Imperfections

by Shaniel Watson

  I feel like I'm in a movie scene in the old west and its high noon and guns are going to be drawn. If looks could kill, Ava would be dead already.

  "Nick and I decided it would be best if we picked my ring out together."

  "I see, how modern of you."

  "Yes, it is. Cat, I will see you later. Ava." Kate looks at Ava, places her hands at her sides and leaves.

  "Ava! What was that?"

  "Me trying to figure out what's really going on? I know Nick, if he was in love with your sister he would tell me. He wouldn't care who knew about him getting married. I saw the way he looked at you this morning and how you reacted to him."

  "Please don't start stirring things up."

  "Why not? If you don't stir the pot, how are you going to know what's in the sauce?"

  "Do I really want to know?"

  "Yes, you do! Now, go upstairs, pick out one of the sexiest outfits you can find for dinner tonight and don't tell Kate I'll be joining you for dinner. I really want to see the look on her face when I make my grand entrance."

  I give her a stern look, and shake my finger at her. "I want to have a pleasant dinner with the people I care about. Behave yourself and don't make any more trouble with Kate." I know she can't help herself; she gives me a smile and a wink.

  "I'll try but I think you know me better than that. See you later, I'll let myself out."

  I hear the bell ring from upstairs in my bedroom. I spin around and look in the mirror one more time at my outfit before I run downstairs to answer the door. I decided to wear my yellow silk strapless blouse, skinny tight black pants that fit like a dream, strappy three-inch heels that make my legs look long and slender. My hair is straight and shiny tonight. I decided to put it over one of my shoulders to lay on the swell of my breast next to my Cat pendant. My makeup's good so I grab my clutch purse and head downstairs. Why's Chris ringing the doorbell? Maybe he forgot his keys.

  "Who is it?"

  "Nick."

  "Nick?"

  What's he doing here? I thought we were going to meet him and Kate at the restaurant. I open the door and feel a tingling sensation in the pit of my stomach. He looks good, like he stepped off the page of a men's magazine, GQ ruggedly handsome; I could look at him all night. As much as I don't like to admit it I do like a powerful man. What woman doesn't like a strong man with arms and abs of steel with a body that's made to protect? Lips so soft and firm they can make parts of your body you didn't know you had cry with pleasure and the sweetest pain of all? Pull it together, Cat! Pull it together and don't embarrass yourself.

  "It's nice to see you too, Cat. You look lovely as usual."

  "I'm sorry, I wasn't expecting to see you here."

  "Obviously."

  "I thought it was Chris, he's supposed to pick me up."

  "Wouldn't he use his key to let himself in?"

  "I thought he forgot them, smart ass." I smile at him and he gives me a perfectly sexy smile in return, relieving some of the tension between us.

  "Chris called me and asked if I could give you a ride, he's showing a client a new property and it's taking him longer than he planned. He said he'll meet us there."

  "Where's Kate, is she in the car?" I do not want to be in the car with them and I don't want to be alone with him. I could kill Chris for putting me in this awkward situation.

  "No. She's going to meet us there."

  "Okay, I'm ready, let me grab my coat."

  We walk to the car, and he walks in front of me and opens the door. "Well, wow, are you opening the car door for me? Things have changed."

  "I am nothing less than a gentleman. I will always open the door for a pretty lady."

  "Ha. I've seen you open the car door for women before, but you've never actually opened one for me or anyone that you're dating, that I can remember."

  "That was the old me; the college years. I've learned a few things since then."

  "That's a good thing; it's nice to see that chivalry isn't completely dead. At least something has changed for the better." He closes my door, gets in the driver's seat and puts on his seat belt. He puts his left hand on the steering wheel and I can't help but stare at his hands. In my mind I can see them touching me. I can still feel his hand against my cheek, gentle, yet rough at the same time. I have to stop thinking like this, I've only been with him for ten minutes and I'm thinking about how his hands feel on me. How am I going to spend at least two hours with him and my sister, watching him eat, smile, touching my sister, the happy couple.

