“Light pollution,” he said with a frustrated sigh.
“And regular pollution,” I agreed, squinting through the yellow haze which obscured the stars. “I wish we could use the big one.”
“They probably won’t let anybody use it until they have a better one for them to use,” he mused.
“We should start a petition,” I joked. “Calling all billionaires! Donate a telescope, save a date!”
He laughed, and we simultaneously gave up on seeing anything worthwhile. In unspoken agreement, we walked hand in hand back to the museum. We had circled the whole of the public section now, and were back at the entrance to the planetarium dome. I realized with a twinge of panic that I didn’t want the evening to end, and saw my thought reflected in his eyes.
“Hey,” he said suddenly. “I hear there’s this great bar downtown with a nice big dance floor and top-forty remixes all night. I haven’t checked it out myself, so I can’t vouch for it, but I’ve been wanting to go. You interested?”
“How could I turn down top-forty remixes?” I said wryly. “I haven’t been out dancing in a long time, though. I’d love to come!”
“Awesome! I can drive you, unless…?”
“I took the bus here,” I confessed. “Internship, remember?”
“Right! Not a whole lot of room for a car payment on serf’s wages.”
“You think you’re kidding, but honestly…”
He laughed and took my arm, and soon we were on our way downtown. His car stereo was tuned to an indie station, and within the first ten minutes, I had heard two of my favorite songs. Unable to resist, I sang along, and to my unending delight, he joined in.
“I’m so glad you like this stuff!” I clapped my hands like a gleeful child as he steered into a parking garage.
“Right back atcha,” he said with a grin. “Most people I meet have never even heard of the Black Peaches.”
“I saved up my allowance for three weeks to buy their first album,” I admitted. “I still have it, and one of these days I’m determined to get it autographed.”
“And so you shall,” he said gallantly as he parked. “For there is no task so daunting that determination can’t overcome.”
“You sound like a prince from an eighties movie!” I told him as I rolled my eyes, taking his arm again as we walked to the elevator.
“Is it working?” he asked with a grin. “Am I charming?”
“You could only be more charming with a white horse and a billowy, frilly shirt.”
“I’m so glad you didn’t say tights and a codpiece,” he laughed, wiping imaginary sweat from his brow.
“I said prince, not goblin king,” I laughed.
“So I wouldn’t be more appealing if I stole babies for a living?” he teased.
“No stealing,” I said firmly. “I hear it’s way more fun to make babies the old-fashioned way.” My own boldness caught me off guard, but his hearty laughter eased my anxious heart.
We could feel the music through the sidewalk as we approached the bar, and I found myself immediately and irresistibly drawn to the dance floor. Dragging Blake behind me, I pushed through the tipsy crowd, carving out a spot in the very center.
“You like being in the middle, don’t you?” he shouted over the music.
“Only in the dark,” I replied with a grin. “Center of attention’s not really my thing.”
“Want a drink?” he asked.
“Dance first, then drink,” I insisted.
“You got it, darlin’.”
The way he said it sent a thrill of chills cascading over my body, layering pleasure on pleasure as my body connected with the rhythm of the music.
Mating seemed to be what everybody around me had in mind. Dancing devolved all around us into grinding gyrations. Couples pressed toward the center of the floor without a care, and within moments Blake and I were dancing as one, crushed skin-to-skin by the undulating crowd.
He smelled of sweat and musk, a sharply tantalizing scent which struck lightning from my nostrils to my groin, making every nerve tingle where he touched me. I ached in ways I had never ached before, felt suddenly lonesome in my own skin, as if I were missing a layer of him.
Blake met my unspoken need with his body, wrapping me in his strong arms as he moved against me, sparking a wildfire lust which spread from my toes to the tips of my fingers, from my lips to my throat and down my spine. I had never desired anyone more than I desired him in that moment, and it was with lightheaded desperation that I tilted my lips up to meet his.
