I quickly added, “Nah. Sometimes the undertaker look is sexy.”
It wasn’t a lie. Men in suits were hotness catnip. When the guy had a genuinely sweet personality, too? Bingo. But even without the suit, Ian was handsome. Just not in the way I was used to qualifying handsome.
Any offense I’d caused must have been forgiven, because he put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close to his side. I held my breath; the contact of his bare forearm against my shoulder made me hyperaware of my skin in ways I never had been before.
“Let’s sit down. It’s been a battle not to eat both of these sandwiches myself.”
I leaned into him. It felt unreasonably good. Too good. “Well, you wouldn’t have had any water, so you would have gotten thirsty.”
Ugh, my brain was not working. I blamed the hug. Of all the things I’d expected when I’d agreed to go on a date with a fifty-three-year-old man, the last thing had been that I would find him overwhelmingly sexually attractive.
Better to change the subject. I sat on the blanket and made sure my skirt wouldn’t fly up then reached into the bag. Fruit. Fruit was a safe, nonsexual topic. “So, I brought strawberries and peaches.” I squinted at the alleged peach as I examined it. “I thought I got peaches. Live and learn.”
“In this case, learn the difference between peaches and nectarines.” He reached out and playfully snatched it, adding, “I like these better, anyway.”
I appreciated the effort at making me feel less stupid. “Show me the goods. You’ve been bragging up these sandwiches all week.”
Before he could make a move, I pulled the picnic basket toward us. The only thing I’d eaten all day was the banana I’d bought at the same market I’d gotten the strawberries and nectarines from, and that was just to ensure that I didn’t pass out from low blood sugar on the train over. I’d had nervous stomach all morning. It had all cleared up the moment I’d arrived. I guess I’d just been worried that our plans would fall through and I wouldn’t get to see him. But now, those nerves were gone, and the scent wafting from the basket put me just a step below “newly-infected rage zombie” in terms of hunger.
He reached into the basket and pulled out sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil. “Grilled Cubans. You said you liked ham, so here you go.”
I do. Oh, I do like ham.
Going into raptures over how much I liked ham would have probably been off-putting, so I just lifted the edge of the foil and took a long, greedy inhale. Whatever was in the thing, it was amazing. I spotted roasted pork in addition to the promised ham, some pickles, Swiss cheese and whole-grain mustard.
There was no way I could politely nibble. “I’m going to be rude and dive right into this.”
“I don’t mind at all,” he said, unwrapping his own.
I took a bite—and probably got mustard seeds stuck in my teeth—and my eyes rolled back in my head. I may have even made some not-safe-for-work noises as I savored it. Wiping a little dribble of grease from my lower lip, I forced myself to act like a person and not a wild food scavenger. But I couldn’t downplay how awesome this was. “Oh my god. This sandwich is a religious experience.”
“I told you,” he said, taking his own bite.
“Where did you get these?” I grabbed a bottled water from the bag and gave it to him before I opened my own.
He swallowed and said, “There’s a deli not far from my place that makes fantastic grilled sandwiches. They do a portabella panini that’s phenomenal.”
I mentally added loves sandwiches to the list of positive qualities I’d noticed about him. But I needed a more specific location with regards to these, just in case things didn’t work out between us. “Where do you live?”
“Brooklyn. Dumbo.”
I had no idea where Dumbo was, but I’d heard people say it in reference to the neighborhood before, so I knew he wasn’t insulting me.
The most important thing was, I knew what train to ride to get closer to the mythical deli. “Get out! I work in Brooklyn!”
“I know you do,” he said with a laugh that slightly embarrassed me. Of course he knew where I worked. I worked for Sophie. He went on, “Do you know the gray building with the clock tower? Used to be a textile factory, but now it’s all condos?”
“I wouldn’t know what it used to be, but you mean the big square clock tower with the green roof?” Wait, if he lived there, and I worked nearby, did that mean I finally knew were Dumbo was? I’d always been too afraid to ask. “Is that your building?”
