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.”
“Cut it short?” I laughed. “Ian. We’ve been hanging out since two this afternoon. I’m pretty sure we broke a dating rule here.”
“Some rules are made to be broken.” It was such a cliché thing to say, but coming from him, it sounded kind of dangerous and flirty. He turned off the car—I was surprised it wasn’t out of gas by now from running the air conditioner—and gestured to the building. “Come on. I’ll walk you to your door.”
My door was a whole sidewalk width away, but I let him walk me, anyway, because I was pretty sure I was getting a kiss goodnight. In fact, I’d been anticipating it ever since that fantastic kiss in the park. But between then and now, nothing. He hadn’t even tried to hold my hand or put his arm around me. I decided it was because he respected my request that we take it slow, and that it wasn’t a comment on my desirability.
I reached into my purse for my keys, distracted. We might be taking it slow, but emotionally, I was already way too into him. Which was so stupid. I knew it was stupid, especially given our situation. Thirty years was one hell of an age gap to have to overcom
e.
“You look very grim,” he said, and though his tone sounded light, there was a nervousness under his words. I thought I was an open book when it came to emotions, and obviously I was, if he’d picked up on my split second of doubt. But he was just as transparent.
“I was just thinking about how much fun we had today.” I stopped myself on the edge of revealing too much.
He frowned. “If that was meant to be reassuring…”
“No,” I answered quickly, then winced. “I mean, I had a really good time, and—” what the hell— “I hope we keep having fun. I want to know how this story ends.”
Because I’m falling for you, and I’m afraid I’m Cinderella at quarter to midnight. I didn’t want the spell to break. I would be heartbroken; not forever, but even a day or a week would suck. I’d let myself get in way over my head.
He put his hands in his pockets, hunching his shoulders, and looked away. Looking away seemed to be a signal that he was about to say something significant, and it frightened him. That’s when he made eye contact with me, again, and I almost dissolved like cotton candy as he said, “Maybe it’s better to hope that it doesn’t.”
He leaned one arm against the building, above my head. I’d forgotten our height difference; beside him, I felt tiny but not threatened. The intent in his expression was clear. I rolled my tongue over my bottom lip as he leaned down, and I tilted my face up.
“This is ill-advised, at the very least,” he said, his mouth just millimeters from mine.
“Yeah, I’m way too young for you.” But my hands came up between us to rest on his chest, and then we were kissing, my fingers curling in his shirt to pull him closer as the brick wall met my back. His free arm curved around my waist, and our feet tangled. I was pinned. I liked it.
A car door slammed somewhere down the street, and Ian looked up, panting.
“Nobody’s going to see. And if they do, they won’t care,” I said, pleading.
He lowered his head again, the arm on the wall coming down to join the other around my waist. It was a good thing, too. I was breathless and weak-kneed as his tongue swept over mine, and every inch of my skin buzzed, from collarbone to kitty. My ability to stand was imperiled.
Someone, someone very near us, dropped their keys on the sidewalk.
It was my turn to break off our kiss. “Rosa!”
“I’m sorry, I was trying to sneak past.” She narrowed her eyes slightly as she looked Ian over. Then to me, she said, “Carry on.”
The door closed behind her, and Ian stepped back, laughing as he scratched the back of his neck. “Remember those signs from God you were talking about?”
“Yeah, he is clearly reminding you that you have church in the morning. That’s my roommate. You’ll have to meet her sometime when you haven’t just been feeling me up in front of her.”
“I was not feeling you—”
“I’m fucking with you, Ian.” I stood on my tiptoes, brushing my lips against his. “Just one more?”
He groaned. Not loudly, just enough that I felt it rumble through his chest as I opened my mouth. The kiss was far too brief.
“I’ll call you tomorrow. If that’s not too soon,” he said softly, stroking the backs of his fingers down my jaw.
He could leave right now and call me in twenty minutes, and it wouldn’t be too soon. “Not too soon at all.”
“All right. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then.” He kissed me again, just a quick peck, and headed to his car.
A strange, crushing feeling swelled in my chest as I unlocked the door, like I missed him already.
You’re not being sensible, Penny. You’re going to be let down, and it will be nobody’s fault but your own.
When I got a chance to figure out our numbers, I would have a clearer picture of what was happening between us, and exactly how much I could count on us being a good match. Which reminded me…
“Wait! What’s your middle name?” I called after him, not caring how weird the question probably sounded.
He stopped with the car door half opened and turned to me with a bemused expression. “David. Why?”
“Designing our wedding invitations,” I said, laughing.
He grinned and slid into the driver’s seat. “You’re a frightening woman.”
I went inside and waited behind the door until I heard his car start and drive away.
“What the fuck was that?” Rosa demanded when I came upstairs.
I shrugged. “That was Ian.”