  "Cat, are you okay?"

  "Yeah, why?"

  "It looks like something's on your mind. I think I know what it is, you want to talk about it now?"

  "No."

  "I think we should. A lot of things happened last night and since you've been gone."

  I turn my head and look at him. "I know. Let's not talk about it tonight, not tonight. Let's just try to make it through dinner."

  He puts the car in drive. I turn and stare out the window and try to clear my mind, putting my head against the headrest. The radio comes on, the song is ending and the DJ starts talking about the big first milestones in a person's life that takes them to adulthood, like your first kiss, first crush, first relationship, and the big first, the first time you had sex. I can't believe he's taking calls about this shit, talking about this right at this moment. Why! Why! Why! Why ME! I can't catch a freaking break.

  "So what was your first time like?"

  My head whips around so fast I feel a pinch in my neck. "Excuse me?" I can't believe he's asking me about the first time I had sex.

  "What was your first kiss like?"

  Oh. I seriously need to relax. As if he doesn't know what it was like. He looks at me smiling with perfectly straight white teeth I know he needed to wear braces for a year to get and he was still the cutest boy I ever laid eyes on.

  "What did you think I was talking about?"

  "I thought you said something else." How embarrassing he knows what I thought he said.

  "I'll tell you what mine was like and with who. I was ten, and in the fifth grade. It was at recess behind the school. Lisa Shaw, cute blonde, big brown eyes. She was one of the most popular girls in school. One day she walked up to me and asked me if I would help her find an earring she lost. I kind of thought it was weird that she was asking me to help her find her earring and not one of her girlfriends, but what the hell, I got to be alone with her. About two minutes after we got back there she grabbed my hand and kissed me full on the lips, she even slipped a little tongue in there."

  I roll my eyes at him. "You must have been in heaven."

  "Yeah, I was for the next ten minutes until we got caught by a teacher."

  "Did you get in trouble?"

  "Yes, we did, it was worth every minute."

  "I bet it was."

  He's grinning and I can totally see him as a little boy behind the school smiling from ear to ear. Thick black hair and piercing eyes that change to a beautifully haunting shade of blue- gray when he's caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  "I told you about my first kiss…"

  He takes a quick look at me still smiling before he looks at the road again. I turn my head and look straight ahead and start talking before he finishes.

  "My first kiss was with some guy who wasn't much of a looker who I didn't really like. I was thirteen and he was about sixteen, I hardly remember it. The one thing I do remember is that he was a bad kisser and his tongue was everywhere. I was like 'please stop.' He basically assaulted my mouth." The car stops at the red light; I turn and look at him. Looking back at me with one eyebrow raised with a smirk on his face he bursts out,

  "Bullshit!"

  "What?" I laugh, giving him my best I'm-so-innocent look. "That's how I remember it."

  "Like I said, bullshit. You and I both know I was your first kiss at thirteen and that's definitely not how I remember it."

  "How do you know you were my first kiss, you could have been guy number t
wo."

  "Trust me when I say a guy knows when he's the first anything with a girl. Come on, admit it, I was the first."

  "All right, fine you were my first kiss. So what do you remember about that kiss, was it as memorable as your kiss with Lisa Shaw?" I ask as the light changes to green and he looks straight ahead.

  "I remember everything about it. I was in the living room at your house, your mother was upstairs and I was waiting for Chris to get dressed so we could go to football practice. It was like eighty degrees outside, the sun was shining like a laser beam and I went outside to wait for him. You had a yellow tank top and these little green shorts that could barely cover your assets so to speak. Your hair was out straight down to the middle of your back. Almost like it is now."

  He remembers my hair, most guys wouldn't. I remember those shorts, my parents never let me wear them outside of the house or if we had visitors at the house. I knew he was coming over that day so I purposely put them on, ha. The mind of a thirteen-year-old girl.