“It’s my clock tower,” he said.
He couldn’t mean… “You live in there?” Before he could answer, I jumped the gun and added, “That’s so cool!”
He nodded, clearly downplaying the awesomeness of living inside a clock. If I lived in a clock tower, I would introduce myself that way. My business cards would say, “Penelope Parker, clock tower dweller.” If I had any business cards. No, actually, I would get business cards, just to put that on them.
“I would love to see it, sometime,” I blurted, before I could remember how rude it was to assume an invitation. “You know…if you’re cool with that.”
“I think I could be very cool with that.” But as he said it, his gaze shifted, like he was seeing something very grim happening just slightly in the future. And it wasn’t momentary; it was like he’d completely checked out.
“Ian?” I asked, though I felt like I was somehow intruding by interrupting what appeared to be a thoughtful moment.
He snapped back to himself and looked a little sheepish. “Sorry.”
Judging from past experience—our singular past experience—I was pretty sure Ian was tense about our date. And last time, a pretty large portion of that had been caused by the internet. “You seem really tense. You weren’t reading a bunch of bad dating advice again, were you?”
He couldn’t hide anything with that face of his. “I may have done. You should be impressed. Do you know how difficult it is to find second date advice?”
I leaned forward, like I was telling him a secret. “You made it to the second date. That means whatever you did on the first date was fine.”
“Was it? I don’t know these things. I’m rubbish when it comes to dating.” He looked so lost I was starting to feel really sorry for him. But I wanted to laugh at him, too. He had way more life experience—and way more romantic experience—than I had, but he was more nervous than I was. Maybe ignorance really was bliss, then?
I reached into my purse for my phone. “You’re doing fine. But where are you getting your advice?” Nah, we needed a more decisive plan of action. “Never mind. I’ll look it up. What did you google?”
I hadn’t thought he could have looked any more embarrassed, but he went from the color of pink Starburst to the color of a red Solo cup and mumbled, “‘Dating don’ts for men.’”
“Don’ts”. Not “do’s” for how to get a chick in bed with you. Not “how to trick a woman into having sex”. At least, not that he was admitting. The results loaded, and I turned the screen out to him. “Which one?”
He hesitated before tapping on the first link. “Why are you so interested in this?”
Because I’m a genius. “Because. We are going to break every single one of these rules.” I bit my lip as I read the list. Maybe it wasn’t the greatest idea. The very first one was about money, and that subject made me more panicky than a cat on a car ride. But it wouldn’t be fair if we just went over all of the stuff that made him uncomfortable. “That way, you wouldn’t be so nervous anymore.”
“Ah, because the worst will have already occurred.” He still seemed reluctant, which was good, because then I could pretend to be full of bravado about the whole process.
I stared at “don’t talk about money” while I chewed another bite of sandwich and tried to bolster my courage. Look at me! I’m brave! Fearless! I’ve got everything figured out! I lied to myself as I read the first one. “‘Don’t talk about money.’ Okay. Ian, I make thirty thousand dollars a year.”
Whether he was surprised by how much or how little that was, I couldn’t tell. Maybe he just hadn’t expected me to give him my annual salary like that. He responded, “I, uh… I make three hundred.”
“Three hundred thousand a year? I thought architects made like eighty or something.” No. No, no, no. Now he would know I’d researched his salary. Personally, I felt like that should be acceptable for anybody who was agreeing to go on a date with anyone else, but other people hadn’t been raised with the money weirdness I had. I probably looked like I was fishing for marital assets. It was better to be upfront about it than try to cover it up and dig a bigger hole. “This sounds so nosy of me, but I looked it up.”
“No, it’s fine. That’s one of the first questions anyone asks me, anyway. After, ‘so, uh, do you like, draw buildings and stuff?’” He finished his sentence in a surprisingly good imitation of an American stoner. “I’m a partner at our firm, and we do big ticket commercial work. It’s not the average salary.”
