First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) (9 page)

I chanced a look at the women. They were both
packing up their things.

Then one of them said, “You’re old enough to
be her father. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

I could get objecting to someone making out
in front of you—even though there was an entire park full of other
people they could have gawked at instead of us. But I didn’t
understand making such a cruel remark. It had to have embarrassed
Ian terribly. And if he was embarrassed…

Would he be too embarrassed to go out with
me, again?

And that was it. That’s what made me snap,
“Take your ugly babies and fuck off.”

The moment it came out of my mouth, I hated
myself. I recognized the tone of my voice, and it was the immature,
stupid girl from Pennsylvania, being cruel just because she
could.

If Ian hadn’t been embarrassed before, he
probably definitely was now.

The women took off fast, while Ian sat there
in stunned silence until he managed to choke out a “well”.

I covered my face with my hands. “I am…so
sorry, that was totally inappropriate and immature.”

“
Well, you didn’t have to
insult their babies. That was a bit over the top.”

My heart plummeted so fast I imagined it
shattering on the ground. But Ian reached out and skimmed the backs
of his fingers down my arm, and his touch assured me we were still
getting along.

So did his next words. “But if this is
something…ah. I know we just met, and this is our second date, but
I’m hoping there will be more in the future. And if there are,
people are going to comment on the age difference.”

His touch gave me goose bumps, so I rubbed my
arms. “I know. And I know people will be rude, because people are
people. But I like you, Ian. I want to go out with you, again.” I
laughed. “I want to make out with you again.”

“
Well, I’m not going to turn
you down,” he said hoarsely, and cleared his throat. “And I like
you, too. Just so we’re even on that score.”

I looked down at the blanket and over at the
teenagers who were trying to watch us in the wake of our verbal
altercation. “Look, I ruined our picnic—”

“
They ruined our picnic,” he
corrected me. “And it’s not ruined. We can still have a good time
here.”

“
Yeah, we could do that.” I
cocked my head. “Or…we could go to my place and do that make-out
thing I just mentioned.”

His eyebrows went up. Way up. “What happened
to going slow?”

“
I didn’t say you were going
to get to round all the bases.” I hadn’t kissed Brad until our
third date. Hot and heavy making out? I hadn’t even
wanted
to for a couple
months. When I had done it, it had been because I’d felt I’d owed
him something. I didn’t owe Ian anything. But I really wanted to
give something to him.

Not
that
. I still had no idea about
that
.

He scratched the back of his neck and looked
away from me. “I’m tempted. I’m sorely tempted. But you said you
wanted to go slow. And I want to respect that.”

That was sweet. In theory. He was still
turning me down, and I couldn’t help but worry this was all because
I’d lost my temper at those women, and now he was reevaluating me,
in general. But that was stupid, because he’d just said he liked
me. So what was the problem?

“
I’ve got an idea,” he said
suddenly. He pointed toward the two teenagers down by the water,
drawing the castle. “I’ll be right back.”

He walked off with purpose, calling out,
“Hello there,” and crouched down to talk to them. I wasn’t sure
what he was doing, but he took out his wallet and gave them a bill.
Was he buying drugs?

One of them ripped a few pages out of their
sketchbook and passed it to Ian, then took a pencil behind their
ear and handed it over. Ian stuck out his hand, gave both the
people a hearty handshake, stood, and came back like nothing weird
had just taken place.

“
Um…what was that?” I asked
him once he got close enough to hear me.

“
Oh, those are my new
friends, Nate and Lexi. Lexi was kind enough to sell me her
sketchbook.” He held up the pencil. “What do you say? May I draw
you?”

I took a breath and made a surprised noise I
couldn’t control. “Wow. Yeah. I can’t believe you would pay someone
for their sketchbook, just to draw me.”

He shrugged. “Money well-spent. It gives me
an excuse to stare at you without being creepy or uncool.”