  "You weren't wearing any shoes and you were hosing down a lawn chair. Standing there watching you kind of opened my eyes, it made me think of you in a different way I hadn't thought possible."

  "Is that why you kissed me?" I turn my head against the headrest to look at Nick's profile. My God, he is a beautiful man from every angle, down right sexy as hell. The car stops at a red light, and he turns his head and looks at me.

  "That kiss wasn't supposed to happen. You didn't say anything but I had the feeling you were upset with me. I wanted to find out if everything between us was cool."

  "We started talking and you said 'man it's hot out here!'" It was hot that day.

  "Then you turned the hose on me and asked me if I needed cooling off."

  "You were shocked that I did that to you. You started chasing me around the yard. You couldn't catch me because of the mud and water. We were laughing, then you finally caught me when you grabbed me by the waist. It was so slippery we fell on the grass and you landed on top of me hard."

  The light changes from red to green and we start moving again. We are almost at the restaurant.

  "I was scared I hurt you. I kept asking if you were okay."

  "After the initial shock of getting the wind knocked out of me I started laughing and you looked down into my eyes. You looked so worried I stopped laughing and told you I was fine."

  "You were smiling, I looked at you for the first time and thought, wow, she really is pretty."

  "So…I wasn't pretty before?"

  He turns his head, looks at me with a boyish grin and turns back to the road.

  "No, I didn't say that. I saw a couple of things that day that I didn't notice before. It's like I had shades on and someone pulled them up." The car stops and he looks at me with those stunningly beautiful eyes that make me forget how to breathe. "I never knew the view was so beautiful. That day at your house we were so close I could feel your heart beating against my chest. You put your lips against mine and I kissed you. You opened your mouth and that was it, I couldn't think about anything else but the feel of your tongue against mine soft and wet, you drew me into your mouth, made this little moaning sound and you felt so good, I was lost. Until I heard Chris call my name and I pulled you up with me."

  We both laugh at the memory.

  "I knew if he saw me on top of you doing what we were doing, he would have kicked my ass. I would have let him. If I ever deserved my ass beaten, it was that day, I deserved it."

  "No, you didn't, you weren't forcing me to do anything I didn't want to do; it was just a kiss."

  "That's not the point. You almost got an education that day, shit, a little longer and you would have graduated with a master's in education in the grass and we would have both been fucked. You were my friend's little sister, I was supposed to help him keep the guys off you not be one of the guys on you. I made sure I didn't touch you after that, I didn't want to give you the wrong idea about our relationship."

  Believe me I know. You wouldn't touch me for months after that kiss. Nick parks the car in a parking spot, looking at his watch.

  "We're early. Let's wait here until it's time to go in."

  "I don't know. Maybe we should wait inside." I look around the parking lot and across the street at the entrance of the lounge.

  "What, are you afraid to be alone with me?"

  Yes! Don't look at me like that with those damn full lips I want to kiss. I shake my head.

  "No. Not at all." I wish he would stop looking at me like that. If he won't stop looking at me like that, I'm just going to look out the window. The DJ starts talking about people's firsts again; this time he's talking about people losing their virginity, he makes a joke about two virgins. Usually I wouldn't care, I would be laughing, but this is so awkward sitting here with Nick. Him looking at me, me having these feelings for him. I wish this guy would shut up.

  "I was fifteen my first time, what about you?"

  Is he really asking me about my first time? This is a conversation that we should not have, at all. "I'm not answering that question; we shouldn't be having this conversation."

  "Why not?"

  "You know why not. It's not appropriate given your current updated Facebook status."

  "You know I don't have a personal Facebook account, you don't have one either. And no matter what my status is we should be able to talk about anything. We've been friends since we were kids, we will always be friends first and foremost. I understand if you're…embarrassed—"

  "I'm not embarrassed."

  "Are you sure? You look like you're blushing."

