First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) (23 page)

“
Yeah, some of us aren’t set
up for that, so shut up.” She pushed the plate toward me. “Finish
this.”

I pushed my fork into the last bit of cake
left, and paused. “Hey, not to change the subject, but do you
ever…”

Rosa waited for me to continue.

I sighed. “Do you ever wonder what your life
would be like if you just did what you wanted to do and said to
hell with what everybody expected of you?”

“
Yes. It was called setting
all my old clothes on fire and never speaking to my family again,”
she said with a wry quirk of her lips.

“
Ha ha. I mean, what if you
hadn’t become an accountant? What if you’d been like, ‘you know, I
think I would rather be a professional tennis player?’ and you
didn’t let anyone tell you no?”

“
You just got your
semi-annual call from your parents, didn’t you?”

“
Yeah,” I admitted
miserably. “I have to stop answering.”

“
You have to figure out how
to deal with this in your own time, is what you have to do.” That
was another thing I really liked about Rosa; she might be
overprotective, but she wasn’t bossy. Not about things that
mattered. I’d had plenty of friends in college who’d been more than
happy to tell me I needed to cut off my parents and their toxic
influence on my life, but it wasn’t as easy as they all made it
sound. Eventually, I’d stopped sharing my issues and anxiety over
my parents, and then, piece by piece, I’d stopped sharing other
stuff, too, until none of my friends were actually friends anymore.
Rosa would never be like that.

“
I thought you liked your
job,” she reminded me.

“
I do.” I did. Ish. I liked
the people I worked with, and I could definitely stand the pay,
compared to what I’d been making working at Subway during college.
Deja and Sophie could be kind of demanding, but that was the best
part of the job, because most of the time, it wasn’t very
challenging. “It’s just not that interesting.”

“
Maybe once you work in an
actual administration position—” Rosa began.

I stopped her, because that wasn’t the issue.
“No, I mean…business management? I’m not exactly beating the
pavement looking for those jobs. I kind of wish…”

She waited for me to
continue, but it was so hard, when I felt like I was saying I
wanted to a ballerina or a fireman.
What
the hell.
“I wish I would have gone into
something more science-y. Marine biology, you know? Or something
with bees. Something interesting.”

“
You know what’s cool about
colleges?” Rosa asked. “They’re all over the place. I heard there
are even some here in New York.”

“
There are also these things
called ‘student loans’,” I reminded her.

“
True.” She nodded ruefully.
“Try not to make any big decisions about running away to study bees
until after you’ve calmed down from your parental phone call,
okay?”

“
I’m going to dinner with
them.” My stomach roiled. “And they want me to bring
Ian.”

“
That might not be a bad
idea,” she said, surprising me. I’d expected more
this-is-going-too-fast lecturing from her.

“
Yeah?” I asked
cautiously.

“
You’ll have a buffer,” she
said, dead serious. “And you can gauge Ian’s reaction. If he thinks
your parents are great and wants to hang with them all the time,
that’s something you need to find out, right now.”

“
Oh god, I hadn’t even
thought about that.” Although, it didn’t seem like there would be
much of a chance of that happening. Not if he really liked
me.

“
If Ian is as great as you
say he is, he’ll pick your side. And he’ll listen to you.” She came
over and hugged me, a warmer, better hug than any my mom had ever
given me.

“
Thank you, my cool mom,” I
said with a laugh.

She made a disgusted noise and gave me a
shove. “As if I would ever use that kind of alliteration in my
daughter’s name, Penny Parker.”

* * * *

Staying true to our
slow down plan was pretty easy once the worst period in the world
decided to rain blood and cramps all over me. Ian and I were
supposed to go out on Friday night, but I didn't feel like spending
the whole time worrying about whether or not I was bleeding through
my jeans.

"I hope you didn't have big, big plans," I
told him when I called him around dinnertime on Thursday. "I have
to cancel on you."

"Exactly what level of disappointed am I
allowed to be without appearing needy?"

