by Claire Adams
It felt a little like walking on air as I stumbled into my apartment and found my phone. “You won’t believe where I just was,” I said when Caroline answered.
“Where?” she said. “Don’t make me guess. I’ve had a really long day.”
“I was at that bar, The Knock. You’ve been there before, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, once or twice. Once with that guy, Derek. It’s a little . . . upscale for my tastes, though. Or maybe not upscale—pretentious? I do remember that everyone there was like a supermodel or something. That made me feel great.”
“You’re just as gorgeous as any of them,” I said. “More so.”
“That’s sweet of you to say, even if it is untrue. So you went to The Knock? Who with?”
“Ian.”
“Your boss?” I could hear the surprise in her voice.
“Yeah. He randomly asked me at the end of the day today.”
“Wow. How’d that go?”
“It was all right.” I thought back to sitting there next to him at the bar, feeling his knee resting lightly against mine, how exciting I had found that to be. Caroline was my best friend, yes, but even still, I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell her this small but important detail. It sounded rather pathetic, even to me, even though I was the one who had found it so thrilling. “It was almost like an extended job interview or something. He was asking me all these questions.”
“Yeah? Like what?
“Like . . . how I was enjoying the job so far, and what sorts of things I liked to do, and whether or not I was seeing anyone.”
Caroline was quiet for a moment, and then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Daisy,” she said.
“What?” I asked when she didn’t say anything after that.
“Daisy. I love you; you know this. But sometimes you can be so dense! Especially when it has to do with men! He is interested in you!”
I felt my heartbeat accelerate when she said that and a warmness rise in my cheeks. If I were to look in the mirror right now, my face would probably be red.
“I don’t think so,” I said, glad that we were just talking on the phone and not in person. Did my voice sound different? Did I sound a little . . . giddy? I cleared my throat. “You should see what he looks like, Caro. He’s gorgeous. Like, he totally fit into the scene at The Knock; me, not so much.”
“That’s bullshit, and he obviously is interested in you if he took you out and is asking you all these questions! Why else would he be doing all this? There’s no other reason.”
She sounded so sure of herself that I could almost believe her. Part of me wanted to believe her. But another part of me didn’t want to have anything to do with any guy, not after the way thing with Noah had gone.
“And I know what you’re thinking,” Caroline continued, “I know that you’re thinking that you don’t want to do this because you don’t want him to turn out to be some psycho like Noah was, but I’m telling you—not all guys are like that.”
I smiled. “Well . . . yeah, that is kind of why I don’t want to think too hard about this. Also, I just can’t really fathom the idea how someone like that could be interested in me. He’s older, too.”
“Like how much?”
“I don’t know—probably in his thirties. I can ask Jonathan.”
“That’s hot. Holy shit, I’m so excited for you! I want to meet him.”
“You can. Just not yet, maybe. I don’t know what is going on, but I cannot remember ever feeling like this toward someone. And I just met him, which is the crazy thing.”
“Sometimes it happens that way,” Caroline said. “Consider yourself lucky.”
The next morning, I was up well before my alarm, and I didn’t feel the least bit hung over. I was too excited to get to work to see Ian, but when I arrived at the office, he wasn’t there. Jonathan was, though, and he smiled when he saw me and asked me how last night had gone.
“It was fun,” I said. “You’ll have to come with us next time.”
His face lit up. “Yeah! I’d love to. Maybe the two of us could go somewhere.”
I looked toward the door, wondering when Ian would be showing up. “Hey,” I said. “How old is Ian?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I was just curious.”
“Oh.” The look on Jonathan’s face was hard to read; maybe a little perplexed. Was it a weird thing to ask?
“I was just . . . um . . . people’s ages are interesting to me.” I cringed inwardly. That sounded so lame.
“You don’t know how old I am,” he said.
“You’re right; I don’t. How old are you?”
“Do you want to guess?”
“Sure. Let’s see . . .” I gazed at his face, taking in the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, the clump of gray hair that had started to grow in amongst the light brown hair right above his ears. He was in good shape, though, and his eyes had this sort of youthful quality to them. “Twenty-eight?” I said, deliberately shaving a few years off what I really thought.
His face lit up when I said it. “Thirty-four.”
“Wow,” I said. “You don’t look thirty-four at all.”
“All that gym time, I guess. And Ian’s thirty-four too. We’re the same age—we went to school together.”
“Yeah, he mentioned that. I wasn’t sure if you guys were in the same grade or what.”
“We were. He used to come over my house a lot; we didn’t live that far from each other. About a ten-minute ride by bike. He was sort of like the brother I never had, since I was an only child.”
“That’s so great,” I said. “I’m an only, too. Well, I’ve got half-siblings, but I don’t really know them. I always thought it’d be fun to have a brother or sister my age growing up; sort of like having a built-in playmate.”
Jonathan nodded. “Exactly,” he said. “I was always glad when Ian was around, because things were just more fun.”
I felt the same way, though I thought better of saying it out loud.