I’d been kissed before, but never like this. His lips were hot and tender and forceful all at once, greedily taking what I was eager to give.
Too eager to give, I realized with a shock as I parted my lips for his demanding tongue; if we continued like this, it would escalate quickly…then I would have to tell him. How could I tell him? Telling guys my deep, dark secret hadn’t worked out so well in the past. But he was determined, I reminded myself. His fire burned as hot as mine, just as dedicated, just as relentless. If any man alive was up for this task, I was sure it would be him.
He broke our molten embrace with a breathless gasp, his eyes and lips darkened with a reflection of the lust that spun through me, making me yearn for more of his touch.
“You want to get some air?” he asked over the music.
I nodded, too dazed and breathless to respond verbally. He moved around behind me, leading me by the small of my back. We cut through the crowd effortlessly, and were soon outside, letting the cool night air caress the blazing sheen of wanton lust shimmering on our skin. He touched my face tenderly, his eyes smoldering like hot coals beneath his lowered brow, his lips swollen and bruised and hungry for more.
“What do you say?” he asked huskily. “Should we go for a walk…or do you want to dance some more?”
“I want to dance forever,” I breathed, electrified by his fingertips.
“In there with that crowd,” he asked with a nod at the door, “or back at my place? I’ve got better music, less of a crowd…” He was murmuring in my ear now, his lips a hairsbreadth from the pulse pounding in my throat. My breath caught and shuddered in my chest, and I held tight to his arms to keep from going limp under the warm weight of overwhelming desire.
A wriggle of apprehension in my belly broke the spell, and I reluctantly pulled away from him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, breathing deeply.
“I… I’m nervous,” I said, pressing a hand against my belly to smother the butterflies.
“I’m pushing too hard,” he said, searching my face.
“No! No, it’s not that, it’s, um…”
A gaggle of drunken sorority girls tumbled out of the doors, nearly knocking me into the street. Blake took my hand and pulled me out of their way, wrapping a protective arm around my shoulders. I felt so safe with him, unreasonably safe. His steady heartbeat against my ear bolstered my courage, and, taking a deep breath, I met his eyes directly.
“It’s not you,” I told him. “You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s me, I… I’ve never…”
“Never hooked up with a stranger?” he asked playfully, nuzzling my hair.
“Never…well, I’ve never been with anyone like that, stranger or not,” I finally confessed in a rush. “Ever.”
He froze for less than a second, an almost imperceptible reaction of shock, but I felt it. I had grown sensitive to those reactions over the years. People thought it was cute when I was a teenager, but the older I got, the more people registered my virginity as there being something wrong with me.
“Not even once?” he asked.
“Not even technically,” I confirmed. “I’m completely… Well, you know.”
“Virgin territory,” he said with a small, hesitant smile. “So to speak.”
“Exactly. So while I’m…really, really, very much interested…I’m also really, really, very much nervous.”
“That’s totally understandable,” he declared with
a definitive nod of his head.
“It is?”
“Utterly.” He turned his warm eyes down to mine once more, and smiled gently at me. “I don’t want to rush you into anything. I’ve had the best time with you tonight. It’s better this way anyway. Now I have an excuse to ask you for a second date.”
“Wouldn’t you have done that if I had gone home with you?” I asked, worried that I’d misjudged his character.
“Oh, of course I would have,” he clarified quickly. “But I was prepared, just in case you were a one-night-stand kind of girl. Had my armor up around my feels and everything.”
That made me laugh, which made the tension between us dissolve. He kissed my cheek, then pulled a business card out of his wallet.
“Ignore the contact info, I stole this from…the bank,” he said, reading the front of the card. “It’s the back of it you’re gonna want to pay attention to.” He winked at me, and my physical reaction to his flirtation made me regret my nerves for a moment.
“My number,” he said, handing me the card after he had scribbled on it.
“Oh! Can I use your pen? I’ll give you mine.” I wrote it down quickly, then tore the business card in half, keeping his number and giving him mine.