I wondered if I should try to compliment him about how successful he was, but that seemed tacky. Was it tacky? To people who hadn’t been raised with money as a primary focus of their life? “You’re doing better than me, at any rate. Okay, next on the list…” Yikes. Whose bright idea had this one been? “It’s ‘Don’t bring up the b-word.’ I assume they mean babies and not Beetlejuice?”
“You want them, right?” he asked, and before I could get offended at his wild assumption that, as a woman, of course I would want babies, I remembered he’d probably talked to Sophie about that.
“Yup,” I confirmed. “And Sophie said you did?”
“I do. In fact, that could lead us into number four. It’s why my ex-wife and I divorced.” He took another bite, like he could cover up the bitterness in his sentence with the salty, buttery amazingness of the sandwich.
It probably would work.
But the fact that he remembered what number four was, off the top of his head? That made me want to hug him and promise everything was going to be okay for him. Instead, I said, “Yikes,” and tried to move us into more cheerful territory. “Well, how many do you want to have?”
“Ex-wives?”
I rolled my eyes. “Kids. How many kids do you want?”
Having heard all about his giant family, I was relieved when he said, “Not as many as my parents had. Three or four, at most. But I’d be happy with just one. You?”
“Three, I think. Any more than that and they can overpower you.” Not that I would know.
“Isn’t that the truth? About when, do you think, you’d like to have kids?”
The question shocked me with the realization that, hey, I might be talking to the guy I ended up having kids with. And he might be talking to the future mother of his children, too. I managed a squeaky little sigh to let off some of the giddy pressure and tried to come up with an answer that didn’t sound too much like now, right now. “I’m still really young, and I know that. But I want to have my kids young. Within the next two to three years.”
There. That would give us a while to figure it out.
He smiled. “Well, it would never work out between us. I was going to wait another fifteen years.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, laughing. But he hadn’t answered the question, and he was fifty-three years old. Even if everything worked out perfectly between us, I didn’t want to be having my first baby with my seventy-year-old husband. “But seriously, that’s a pretty important one. If we ended up…”
“You’re right, it is important.” Most of the time we’d spent together, Ian had been affable and charming in the way that people were affable and charming when they were first getting to know someone. But now, he turned serious, and I appreciated that; if the topic split up him and his wife, he clearly didn’t want to make any future mistakes where this was concerned. “I would say that if something were to work out, and I were to find myself in a committed relationship within the next year or so, and things were just right… I’d be ready to start. I’m not getting any younger. I just turned fifty-three in July, so the clock is ticking.”
Within the next year or so didn’t seem quite so far away when it was the time frame for a major life change like having kids. And it was weirdly pleasing to know Ian was able to accept that as a possible eventuality for us without running away screaming.
But speaking of running away screaming…
There was nothing so disappointing as reaching this part of the getting-to-know-you stage only to have everything fall apart, but it had happened to me more times than not. And while I’d sometimes used my virginity as a handy excuse to ditch dates I wasn’t interested in, I was interested in Ian. But number five was coming up.
It was now or never.
“Okay, we talked about number four,” I said, a sick feeling rising in my stomach and threatening to spoil that lovely sandwich. “So, let’s go on to number five. ‘Don’t talk about sex.’”
“We just did, in a roundabout way. Unless you don’t know where babies come from. In which case, I have some shocking news for you,” he said, like we were both in on the joke somehow.
Oh, if he thought he had shocking news…
“Look, Ian. I have to tell you something, and it might be a deal breaker.”
“All right. I suppose if it is, this is only our second date, so it’s better to find out, now?” His reasoning was the same as mine. That didn’t make it suck any less that chances were high he’d be getting up and walking away.
Rip it off like a Band-Aid. And it won’t even be pathetic if you go home and cry. I took a deep breath and said, “I’m a virgin.”