“
You should be totally
crushed.” I was. Though we’d spoken on the phone twice already
during the week, I missed him.

“
Oh, I am,” he assured me.
“May I ask what’s come up? This isn’t the permanent brush-off, is
it?”

“
God, no!” I couldn’t even
laugh, the thought was so horrible. “No, I’m just feeling under the
weather.”

“
Do you need anything? I
hear soup is the latest thing for sick people.” From anyone else,
it might have sounded pushy, like an attempt to get an invite
despite my cancellation. It was Ian, though, so I knew he genuinely
wanted to help.

Which made me feel really bad about fibbing.
“Um. Not that kind of weather. The…monthly kind of under the
weather.”

There was a pause. Then he said, “Penny? I’m
fifty-three. I do know about menstruation. You’re not going to
shock me.”

“
Oh, good.” That was
actually a weird relief. It was tiresome, pretending my period
didn’t exist just so a man could feel comfortable. “Well, then you
understand. I just feel so gross.”

“
I do understand. But if you
need anything, ice cream, hot water bottle, a hormone-fueled
argument—”

“
Not funny,” I snapped.
Maybe he did have a point though.

“
I’m sorry,” he said and I
heard the smile in his voice. “But I do mean that. If you need me,
I can come over any time this weekend.”

“
Oh.” It hadn’t occurred to
me that he might want to still see me, knowing that the crimson
scourge was bloodying the countryside. “Well, if you wanted to come
over.” I glanced around my tiny room. “I do have a television in my
room. We could watch a movie or something.”

“
Great, then we’re still on
for tomorrow?”

It seemed so far away. Unfairly far away. And
I had cramps and bloating and tears… “What about tonight?”

“
Tonight?” From the tone of
his voice, I knew right away that I’d overstepped my
bounds.

“
Sorry,” I said quickly.
“You have work tomorrow.”

“
Don’t you?” he asked, as
though jogging my memory might lessen the blow of
denial.

I should have just said yes and let him off
the hook. But I felt like my uterus was trying to destroy me, and I
wasn’t comfortable whining about that to Rosa. She’d confessed
earlier in the week that she’d been struggling with depression more
lately, and I didn’t want to do anything to trigger feelings of
gender dysphoria. Maybe it was over-cautious of me, but I cared
about her too much to mess with her mental health because I had
five days a month that sucked.

So instead, I said, “No. I called in.”

I would have to remember to call in when I
got off the phone with him.

When I heard his resigned sigh, I knew I’d
won, and I smiled to myself as he said, “All right. Can I sleep
there? I’ll just go straight to work from your place in the
morning.”

“
Yeah.” I brightened up. “I
would love it if you would stay over.”

“
Give me about forty
minutes,” he said. “Do you want me to bring dinner?”

“
How about pizza? I’m
buying.” My check had just direct deposited, and I had to spend it
before it evaporated, anyway. And I was tired of Ian dropping money
on our dates all the time.

“
You don’t—” he began then
stopped himself. “That would be lovely. No black olives. Anything
else, just no black olives, I beg you.”

“
One anchovies and pineapple
barbecue chicken pizza, then,” I said with a laugh.

We hung up, and I floated on my cloud of
happy for approximately three seconds before I remembered what a
sty the apartment was.

I burst out of my room, probably looking like
Medusa, the way all my hair was falling out of my messy bun, and
Rosa startled, almost tipping a bowl of cereal into her lap. “Is
something on fire?”

“
No! Ian is coming over!” I
nearly shouted.

“
Now?” She jumped up and
drank a big mouthful of cereal straight from the bowl before she
abandoned it on the coffee table. “You look like shit. Take a
shower. I’ll clean your room.”

I rushed to her and grabbed her shoulders. “I
love you so much I want to be buried with you.”

“
Later! Try to make
literally anything about your appearance work.” She shooed me
off.

I took the fastest shower I’d ever taken in
my entire life, brushed my teeth, blow dried my hair and rolled it
up in a sock bun, and put on mascara. Just mascara. Otherwise Ian
wasn’t going to buy my fragile menstrual state.