Chapter Nine
Ian
I could tell there was something that Jonathan wanted to ask me.
“What is it?” I finally said. “Is there something going on that I should know about?”
He jumped back a little, as though my taking notice of him was the last thing he expected.
“No . . . no, I . . . well . . . I was just wondering how it was going with Daisy.”
Ah, of course. He’d probably been thinking about this nonstop.
“How’d it go at the bar the other night? Where’d you end up going?”
“We went to The Knock.”
He nodded. “Good choice.” He was probably saying this because he knew I’d slept with at least half of the women there, so I wouldn’t be as likely to have my eye on Daisy. Except there was something that interested me about her, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it yet.
It was somewhat perplexing, I admit. Despite her complete lack of fashion sense, you could tell that Daisy was an attractive person. But I was around attractive people all the time; The Knock was full of them. And there were the handful of times that I’d sleep with people who might not be considered prime physical specimens, too. I couldn’t remember feeling this . . . I didn’t know what you’d call it, maybe a spark, but that sounds so fucking cliché . . . intrigue toward any of them. It went beyond a mere physical attraction or horniness. Which was absolutely ridiculous, I knew that, because I barely even knew her and my general modus operandi was not to actually get to know any of these women that well, anyway. That had been the whole thing with Annie: she wanted us to get to know each other better. A goal, she eventually confessed to me, was to wake up next to me, just so she could know what I looked like sleeping, what I liked to eat for breakfast.
Yeah, no thanks.
Chapter Ten
Daisy
Around two o’clock, Ian came over to my desk, leaning against it, waiting until I got off the phone. I hung up and looked at him.
>
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Good. That was Lily Parker, the lady from Friends of the Library. They’re—”
“It’s okay—you don’t need to tell me all the details with that. Jonathan’s handling their account. I was actually wondering if you might be up for a little adventure.”
“Adventure?” I said. I could see his idea of an adventure being something like skydiving or caving or going to the race car track. “Um . . . I guess that depends. What were you thinking?”
“Well, it’s a beautiful day out, and I haven’t been out on my boat in a while. I’d like to take you out.”
“Now? It’s Tuesday. It’s the middle of the day.”
“I know.” He gave me a wolfish grin. “But you know? I’m the boss, so I get to make the rules. Jonathan’s on his way back to the office right now, so I’ll just text him and let him know that we’ve got . . . a couple errands to run.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started tapping away at the screen before I could say anything. Was this sort of thing normal? Did he always do this? I’d certainly never had a job like this before, and part of me thought that I should do the responsible thing and stay here, because what if someone called? What if someone came in? Then I remembered that he said Jonathan would be back soon, but still . . . I pushed those thoughts away, though. He was the boss, after all. And when was the last time that I’d been on an adventure?
I’d only been boating a few times in my life, so long ago that I barely remembered it. But I could recall lying on my side near the front of the small sailboat, letting my arm dangle, my fingertips just skimming the surface of the blue water. Then, my cousin came up and said I better watch out or a shark was going to appear from the depths and snatch me.
Ian’s boat was too big for me to be able to lie on my side and let my arm hang and my fingers touch the water, but I was able to sit up near the bow and watch the water stretched out before us, looking like liquid crystal with the sunshine glinting off of it.
His boat was called Man Cave, and he said he didn’t get to take it out too often. “So when there’s a gorgeous day like this and things at work are slow, it kind of makes sense to do this, doesn’t it?”
“It’s really beautiful,” I said, walking back to him.
“Yeah,” he said. He was stretched out on the cream-colored leather couch on deck. “Sure as hell beats being stuck in the city right now. Come, sit down.”
I went over to the couch and he swung his legs around, so he was in a sitting position. I sat next to him.
“One of the perks of the job, I guess,” he said. He gave me a stern look. “But don’t get used to this. Unfortunately, it can’t be a regular occurrence.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. I could tell he was looking at me, but I suddenly felt shy, so I looked toward the horizon, where the sky met the water. Time almost seemed to slow down, or maybe it sped up; I suddenly felt as though I were in some sort of capsule, it was just Ian and me on this boat, and even though I could look to my left and see the city, it felt like we were the last people on the face of the earth.
He leaned forward, his face just inches from my own. I could feel my pulse racing, though it was hard to take a breath. I wanted him to kiss me, yet at the same time, I was terrified.
“Daisy,” he said in a low voice.
I looked over and met his eyes, but looked away quickly. It just felt like too much; this whole thing was making me feel like I was going to spontaneously combust. But his lips were right there, and all I had to do was lean in a little . . .
But I couldn’t move. I felt completely paralyzed, other than the racing heart, though Ian didn’t seem at all bothered by this. Other guys might have taken it to mean I wasn’t interested, but Ian just continued to look at me. He brought his hand up to my chin and gently tilted my head back. He leaned down and closed the short distance between us, just brushing his lips to mine.
