I didn’t want to leave her there to deal with them on her own, but I didn’t want to stay and say or do something that would make things worse for her, either. I had to get out.
I pushed my chair back, a little too hard, it seemed, because it startled Penny and Deborah.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Penny. “But I can’t sit here and listen to this, anymore.”
“Excuse me?” Deborah gasped. Her face had gone all red, and her eyes bugged. I hoped her fucking skull popped like a grape in the microwave.
“No, excuse you.” I pointed at her. “I’ve never in my life seen a parent treat their own child like this. Look at her. She’s beaten down, and you’re enjoying it.”
It probably doesn’t help that you’re calling it to the attention of everyone in the restaurant, you utter prat.
“Look here,” James began, but I’d had e-fucking-nough of both of them.
“I’ve looked. And I’ve seen enough. For fuck’s sake, you’re like a pair of fairytale monsters.” I turned to Penny. God, she was never going to talk to me again, after I’d made this ridiculous fucking scene in the middle of the restaurant. But I had to try. “Penny. I love you. And I’m sorry to make a spectacle. But I can’t be here for this. You’re welcome to come with me.”
Her mouth dropped open, and she turned from me to her parents. God, I’d really fucked this up. If she hadn’t realized what a nightmare her parents were, I couldn’t convince her, and she would probably never speak to me, again.
I held up one hand and backed away. “Call me when you’re ready to talk about this.” If she was ever ready. I wouldn’t blame her if she wasn’t. I glared at her parents, my back teeth clenching. “Enjoy your evening torturing your daughter.”
And the cheap bastards could eat the fucking bill, too, for all I cared.
I stormed out of the restaurant and down the sidewalk, my internal monologue in as much of a rage as I was. You’ve really blown it, you arsehole. She’s not going to call you. I’d not only told off her parents—perhaps, if she was used to that family dynamic, she’d seen nothing wrong with the way they’d behaved—but I’d also mortified her in front of a restaurant full of people. A small restaurant, certainly, but any idiot could have seen that she’d been deeply embarrassed.
She isn’t going to call you. She’s never going to speak to you, again. The only thing I could do, the only way I would have even a modicum of chance, was if I went back right away and apologized to her. I wouldn’t be able to apologize to her family, but if I could just get her away from them long enough to beg her forgiveness…
I turned on my heel and went back toward the restaurant, my gaze fixed on the sidewalk as I considered exactly how I would go about apologizing.
When I lifted my head, I saw Penny, walking toward me. I picked up my pace to meet her, and I tried to open my mouth.
“No. No, let me say what I want to say first, okay?” Red ringed her eyes, and a wash of tears glazed them. Her lower lip trembled. Had I really hurt her so much? “What you did for me tonight…no one in my life has ever stuck up for me the way you just did. No one has made me feel… No one has ever made me feel so loved and so safe…”
She could barely get the words out as her chest hitched with sobs she tried to repress. A couple walked past us. I’d subjected Penny to enough embarrassment for one night, so I took her into my arms to shield her from their stares. “Hey, hey. You don’t deserve to be treated the way they treated you in there. And they don’t deserve you. You are so much more than a bank account or a job.”
I stepped back and placed my hands on her shoulders, like a coach giving his star athlete a much-needed pep-talk. “You’re Penny-Fucking-Parker, all right? A whole person who has thoughts and feelings and ideas that impress me every day. God handed them a gift when He gave you to them, and they’re fucking miserable and ungrateful for it? Fuck them. I love you. And I want you to love you as much as I do.”
She blinked up at me but said nothing.
I put my arm around her shoulder. “Come on. We still need dinner, and you need cheering up. I’ve got an idea.”
I really didn’t, but I was good at thinking on my feet. I walked her to the car, wondering what kind of terse conversation Mr. Parker and Mrs. Smythe-Parker were having in our absence. What I wouldn’t have given to be a fly on the wall of that particular crime scene.