I pulled my legs criss-cross applesauce
beneath my skirt and sat up straight. “Okay, but if you’re going to
draw me, you have to make my nose a little shorter.”

“
Never. Your nose is
perfect.” He sat across from me and flipped the wire-bound
sketchbook open. Then he looked up at me, and I wasn’t sure what I
was supposed to do. I must have looked nervous, because he smiled
and said, “Just relax. You’re not sitting for your presidential
portrait.”

“
I’ve never had anyone draw
me before. It’s kind of nerve wracking.” And sexy. To have someone
scrutinize you so closely was exhilarating. I’d never experienced
that before, since I’d spent large enough chunks of my life trying
to be seen but not looked at. Like a pretty vase or
something.

God, that was sad. It was even more sad that
it took a virtual stranger being nice enough to just look at me,
really look at me instead of letting his eyes pass over me on the
way to the next thing to realize how miserable my view of myself
had been until that moment.

“
It’s nerve wracking for
you? I’m the one performing here.” His gaze darted down to the
page, and he made his first marks. I couldn’t see, but it seemed
like he’d drawn a really fast circle. The pencil jerked around in
short, sharp, but very deliberate movements. He kept looking up at
me, and his expression was inscrutable. I found myself doubting
every part of my face. When he looked too long at my chin, was it
because it was too prominent? What did he think of my lips, that
his eyebrow twitched up like it did?

I knew what I thought
of
his
lips.

The silence was suddenly stifling. The park
seemed loud and irritating, when it hadn’t been before. I had to
distract myself, even if it meant distracting Ian. “I’m trying to
not say anything. I don’t want to break your concentration.”

His brow furrowed as he studied the page.
“You’re not going to break anything, Doll. I’m almost finished,
anyway.”

Doll
? Was that a cute pet name? It was our second date, so I
assumed he used it for just any woman he was attracted to. It still
gave me warm feelings in my stomach. “Doll?”

His face went beet red, and he kept his gaze
trained on his drawing. “It’s like honey, or baby. It just slipped
out. More creepy second date behavior on my part.”

“
I’ll just interpret it as
you being comfortable enough with me that you could accidentally
give me a cute nickname.” I tried to imagine six months from now,
hearing him call me “Doll” every day. I could have melted. “Where
did you come up with Doll?”

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have asked. What if
his answer was “I call all women that” or “It was my pet name for
my ex-wife”? I didn’t want to know any of that.

“
If I tell you, I’m going to
sound like a desperately clingy person you’ll want to run away
from.” He erased something on the paper.

Run away. As if I would want to do that. “No
you won’t, I promise. If I didn’t try to run away from you when you
tried to murder a defenseless octopus, I won’t run away, now.”

His mouth bent in a reluctant, close-mouthed
smile. Or maybe it was a grimace at what he’d just erased. “My
father used to call my mum that. It’s very common.”

That was a much better answer than I’d feared
it would be.

“
So, you’re superstitious,”
he said suddenly, because silence wasn’t comfortable for us yet.
“What about, besides fortune cookies?”

I used to be ashamed about my silly reliance
on signs, until a friend of my mother’s started exploring her
spirituality when I’d been in high school. My mother hated my
insistence on picking through the grass for four-leaf clovers—I’d
never found one—and my daily horoscope emails. But then Cheryl told
me, “There’s no such thing as coincidence,” while reading my tarot
cards, and I suddenly hadn’t cared anymore. I’d learned a universal
truth—at least, it had seemed like one to me—and I stopped being
shy about sharing it.

Less than a year into her spiritual
awakening, Cheryl’s presence at my mother’s Friday night book club
was no more. It had been too late. My belief in red flags from the
universe had become non-negotiable by then.

I shrugged and said, “You know, horoscopes.
Numerology. I believe in signs. So do you, right? Signs from God?
Isn’t that a Christian thing?”

Wait, was Catholic and Christian the same
thing?

