“Tonight?” From the tone of his voice, I knew right away that I’d overstepped my bounds.
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “You have work tomorrow.”
“Don’t you?” he asked, as though jogging my memory might lessen the blow of denial.
I should have just said yes and let him off the hook. But I felt like my uterus was trying to destroy me, and I wasn’t comfortable whining about that to Rosa. She’d confessed earlier in the week that she’d been struggling with depression more lately, and I didn’t want to do anything to trigger feelings of gender dysphoria. Maybe it was over-cautious of me, but I cared about her too much to mess with her mental health because I had five days a month that sucked.
So instead, I said, “No. I called in.”
I would have to remember to call in when I got off the phone with him.
When I heard his resigned sigh, I knew I’d won, and I smiled to myself as he said, “All right. Can I sleep there? I’ll just go straight to work from your place in the morning.”
“Yeah.” I brightened up. “I would love it if you would stay over.”
“Give me about forty minutes,” he said. “Do you want me to bring dinner?”
“How about pizza? I’m buying.” My check had just direct deposited, and I had to spend it before it evaporated, anyway. And I was tired of Ian dropping money on our dates all the time.
“You don’t—” he began then stopped himself. “That would be lovely. No black olives. Anything else, just no black olives, I beg you.”
“One anchovies and pineapple barbecue chicken pizza, then,” I said with a laugh.
We hung up, and I floated on my cloud of happy for approximately three seconds before I remembered what a sty the apartment was.
I burst out of my room, probably looking like Medusa, the way all my hair was falling out of my messy bun, and Rosa startled, almost tipping a bowl of cereal into her lap. “Is something on fire?”
“No! Ian is coming over!” I nearly shouted.
“Now?” She jumped up and drank a big mouthful of cereal straight from the bowl before she abandoned it on the coffee table. “You look like shit. Take a shower. I’ll clean your room.”
I rushed to her and grabbed her shoulders. “I love you so much I want to be buried with you.”
“Later! Try to make literally anything about your appearance work.” She shooed me off.
I took the fastest shower I’d ever taken in my entire life, brushed my teeth, blow dried my hair and rolled it up in a sock bun, and put on mascara. Just mascara. Otherwise Ian wasn’t going to buy my fragile menstrual state.
With regards to that, I abandoned my Diva Cup for a super jumbo industrial strength overnight tampon, threw on black yoga pants and a blue tank top, then dashed off a text to Sophie, apologizing for the late notice and begging forgiveness for calling in. Then I jumped online and ordered a large pepperoni pizza, some breadsticks, some mozzarella sticks, two kinds of soda…
Maybe the person on the first day of her period should not have been in charge of food.
When I’d put in the order, I went to the living room, where Rosa’s emergency cleaning spree plan was in major action. She had making the place look and smell presentable in thirty minutes down to a science.
“Do you want me to split?” she asked. “Is tonight the night?”
“No, tonight is not the night. We’re just going to eat pizza and watch TV,” I promised. “You can stay. You won’t be bothering us.”
“If you need me to leave, just text me, okay?” she said. “What time is he supposed to be here?”
I checked the clock. “Any minute now?”
It really was “any minute”, because no sooner than the words had come out of my mouth, the buzzer sounded. I dashed over and hit the intercom. “Hey! Come on up! We’re unit B.”
“You are, like, power excited,” Rosa said, and I realized I needed to tone it down a little. Because, while I did feel first-day-of-my-period awful, I didn’t want Ian to think I was faking to get him over here. I composed my expression into one that looked less like I'd just been ogling Tom Hardy’s old MySpace photos and opened the door, waiting and listening to Ian’s footsteps coming up the stairs. He looked up as he gained the top step, and though his face was drawn and his eyes bleary, he smiled when he saw me.
"You sounded like you were dying on the phone. I'm glad to see you're not in imminent danger of expiring." He wore broken-in jeans and a T-shirt, which was as casual as I’d ever seen him dressed, and carried a garment bag over his shoulder.