“Yeah, and that was Ian’s throat you had your tongue down on your second date.” She went to the kitchen, pausing in her scolding as she went about the loud, rattly business of filling the teakettle and setting it on the stove.
When the tea came out, I knew it was therapy time.
“It’s not that big a deal.” It was a big deal, though. I’d been on two dates with Ian, and I was already falling for him. That was something I never let myself do. “Ugh, you’re right. This isn’t me. I’m careful—”
“Some would say over-cautious,” Rosa interrupted.
I gave her a what-the-hell face. “Is this the conversation where you’re telling me to slow down or speed up? Because—”
“I’m just worried that this guy is a rebound for you.” She gave me a pitying grimace. “And I’m worried that because he’s a rebound, things are going to get too intense, too fast. When that happens… Are you going to be okay, honey?”
“First of all, things are too intense, too fast. And yeah, that’s on my mind. But this doesn’t feel like a rebound. It feels like…destiny.” Okay, even I thought that sounded overly syrupy.
“Please don’t get mad at me, but I have to ask. This guy is…middle-aged,” she began, and I knew “old” had formed in her brain first. “What kind of future are you imagining here? A year or two of hanging out and fooling around? Something more permanent?”
“We’ve both got basically the same five-year plan.” Why did I feel so defensive? “He wants to have kids within the next couple of years—”
“Whoa, whoa!” Rosa shook her head in emphatic denial. “You did not talk about kids already.”
“We did, but it was under a totally benign set of circumstances. He got all this really bad dating advice from the internet, so we did the opposite, just to get it out of the way.” That was reasonable, wasn’t it? “And Rosa, he’s so nice. He doesn’t correct me constantly or cringe like I’m embarrassing him. Even when I did sort of embarrass him today.”
I wished I hadn’t snapped at those women in the park. At least, I wished I hadn’t let their babies take collateral damage.
“And all of that is nice and sweet, but your five-year plan? At the end of that, you’re going to be twenty-eight. And he’s going to be almost sixty.” Her words were an ice-cold bucket of reality splashing in my face.
My heart sank. “I know. But I can’t help it. I really like this guy, Rosa.”
She nodded in sympathy. “And there are a lot of other guys out there. Guys you can spend the rest of your life with, instead of the rest of their lives. Somebody you can grow old with—”
“Instead of them growing old without me, I get it.” When she laid it out like that, it sounded a lot less exciting, and lot more bleak.
But I wanted him. I wanted to talk to him and have breakfast with him and learn what television shows he liked. I wanted to hear him call me “Doll” in a sleepy voice and hate the same grocery store cashier as me. I wanted to pick out paint samples and watch him clean gutters; not on a clock tower, obviously, but that wasn’t the point. I just wanted, and wanting sucks.
“I’ll run the numbers, see what they have to say,” I said weakly.
“Mmhm.” She went to the stove and groaned. “It would have helped if I’d turned the damn burner on.”
I laughed, but she brought me back to serious town with a pointed look. “Numerology? Astrology? Those things are probably not what you need to make a decision this big. I know, you live by them.
But maybe it’s time to just sit down and make a cold, logical decision.”
My gaze flicked to her phone on counter. The lock screen said it was one-thirty.
Trying not to freak out about the fact that Ian and I had spent almost twelve hours together, I raised an eyebrow at Rosa and turned our conversation sharply around. “So. Who were you out with tonight?”
She folded her arms over her chest, her change of demeanor suspiciously quick. “Of course, you know that, as your friend, I support you in all of your choices.”
Now it was my turn to make an incredulous noise. “You were with Amanda.”
She turned around and got down teacups, though the water couldn’t possibly have boiled yet.
“You’re lecturing me about bad relationship choices, and you were out with your ex?” My eyes widened. “You did woo-hoo.”
“You have got to stop playing The Sims,” she said wryly, as if she could change the subject so easily.
“Are you getting back together? Is it revenge sex? What’s happening?” I loved gossip, especially if I was the one discovering it. Not that I ever gossiped about Rosa. If I did, she would hold a pillow over my head in my sleep. It was an agreed upon term of our friendship.
“Don’t you have some bones to cast?” she asked, and I knew I wasn’t going to get any juicy love life details out of her tonight. I’d have to wait about a week, until they were hot and heavy again. Rosa and Amanda were like some wonderful soap opera; they got together and broke up more than Victor and Nikki on The Young and The Restless.
I sighed. “Yeah. I’m going to go put his numbers in. See what comes up.”
“Good luck. I’ll let you know when the water boils,” she promised.
My tiny bedroom was just as I’d left it, perfectly rumpled like a comfortable nest. I slid my laptop out from beneath the bed and opened it, then pulled up the bookmarked numerology site I swore by. At the prompt, I entered, “Ian David Pratchett,” and his birthday, after a little quick math to deduce the year. Then I plugged in my details and clicked the “calculate” button.
First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) Page 7