  "I do not blush. Stop smiling at me." I want to slap that smile off his face.

  "There's no harm in talking, Cat. That's all we're doing. You never wondered who my first time was with? Right now you're wondering who it was, if you know her. If you weren't thinking about it before, you're thinking about it now; maybe it could have been one of your friends."

  "My friends were too young for you, I know it wasn't one of them; you're not that guy." He gives me a crooked smile and shakes his head. I smile 'cause now I'm curious.

  "How do you know? It very well could have been one of your older friends."

  "I know it wasn't, so who was it?"

  "Samantha Owens."

  "Samantha Owens, the cheerleader."

  "Why do you say it like that? She was nice."

  "I'm sure she was."

  "She was. I was fifteen, she was my first serious girlfriend; she looked like Tiffani Amber Thiessen. You know, the actress from Saved by the Bell?"

  "Yeah, I know who you're talking about. Chris and Jay watched that show, I liked it. She was the perky cheerleader everyone wanted to go out with including my brothers."

  "Everyone wanted to date Samantha; she was popular, cute and smart. She had all of that going for her and she wasn't mean or conceited."

  "What, a regular girl wasn't good enough for you? You had to pick little Ms. Perfect."

  "No, I didn't pick her, she actually picked me even though she was a year older than me."

  "Please don't act like you're surprised. You were on the football team, your family had money, you made good grades and you were good-looking, why wouldn't she choose you?"

  "I would like to think that my personality had a little to do with her liking me."

  I roll my eyes at him again. "Okay, if that's what you want to believe."

  "Like I was saying—"

  "Yes, like you were saying."

  "Can I—"

  "Yes, you can." I like doing this to him; he hates to be interrupted in the middle of a sentence. I used to do it to him when we were younger, I knew it made him mad and that was the fun part. Seeing the look on his face now makes me remember why I liked doing it. I like to see his jaw clenched and his full lips, so freaking hot. "Okay, I'm sorry, you can finish your stroll down memory lane."

  "Cat, I know what you're trying to do. I'm not bothered."

  Sure you're not. I give him my I-do
n't-know-what-you're-talking-about look.

  "Like I was saying, one day after school we were at her house by ourselves. One minute we were sitting on her bed kissing and the next thing I know we were naked."

  "That's it? You got naked and had sex, no discussion no second thoughts from her, no yes, Nick, I want to do this." I throw my hand up to his chest in a dramatic defensive motion. "No Nick, I can't! I'm too sweet, innocent and perfect! Don't pop my cherry."

  He raises his eyebrows and looks at me with an amused look, more of a smirk.

  "Very funny, Cat, very funny."

  I tilt my head to the side and smile at him. He puts his hand over mine and I suddenly realize the mistake I made by touching him. There they are; those enchanting smoky gray eyes that change to an unusual clear grayish-blue staring down at me as if he can see right through me. No one should have eyes like those, they can be dangerous, they will make any girl drop their draws and confess to any and all sins they have committed right on the spot.

  "I wonder how funny it would still be if I leaned over and gave you a long, slow hard kiss on those pretty lips."

  I feel butterflies in the bottom of my stomach, I can barely breathe. I snatch my hand off his chest from underneath his hand. I look away and he starts to talk again.

  "There was no conversation beforehand, it happened naturally. I asked her if she was sure she wanted to, she said yes and that was that."

  "Was she a virgin too?"

  "Yeah, we were two virgins who weren't sure what the hell we were doing, but we did use protection."

  "At least you knew enough to use protection."

  "My father's motto when it came to sex was 'don't come back with anything you didn't leave with, especially a baby.'"

  "Well that does sound like your father." Nick's father was always straight and to the point; if he liked you, you knew it, if he didn't you knew it."

  "What about you, what was your first time like?"

  "Is it my turn to share already?"

  "Yes, how old were you?"

  "I was late to the party, I was almost eighteen."