"No. Just generally miserable.” I gestured him inside. “This is the place.”
“Not a lot of it,” Rosa said from the couch. She stood. “I’m Rosa.”
“I think we met before,” he said, clearing his throat. “Downstairs.”
“Right, when you two were making out.” Rosa grinned. “We weren’t properly introduced.”
I turned to Ian. “I was thinking we could watch TV in my room. Keep one foot on the floor so Mom doesn’t worry?”
“Sure. Except for the foot thing,” he said with wink. Then he looked to Rosa. “Sorry, but I have nothing but lascivious intentions toward your friend.”
“Hey, as long as I don’t have to listen.”
Somehow, having Ian in my apartment made the place feel smaller. Not just because there was a third person in the space; Brad used to come over, and Rosa and I had invited handfuls of friends here plenty of times. But having seen Ian’s apartment, with its three stories of amazing open floors and a kitchen larger than my bedroom, I could only imagine how he was seeing things.
I was kind of embarrassed.
It got worse when we stepped into my tiny bedroom. Rosa had stuffed all my dirty laundry somewhere, god bless her, and gotten rid of my tissues and trash, but the space was small and definitely not sophisticated. Ugh, this had been such a terrible idea. I’d just wanted to see him so much—
“Wow,” he said, and I cringed. “This reminds me so much of my first apartment in New York.”
I turned around, almost afraid to ask. “Because it’s so small and shitty?”
“Well, it is small. But this place is better kept than my apartment was. And I shared a bedroom about this size with another guy.” He laughed at the memory. “We didn’t even have beds.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think about the fact that you probably didn’t want to hang out in some dingy twenty-something’s crappy apartment.” I wanted to crawl into a hole and die of shame.
“Did you not just hear what I said about sleeping on the floor?” he asked, toeing off the battered-looking sneakers he had on. “I didn’t expect you to have a million-dollar penthouse. Besides, I’m here to make you feel better, not do a property appraisal.”
“Food’s here!” Rosa called from the other room.
“Wait right here,” I told him, adding, “The remote is on my nightstand.”
After I paid the delivery guy, I grabbed a plate and threw some pizza and breadsticks on it for Rosa. I handed it to her as I passed through the living room, and she beamed up at me. “Have fun.”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” I sing-songed back in a low voice.
Ian waited for me on my bed, propped up on the headboard with the remote in his hand. He looked…guilty. Because I had paid for dinner? That was so stupid but also pretty nice, considering the way some of my ex-boyfriends had nickel-and-dimed me. I held up the stack of boxes. “I kind of over-ordered. Owing to my condition.”
He sat up and reached for the food while I knelt on the bed beside him. “Are you sure you want to eat in here? Where we’re going to get pizza sauce all over your bedding?”
I frowned. “I don’t know how you eat pizza, but I try not to turn into a yard sprinkler of tomato sauce when I do it. Besides, you’ve had roommates before. You know how important space is.”
“That’s true. It was fairly awkward when I wanted to bring a girl back to my sleeping bag.”
I sa
t beside him cross-legged while we ate. And I did not hold back to be ladylike. When I was on my period, people were lucky they didn’t lose body parts while I ate. I let him do most of the talking, nodding and saying, “Uh-huh” a lot while he told me about his day. He asked me about mine, but “I forgot my menstrual cup and had to stuff toilet paper into my panties while I wandered pathetically around the office begging for tampons” wasn’t exactly the story I wanted to share, so I said, “Nothing out of the ordinary really happened. Your job seems a lot more exciting than mine.”
“Or less frustrating, depending on how you look at it. I’m dreading going in tomorrow.” He sounded so tired I felt guilty that he’d hauled his ass all the way out here to sleep in my lumpy bed and eat pizza with me.
I wiped my hands on a napkin, then laid my palm over his knee. “Well, thank you for coming over here, even though you’re having a bad week. I’ve been feeling progressively better since I got off the phone with you.”