A warm shiver reverberated through my whole body, and I felt goosebumps on my arms, even though I wasn’t cold at all and the sun was bathing us in a warm glow. He pressed his mouth more firmly against my own, now, cupping my chin in his hand, holding me there, the tip of his tongue tracing the contours of my lips.
I kissed him back. Slowly, at first, because it had been so long since I’d last kissed someone—really kissed someone—that I was afraid I’d have forgotten, but no, it was like my body knew exactly what it was doing and it didn’t need my brain to offer any instruction. My lips moved with his in perfect synchronicity; there were no miscues, no banging of teeth, no awkwardness whatsoever.
“You’re a hot little thing,” he said when we finally broke apart, “no doubt about that. But we’re going to stop for now.”
My eyes flew open. “We . . . are?” I was about to ask why, but caught myself.
“We don’t need to rush things,” he said. “I’m exercising restraint. Which may sound surprising, but is something I like to do from time to time. But don’t worry—they’ll be plenty of time to do things like this again. I wasn’t expecting any of that to happen. That wasn’t my plan; I want you to know that.”
I nodded, feeling my heart rate finally beginning to slow down. There was an aching longing between my legs, and I wanted to just jump on him, but there was no way I was going to do something like that. “I know,” I said. “And trust me—I wasn’t expecting any of that to happen, either.”
“But it did.”
“It did.”
“And it was very good. More than that, actually. So don’t go getting all insecure or feeling weird about why we didn’t happen to go all the way today, all right? Because that has nothing to do with it.”
“Okay,” I said, though it was a little hard to believe. If he was really that interested, wouldn’t he have wanted to have sex right now? “That’s fine. I . . . I’m actually a virgin.”
I didn’t know why I said it; was it supposed to be like, I’ve waited this long already, I can continue to wait? Because that seemed kind of silly. And the way I was feeling right now, I didn’t know if I could wait, but obviously, I was going to have to.
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re a virgin?”
“Yes,” I said. The way he said it, it was as if he thought I was lying. “Is that really so hard to believe?”
“I’ve heard—” He stopped and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Well, yes, in a way. How old are you? Twenty-five?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Wow. That’s pretty impressive. Most girls your age have gotten laid at least a few times. In my experience, anyway.”
“Do you have much experience with women in their early twenties?” Did I really just say that?
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I do. And, believe it or not, at one point I, too, was in my early twenties.”
“I bet you were.”
Had he put something in that drink I’d had when we first set out? Some sort of confidence boosting concoction? It had just been a bottle of water, but maybe there was something that was odorless, tasteless. Because I could not ever remember flirting with a guy like this before, and feeling totally comfortable and excited about doing it—if I hadn’t had a little alcohol first. Maybe it was just the warm sun and the salt air and the fact that I was having more fun that I could ever remember having in a long time.
“It’s not that I haven’t had any sexual encounters . . . I’ve had a few of those. I just haven’t had sex.”
“Have you ever given a blowjob?”
I felt my face flush. “No.”
“Ever had a guy go down on you?”
I turned even redder. “Um, no.”
“No?”
“Well, one guy tried but . . . it was too weird. Also, it tickled.”
Ian smiled. “Is that so.”
“Yeah.” That had been Emmett, the guy I’d been with in high school. I barely even remembered it now, though I could recall laughing because it really did tickle, which of course he took personally a
nd refused to talk to me for the next two days. “It was a boyfriend way back when.”
“So you have had a boyfriend. And he didn’t try to sleep with you? I find that really hard to believe.”
“He was a nice guy.”
Ian raised an eyebrow. “Are you implying that I’m not?”
“No, but you two are very different. He was a writer, and more important to him than a girlfriend or even sex was his writing. Our physical relationship always took a backseat to that.”
“You were like his muse. I can see that.”
“I’m a writer, too, you know.”
“I think you mentioned that before. Lapsed writer, though, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Well, I need to get back at it. That’s what I went to school for.”
“Interesting. And now you’re working for me.”
“And now I’m working for you.”
“Listen,” he said. He traced his fingers lightly up and down my arms. I wanted nothing more than to fall into him, to press my face against his torso, feel his arms wrap around me, his hands doing things to my body that just made me blush to think about . . . But he was looking at me with intensity, so I tried to focus on what he was saying.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“Let’s . . . Let’s just keep this between us,” he said. “I certainly wasn’t expecting things to go in this direction, so I think, for now, it would be best if we didn’t talk about this with anyone else. Especially not at work. I’m the boss and everything, but there’s probably some sort of ethical violation in hooking up with an employee.”
“I’d think you’d get to call the shots on that,” I said, even though he was probably right. “But that makes sense.”
“It might even be like a fun little game. You’re sitting out there at your desk, knowing that I can see you from my office, and we’ve just got to pretend that there’s nothing there between us. Think you can hang with that?”
“Of course I can.” Though the aching between my legs was suggesting otherwise.
“Good.”
He cupped my chin again and ran his thumb over my lower lip. “Because I find it entirely arousing that you’re a virgin. I’d like to remedy that, but not right now.”