wisdom teeth
extraction, he asked, “Wait…weren’t we talking about Shakespeare in
the park, a moment ago?”

I subdued a groan. “I talk too much.
Sorry.”

“
No,” he was quick to
reassure me. “You talk just enough. Any more than this and you’d be
overwhelming. But you’re at a good level right here.”

My frozen expression thawed with my
relief.

He moved for his Styrofoam cup as he said,
“Unfortunately, I know the name of the cat you left behind to go to
college, and I know that cherry is your favorite flavor of cough
syrup. But I think we skipped over some important information.”

Ugh. How could I be this tragically
awkward?

He went on, “Tell me about your family.”

This was one of my least favorite parts of
getting to know someone new. They asked about my family, I told
them, and they would say things that sounded innocent but felt
prying and personal. “Wow, it must have been lonely, being an only
child,” or “I bet you were really spoiled.” The truth was, I’d been
incredibly spoiled and unlikeable until I’d arrived at NYU and
gotten the world’s biggest you’re-not-special-at-all slap in the
face. Yes, my parents had indulged my every whim, but damn straight
I’d been lonely. My father had worked all the time, and my mother
had been so involved in her own career and various community
activities that I’d spent a lot of days and nights with a
babysitter. Of course I’d been lonely and spoiled, but it was
humiliating to explain that to my best friends. Telling a stranger
on a date? No, thank you.

“
Ugh. Okay, please don’t
tell me this sounds lonely, but I’m an only child, and my parents
are not close to their families, so it was kind of just the three
of us.”

He blinked and shrugged. “I don’t think that
sounds all that lonely. Honestly, around the time my last little
brother was born, I would have been happy to live on my own in a
cave somewhere.”

My hair was coming dangerously close to
getting into my food. I flipped it over my shoulder and hoped the
motion didn’t look as jerky as it felt. I’d never been able to pull
off the smooth, graceful thing with my hair. “Why? What’s your
family like?”

“
I’m the fourth of nine
children—” he began, and I tried not to cut him off, but that was
beyond out-of-the-ordinary. I’d never met anyone with so many
brothers and sisters.

“
Nine?” I almost spit
half-chewed kung pao everywhere. I couldn’t imagine growing up with
eight siblings. I’d always wanted at least one, but nine was beyond
excessive.

“
Four boys, five girls.” He
seemed amused by my reaction.

I swallowed with a little difficulty and
grabbed for my drink. “Wow. And do they all live in… You’re from
Scotland, right?”

“
Yes. I am originally from
Scotland.” He nodded along as he answered. “And yes, all but one of
my siblings still live there.”

“
So, how long have you lived
here? The country. Not New York.” I didn’t mean to interrogate him,
but he was way more interesting than I was. If I kept asking
questions, he might not figure that out.

“
Oh, about…” he paused, his
brow furrowing as he silently counted it up, “twenty…seven? Yeah,
twenty-seven years now.”

“
Wow, I didn’t know they’d
let you stay that long.” I put my drink down. “So, you were here
before I was born.”

Why did I have to go and say something like
that? Right when we were getting comfortable?