“Happy to help.” He cleared his throat. “Since we’re on the subject of work, there is something I need to discuss with you.”
“Oh?” I reached for a third breadstick. I was going to have to run thirteen miles on Sunday, but at the moment, the carbs were worth it.
“There’s a chance I may have to go away on business for…a while. A temporary relocation.”
My heart plunged.
“Nothing permanent. And it’s not final, by any means.” He must have seen the shock and disappointment in my expression, because his brow crumpled in concern. “It wouldn’t be until next summer. But I thought I should let you know the possibility exists.”
That calmed me down a little, and I took a bite. Next summer was months away. Although at that point, would he expect me to go with him? I mumbled around a mouthful of garlicky amazingness, “Where would you be going?”
“Nassau. The Bahamas,” he clarified. “To work on a resort.”
“Oh, wow!” Having a boyfriend in a tropical location wasn’t exactly the worst thing anyone had ever faced, for sure. There would be all sorts of snorkeling and scuba opportunities. Swimming with sharks, petting stingrays… That was the least objectionable place to have a long-distance boyfriend. “Would I be able to come visit?”
“I hope you would,” he sputtered. “After I came all this way tonight.”
I chewed my lip. “Okay. Well, since we’re bringing up unpleasant subjects… My parents are coming to town next week.”
“And that’s unpleasant?” he asked.
I didn’t want to get into all the details, at the moment. Rosa was right, it would be a good test, and I didn’t want to influence the outcome. “No, but having to ask you this kind of is. They want to meet you.”
“They know about me?” He seemed pleased by this, which was a hundred times better than freaking out at being asked to meet my parents after a few weeks of dating.
“Yeah. I mentioned I was seeing someone, and my mom thought this visit would be a good time.” I shrugged. “We don’t get together often, so I think she wants to check you out before things get serious.”
“Are things not?” he asked, and suddenly everything was.
“That’s not what I meant.” I caught my bottom lip between my teeth. “I mean, I didn’t want to presume—”
“Neither did I. But I’m quite serious about you, Penny.” He reached out to touch my face, and the tender gesture made my chest tight, until I realized he was wiping a smear of marinara off my cheek.
“Oh my gosh, way to ruin the moment with my sloppy eating.” I laughed. “Well, I’m serious about you, too. Seriously serious.”
“Good.” He looked at me for a long time, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. But I knew it was good, from the small smile that flirted with his mouth. Finally, he looked down, as if breaking himself from a spell, and said, “Of course I’ll meet your parents. Just tell me where to be, and when.”
“I will.” I reached over and took his hand, squeezing it. “Thank you.”
“For?”
“Giving me a chance.” I looked around my room, still feeling self-conscious about the way I lived. “We don’t have much in common. We’re in such different places, life-wise.”
“You’re thanking me?” He shook his head. “If you remember correctly, Doll, I was the one who fucked up badly on our first date. And I’m a hundred and thirty years old. So, thank you for giving me a chance.”
When we finished eating, we got around to turning on the television, and I snuggled down beside him as he stretched out.
“You do the clicking.” My full belly made me sleepy; all I wanted to do was lay my head on him and close my eyes. So I did. But they came open again when a thought popped into my head. “You don’t have a TV, do you?”
“Of course I do.” He almost sounded offended at the suggestion that he wouldn’t.
“I didn’t see one in your apartment,” I countered.
“That’s because it’s very ingeniously hidden away until I need it.” He frowned as he hesitated briefly on what looked like a gardening show then clicked past it.
I half sat up, demanding, “Well, where is it?”
“You know where the couch is? The window in front of it? The television slides up from the floor.” He never took his eyes from the screen, and somehow that made him super hot.
I was way too into him if I found being ignored in favor of the television sexy.
“Oh, it does not!” I insisted. “That’s like The Jetsons or something.”
“You’re twenty-two, what do you know about The Jetsons?” he challenged. Then, he went on, “Remind me the next time you’re over, I’ll show you.”