If I’d made a gaffe describing his religion,
he seemed unfazed. “It is. I wouldn’t say that I listen to them.
But yes, I have had times when I’ve thought maybe I was being
pushed in a certain direction. Sometimes, when something illogical
is happening, you have to look for a pattern to make sense.”

It was something Cheryl could have said, with
her wise, no-nonsense tone. And everything clicked into place about
Ian.

The fortune cookie had not been wrong. It had
not been a coincidence, since they didn’t exist. Our star signs
were compatible. I hadn’t done any serious charting or anything,
but I knew that, in general, Cancer and Scorpio were an okay
match.

A bubble of elation and
delicious anticipation burst inside me. And even though we were on
our second date, even though I knew I was falling too fast, I knew
I was falling
right
.

So I just said, “Yeah. I know that feeling,”
and let a moment of what felt like mutual understanding linger
between us.

“
So, horoscopes, then,” he
said, breaking the momentous tension. “I’m a Cancer, and you’re
a…”

“
Scorpio. My birthday is
actually October thirty-first. I was crushed when I realized the
cause for all the dressing up and candy collecting wasn’t a
celebration of my birth, but something that had been going on for a
really long time.” I loved that memory, even though it had been
devastating to six-year-old me. Every other person I’d met who
shared my weird birthday seemed to have the same story.

He chuckled, tilting his head to examine the
drawing. “Well, that explains why you’re superstitious. What do the
stars have to say about us?”

“
What, like, romantic
compatibility?” He nodded, and I said, “Scorpios and Cancers work
together really well. I mean, you’re probably stubborn and
opinionated, but I’m stubborn and opinionated, too. But both signs
have a lot of energy relating to family and home. Our relationship
would probably be pretty intense.”

It already seemed intense. Maybe that was
just the force of my attraction to him.

“
Is that a bad thing?” he
asked.

“
No, it’s not a bad thing.”
I considered for a blink. “I’m Mars. You’re the moon. Your sign is
all about the loving and nurturing in a relationship, and mine is
about the romance and the passion.”

“
You can’t claim exclusivity
there. I’m dead romantic when I put my mind to it.”

Well, duh, Ian.
I smiled at the utter foolishness of his
declaration. Of
course
he was romantic. Not many guys sat down and seriously drew a
woman’s portrait on their second date. Well, maybe art students
trying to get laid. But not guys who turned down the possibility.
“I can tell. This is probably the most romantic thing anyone has
ever done for me.”

“
I’m not going to take too
much credit, because this is really the bare minimum.” He handed
the sketchbook to me. “Here, all finished.”

I’m not sure my heart had ever beat faster
than it did at that moment. The drawing he’d done, even in the
short amount of time it had taken him to produce it, was the most
idealized version of myself I’d ever seen. Was this how he saw me?
This gorgeous woman with the wistful expression on the page? “It’s
incredible. I had no idea I was so pretty.”

“
Yes, you did,” he
teased.

I conceded with a nod. “I am
really hot.”
I just didn’t realize how hot
you thought I was.
“But this is… this is
beautiful. Can I keep it?”

“
Of course,” he said without
hesitation.

I hugged the sketchbook to my chest and
kissed him on the cheek. I couldn’t help it; it was a kiss on the
cheek or a full-on tackle. “I love it. I really do.”

And that was the moment I started to fall for
Ian Pratchett.

Chapter Six

The thing with day dates is you can make them last
for a really long time. And we definitely had. After the picnic,
we’d dropped our stuff at Ian’s car—he had a car
in the city
—and took a
walk, until he noticed the hell my heels were putting me through.
He’d driven us to get drinks at a lovely, almost
too-air-conditioned bar. We’d started talking, and before we’d
known it, drinks had turned into dinner, and dinner had turned into
sitting in his car at the curb in front of my apartment until the
sun went down and it was getting dangerously close to being
tomorrow.

Ian looked at the clock on the dashboard. “I
hate to cut this short, but mass is at ten a.m. And Danny is going
to kill me if I don’t come to his church tomorrow.”