Chapter Five
“I’m sorry, what?”
My face was hot, and not just because it was a sunny day in August. “I’ve never had sex with anyone.”
Ian’s “Huh,” had to be one of the most infuriatingly obtuse reactions I’d ever experienced.
Huh? What did he mean by huh? What was I supposed to think he meant by it?
Then he said the awful thing that so many guys had said, right before they realized I wasn’t joking and I could see them becoming visibly uncomfortable: “Well, I hope this isn’t a deal breaker, but I’m not.”
I knew I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up, but disappointment came crashing down on me hard. I didn’t have the grace to be kind when I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. “You have no idea how often I hear that.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.” He did look sorry, and that helped soften the blow a bit. But I’d gotten the I’m-not-a-virgin joke from enough guys that I knew what it meant. The next thing Ian asked would be…
“Do you mind if I ask why?” It was like he had a script.
I summoned up a gentle, Zen-like patience. “No, I don’t mind. The why is, I haven’t found anyone yet that I wanted to have sex with. I’m not super religious, or waiting for marriage or anything. I’ll just know when it’s the right guy.” And that was that. I couldn’t sugar coat it, and I wasn’t about to bend or apologize. Or tell him it was because of a family superstition. That would only make me look ditzy as hell. Instead, I shrugged and told him, “If you can’t handle that in a relationship, I understand. That’s where my ex-boyfriend went. I think he saw himself as being able to conquer my virginity.”
It sucked that, because I hadn’t felt comfortable or ready to have sex yet, I had to be so defensive about a choice that was mine and mine alone. There had been guys—Ian definitely did not seem like one of them—who felt like my acceptance of a second date, or a third, had been false advertising. Or they wanted me to feel grateful to them, that they would accept such an unreasonable restriction. Brad had been one of those guys.
“He sounds like a shitty boyfriend.”
Had Ian read my mind? I froze in place for just a blink.
He must have taken that as a sign of offense, because he said, “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.”
Uncalled for or not, it w
as nice to hear it verified by an independent party. “No, you’re right. He was a shitty boyfriend. It just took me a while to see it.”
Was the same thing happening with Ian? Was I seeing some funny, kind of dorky older man as hot because he was new? Eventually, that novelty would wear off, especially if he turned out to be a jerk about this. And I really, really wanted him to not be a jerk.
I held up my hands and let them drop to my lap. “So, now, you know what I mean about ‘going slow’. Like I said, there won’t be any hard feelings if—”
“Well, I don’t know if you noticed last Sunday, but I’m a Catholic. Not having pre-marital sex is something we’re supposed to be very good at.”
That was…unexpected. Maybe because I wanted so badly for this to go forward, to really get to know each other, I’d figured it was doomed. But he’d answered so easily and quickly. He hadn’t asked if he could sleep on it and call me if he decided he could handle the situation. He hadn’t made some insulting attempt at humor about how he would cure me. He’d just accepted my words at face value.
My eyebrows were never going to come down from my hairline. “Oh. I kind of assumed that would be a date-ender. It has been in the past.”
“Nah. I said I was fine with slow.” He looked out at the pond, the way he’d looked out at the river when he’d asked me to come on this date. I wondered if it was something he did out of nerves. Did talking about sex make him nervous? He reached for his bottled water. “I wasn’t expecting to have sex with you any time soon, anyway.”
“Good. Glad we’re on the same page.” I picked up my phone, but I could barely read the words on the screen. Talking about sex with Ian—even though we were talking about not having sex—made me imagine having sex with Ian. I’d never wanted so badly to reassure a man that my virginity didn’t mean we’d be playing Yahtzee and chastely holding hands. With a surge of horny bravery, I added, “But just so you know, I give great hand jobs, so there’s that to look forward to.”
He sputtered, water bursting from his mouth in a sloppy spit-take. “Jesus! Give a man some warning.”
First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) Page 5