With regards to that, I abandoned my Diva Cup
for a super jumbo industrial strength overnight tampon, threw on
black yoga pants and a blue tank top, then dashed off a text to
Sophie, apologizing for the late notice and begging forgiveness for
calling in. Then I jumped online and ordered a large pepperoni
pizza, some breadsticks, some mozzarella sticks, two kinds of
soda…

Maybe the person on the first day of her
period should not have been in charge of food.

When I’d put in the order, I went to the
living room, where Rosa’s emergency cleaning spree plan was in
major action. She had making the place look and smell presentable
in thirty minutes down to a science.

“
Do you want me to split?”
she asked. “Is tonight the night?”

“
No, tonight is not the
night. We’re just going to eat pizza and watch TV,” I promised.
“You can stay. You won’t be bothering us.”

“
If you need me to leave,
just text me, okay?” she said. “What time is he supposed to be
here?”

I checked the clock. “Any minute now?”

It really was “any minute”, because no sooner
than the words had come out of my mouth, the buzzer sounded. I
dashed over and hit the intercom. “Hey! Come on up! We’re unit
B.”

“
You are, like, power
excited,” Rosa said, and I realized I needed to tone it down a
little. Because, while I did feel first-day-of-my-period awful, I
didn’t want Ian to think I was faking to get him over here. I
composed my expression into one that looked less like I'd just been
ogling Tom Hardy’s old MySpace photos and opened the door, waiting
and listening to Ian’s footsteps coming up the stairs. He looked up
as he gained the top step, and though his face was drawn and his
eyes bleary, he smiled when he saw me.

"You sounded like you were dying on the
phone. I'm glad to see you're not in imminent danger of expiring."
He wore broken-in jeans and a T-shirt, which was as casual as I’d
ever seen him dressed, and carried a garment bag over his
shoulder.

"No. Just generally miserable.” I gestured
him inside. “This is the place.”

“
Not a lot of it,” Rosa said
from the couch. She stood. “I’m Rosa.”

“
I think we met before,” he
said, clearing his throat. “Downstairs.”

“
Right, when you two were
making out.” Rosa grinned. “We weren’t properly
introduced.”

I turned to Ian. “I was thinking we could
watch TV in my room. Keep one foot on the floor so Mom doesn’t
worry?”

“
Sure. Except for the foot
thing,” he said with wink. Then he looked to Rosa. “Sorry, but I
have nothing but lascivious intentions toward your
friend.”

“
Hey, as long as I don’t
have to listen.”

Somehow, having Ian in my apartment made the
place feel smaller. Not just because there was a third person in
the space; Brad used to come over, and Rosa and I had invited
handfuls of friends here plenty of times. But having seen Ian’s
apartment, with its three stories of amazing open floors and a
kitchen larger than my bedroom, I could only imagine how he was
seeing things.

I was kind of embarrassed.

It got worse when we stepped into my tiny
bedroom. Rosa had stuffed all my dirty laundry somewhere, god bless
her, and gotten rid of my tissues and trash, but the space was
small and definitely not sophisticated. Ugh, this had been such a
terrible idea. I’d just wanted to see him so much—

“
Wow,” he said, and I
cringed. “This reminds me so much of my first apartment in New
York.”

I turned around, almost afraid to ask.
“Because it’s so small and shitty?”

“
Well, it is small. But this
place is better kept than my apartment was. And I shared a bedroom
about this size with another guy.” He laughed at the memory. “We
didn’t even have beds.”

“
I’m sorry. I didn’t think
about the fact that you probably didn’t want to hang out in some
dingy twenty-something’s crappy apartment.” I wanted to crawl into
a hole and die of shame.

“
Did you not just hear what
I said about sleeping on the floor?” he asked, toeing off the
battered-looking sneakers he had on. “I didn’t expect you to have a
million-dollar penthouse. Besides, I’m here to make you feel
better, not do a property appraisal.”