“Beautiful,” he said with that enchanting grin. “How’s Friday sound?”
“Sort of like fish fry, but drop the fish and add ‘day’ at the end,” I teased giddily.
“For a second date,” he said with a playful nudge. “You pick the place.”
“Oh! There’s the place that just opened up, all of my coworkers are raving about it, some kind of Chinese-Italian fusion… I know, sounds weird, but I guess it’s amazing… Chow Bello’s!”
“I’ve heard of it,” he said happily. “Want to meet me there at seven on Friday?”
“Absolutely,” I told him with what I’m sure was an absolutely doe-eyed smile. I couldn’t help it, he made me feel all dewy and floaty, and I was enjoying every second of it. Like a perfect gentleman, he called me a cab and kissed me goodnight.
I floated home on cloud nine, eagerly anticipating Friday night with the sneaking suspicion that it would finally be the night I lost the suffocating label.
“Then I’ll finally be off the ‘available for volcano sacrifices’ roster,” I chuckled to myself as the cab pulled away. “And well on my way to…well, everything else.”
The next day, I was more certain than ever that Friday would be my night. But as the excitement dulled and my head cleared, I began to panic. I wasn’t ready for this. Mentally and emotionally, I felt ready, but physically? Not so much. Not five minutes after I left work that day, I called Sara in a panic.
“Sara! You have to help me!”
“Oh, right…” She answered, her voice full of guilt. “So here’s the thing, the guy I set you up with—”
“Never showed, fell in love, got married, had a bunch of babies, etcetera, etcetera, whatever. Sara, you have to help me.”
“With what? And since when was getting stood up an ‘etcetera, etcetera, whatever’ thing for you?”
“Since an adorable, handsome, super smart, funny, amazing guy also got stood up in the very same place,” I babbled excitedly. “I had the absolute best time, and if you hadn’t set me up with a flake, I never would have met him, so I am forever in your debt, but now I have a second date and a problem.”
“Second date is good. What’s the problem?”
“Sasquatch wearing granny panties.”
“When’s your date?”
“Friday.”
“Meet me at the mall in twenty minutes.”
I hurried to meet her, eternally grateful that I had a friend as experienced as I was naïve. Not that she was indiscriminate or anything, but Sara grew up fast and learned the game early, and had miles and miles of experience on me. She swooped down on me like a mother hawk, her dark hair fanning out around her shoulders like a shampoo model, her sharp, analytical eyes taking me in with a single glance.
“You really do like this guy,” she observed.
“Is it that obvious?” I asked, cringing.
“Honey. You’re twisting your hem to pieces and you look like you just saw Fabio’s ghost. Let’s go get you presentable.” She hooked her elbow through mine and led me into the mall, toward the hallway filled with salons.
“I just have one question.” Sara was taller than me and walking almost angrily fast, and I was struggling to keep up.
“What’s the question?” I gasped.
“Why didn’t you do all this when I set you up with Antonio?”
“Because I wasn’t expecting to go all the way on a first, blind, date,” I told her, shocked that she would think otherwise.
“You gotta be a Boy Scout about this stuff,” Sara told me briskly. “Always be prepared.”
“I was prepared,” I objected. “I was prepared with three different excuses for why I wouldn’t be able to hook up with the guy that night.”
Sara cast a baffled look in my direction. “You prepare excuses? Jeez, no wonder it’s taking you so long.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You want me to just be available to any man who wants me?”
“You’d be rid of that problem of yours in no time,” she told me sagely. “Especially if you didn’t go around telling people that you’re a virgin.”
I stared at her aghast. “You want me to just…just do it, just like that, and not even tell the guy? What’s he gonna think when…? I mean…”
“Oh, well, afterwards you’ll have to tell him, but there’s no law that says you have to tell him beforehand.”
“Maybe that works for you,” I argued. “But, I don’t know… I want my first time to be special, you know? Tender. Gentle. Not terrifying.”