“Fine. But I won’t believe you until you do.” I wriggled down closer beside him. My uterus was still trying to destroy me. “Hey, could you reach under the bed? I’ve got a heating pad under there.”
He leaned over the edge and felt around a moment then said, “Aha,” and came back up with it. He watched me as I rolled over and plugged it into the outlet. “Do you need any help?”
“No, I’m young, but I’m allowed to plug things in all by myself,” I said, wrapping the heating pad low around my waist. It started heating up, and I groaned in anticipation of the relief to come.
“That bad, is it?” he asked with genuine concern, and not one iota of disgust.
“Yeah.” I’d heard from some women that their cramps were as bad as contractions during labor. I wouldn’t know about that, but I hoped it was the case. Otherwise, labor was going to really suck. “Thank you for not saying, ‘it’s not that bad.’”
“What idiot would say something like that?” he asked in a tone of horror.
I leaned up and gave him The Look. “Everyone.”
“I would never say that. Mostly because I don’t know what it feels like, but also because I don’t feel like having a woman rip a handful of my intestines out in retaliation.” He put his arm around my shoulder.
When I laid my head on his chest, he squeezed me close. “You’re the only woman I would eat pizza in bed with. Just so you know.”
“You’re the only man I wouldn’t hide my period from,” I mumbled with a yawn.
A laugh rumbled in his chest. “Forgive me for saying so, but I do think you’re getting the more pleasant bargain.”
I drifted to sleep to the sound of the television and the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath my ear. If being serious meant more nights like this, then I was as serious as a final exam I hadn’t studied for.
Chapter Twelve
“I can’t believe you did that,” Rosa said, for the thousandth, self-esteem destroying time.
I combed my fingers through my hair. The half of it that was left.
My parents coming to the city made me lose it every single time. My octopus tattoo? Christmas, 2014. In February, when they’d made an unscheduled drop-in for a charity function, I’d seriously flirted with a nose ring, until Sophie had talked me out of it.
“I
t looks really good, though,” Rosa reassured me, walking in a half-circle around me. She could barely get past me in the tiny bathroom. “I just can’t believe you did it. For a while I thought you were a part of a religious cult that wouldn’t let you cut your hair.”
I closed my eyes, trying to block out the sight of my shaggy, chin-length bob. But it haunted me.
“Of all the stupid things I’ve done, this might be the worst.” It was a cute haircut, and it looked fantastic on me. But that wasn’t the issue. The issue was the withering conversation it was going to cause at dinner tonight. “I don’t know why I do this, every time. It’s like I’m baiting them for negative attention.”
“That’s exactly what you’re doing,” Rosa agreed. “But I wouldn’t consider this a negative. It’s a great look on you. Besides, do they really think they can control what you do with your hair?”
I arched a brow at her in the mirror.
“Well, on the bright side, Ian will probably think it’s hot.”
“Yeah.” I smiled to myself and reached for my eyelash curler. I had a half-hour to get ready before I had to leave for the restaurant. Though I was dreading seeing my parents, I couldn’t wait to see Ian. I also didn’t want those two worlds to collide. All of those conflicting emotions, and my hair had paid the ultimate price.
“So, do they know you’re dating Gandalf yet?” Rosa asked, leaning against the wall with her elbow on the towel bar.
I made and impatient noise as I released my eyelashes from the curler’s grasp. “Okay, again, not Gandalf. Not Methuselah. Not Dumbledore.”
“Sorry.” She held up a hand like I was the one being unreasonable.
I reached for my mascara. Working at a fashion magazine, I got all kinds of awesome makeup free from the beauty editor. I was addicted to Urban Decay. “I’m meeting them at the hotel and riding with them to the restaurant. I already told them he was older, but I thought I would save the specifics until I could tell them in person.”
“Are they going to freak?”
I lifted my chin and pointed my eyes down to wiggle the brush between my lashes. “Nah. They’re going to be psyched that he makes better money than Brad.”
First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) Page 17