“It’s not that bad,” she laughed. “It’s actually really cozy. Natural.”
“How ’bout I keep it cozy, natural, and honest?”
“You told him already, didn’t you?”
“I… Yes. Yes, I did.”
She sighed and shook her head, but I just shrugged. What was done was done, and I preferred it that way, no matter what Sara said. I didn’t want to kick off my very first sexual relationship with a lie, no matter who it was with, but especially not with Blake.
“He’s really perfect,” I told Sara as we lay side by side on the waxing tables. “He’s funny and smart and insightful, and he’s got so much ambition and drive, and the way his eyes… Ow! Sparkle, he just—OW! He’s everything I ever imagined, honestly.”
“Then I—ow!—hope it works out for you,” she replied, wincing. “I really…really? Ow! Come on, that’s attached down there! Ugh… I really hope it works out the way you want it to, Rhona. You deserve that, you know.”
“I don’t know what I deserve,” I said. “But I know what I’m hoping for.”
“What are you hoping for?”
“Love,” I sighed before yelping in pain again. “The real, entwined souls, start-a-family kind of love.”
“That’s a lot of pressure to pin on a second date,” she commented.
I didn’t respond right away as the waxing session had reached new heights of torture. We finished up in the salon, thanking the girls on our way out. I tipped a little bit extra, grateful in spite of the pain; it was all worth it if it helped to make this date go right. I picked up where we left off as we walked into the lingerie store.
“I know it’s a lot of pressure, and I’m not really putting all that on him or this date or anything. It’s just that…that’s my ultimate goal, you know? It’s why I haven’t dated much. I don’t want a string of casual flings behind me, I’m not real interested in experimenting, I just want…you know, the happily ever after.”
“I get that,” Sara said, holding up a pair of lacy black panties. “Appearances notwithstanding, I really am a romantic at heart. I just happen to be a romantic who is satisfied with Mr. Right Now while I wait for Mr. Right, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said, fing
ering the hem of a pair of pink, silky underwear. “I can understand that, in theory. It just doesn’t really vibe with me.”
“Yeah, I get it. Ooh, how about these? Can’t go wrong with red!”
“I think wearing red in that area might be asking for trouble,” I grinned. “Where’d those black ones go?”
We picked through piles of frilly, lacey, feminine articles for hours until I had finally collected a small fortune’s worth of grown-up undergarments, suitable for a sexually active woman. Afterward, on a whim, we stopped to get our hair and nails done to round out the day of pampering. I would have to take out a small loan to pay the next month’s rent, but I didn’t care. It would all be worth it.
When two endless days passed and Friday finally rolled around, I was so excited that I arrived at the restaurant a full hour early. The place had a beautiful garden out front, which I came to know intimately as I paced my nerves away. Night blossoms filled the air with perfume as the sun sank low over the ocean, heightening the intrinsic romance of the evening and whetting my appetite for what was to come.
For what I hoped was going to come, I amended with a frown as I checked the time. Five after seven. That wasn’t that late, was it? With a lurch of anxiety, I recalled that I had thought that precise thing when Sara’s blind date stood me up.
“He wouldn’t do that,” I said to myself. “Not after he just had it done to him. Not after how much fun we had. Would he?”
I put my worries aside and admired the flowers and fountain for the hundredth time. Twenty minutes passed like cold molasses as I paced. Finally, unable to soothe my worries any longer, I texted him.
You aren’t lost, are you? I can give you directions.
I twisted the phone in my hands, waiting anxiously for a response, but ten minutes later, my inbox was as empty as it had ever been. Anxiety clutched my chest with icy fingers, and I swallowed hard. My hands began to tremble as I texted again.
You are still coming, aren’t you?
“Please, please, please don’t do this to me,” I begged him under my breath.
Nothing. I was beginning to feel desperate, pathetically desperate. Tears prickled under my eyelids, but I refused to let them fall. I wasn’t going to mess up my makeup just for him to show up; that was no way to greet a date.
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