I drove toward Penny’s neighborhood, my plan unfolding in my mind. I would take her to that little Chinese restaurant she’d taken me to on the not-so-bad half of our first date. When she recognized the buildings, she quipped, “Are you expecting me to cook for you at my place?”
She sounded a bit happier, and I couldn’t have been more thankful. “I thought you could use some profound spiritual guidance.”
I turned onto the street, and she said, “They do have the best fortune cookies,” with a laugh.
This time, she didn’t order the spicy dish she’d picked the last time. Which apparently meant I was going to be kissed tonight, which was nice to know. When we got our food, I suggested, “How about we take this back to my place? I have something I want to show you.”
“Okay. But first.” She stopped mid-sentence and reached into the bag, coming up with our fortune cookies. “Let’s see what these say.”
We opted to open them in the car, where the air conditioning could save us from the city’s humidity. I didn’t expect anything so earth-shattering as the last time, so when I opened mine, it might as well have come out with a spring-loaded boxing glove attached. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“What does it say?” she asked. I handed it to her, because she wouldn’t have believed me if I read it aloud. I barely believed I’d gotten it, myself. “‘An unexpected relationship will become permanent.’ You planted this!”
“I swear I didn’t. But I’m not complaining about the contents,” I said. We could be as permanent as Penny wanted. I nodded toward her cookie. “Go on.”
She opened hers and deftly removed the paper. “‘Stop searching forever. Happiness is just next to you.’”
Fuck me. I knew it was true for me. I hoped it was true for her. But I didn’t want to push her to say something she wasn’t ready to say yet. “You know, we’re going to have to stop doing this. They’re not always going to line up this well.”
“I think it’s a sign.” Her throat sounded dry. I hoped it was due to emotion, and not just the full-blast air conditioning.
I put the car in gear. “I think you’re right.”
I hoped she was right.
* * * *
The ride back to my apartment was mostly silent, charged with a crackling energy between us that didn’t feel comfortable but certainly wasn’t unpleasant. A threshold seemed to have been crossed, but into what, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know Penny well enough to tell what her silence meant; I only knew that, for her, it was far out of the realm of the ordinary.
“I’m sorry I’m not talkative,” I said as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. Though I’d thought I was speaking softly, the sudden break in the quiet was deafening. “It feels like I should say something profound.”
Perhaps because our moment on the sidewalk had seemed profound. Like a separate beginning in the middle of a story we already both knew the end to, or would like to.
“I know what you mean,” she said, but she didn’t share that meaning with me.
Back home, we scraped our dinners out of the cartons and ate like real human beings off plates at the dining table. Our conversation was stilted and too polite until she said, “I want to apologize.”
“For what?”
She frowned slightly. “For my parents.”
I finished chewing the bite I’d taken then took a drink of water. There were so many things I wanted to tell her, reassure her that my feelings about her hadn’t changed just because her parents couldn’t exhibit basic human decency. “Why would you apologize for them? You can’t control the fact that they’re—”<
br />
“Assholes?” she finished for me, either because she didn’t want me to say it, or she thought I wouldn’t. “I know it’s not my fault they act that way. But I’m sorry I exposed you to them and how toxic they are. And I’m sorry I didn’t leave with you.”
I mentally cringed. I’d blindsided her by leaving the restaurant. She’d had to choose between angering her parents—arguably more permanent fixtures in her life than I was—and our relationship. Whether I’d intended it or not, I’d forced that choice on her. I couldn’t look her in the eye, so I looked out the window, instead. “I shouldn’t have put you in that position. It was an ultimatum. You deserve better.”
“I do,” she agreed, but after a pause, she added, “I deserve you.”
How she’d come to that conclusion, I couldn’t say. I wanted to believe her, but I wasn’t sure I was capable—or anyone was capable, for that matter—of living up to what she deserved. All I knew was that I never wanted to see anyone do to her what her parents had done tonight. I never wanted to see that sadness and self-doubt on her face, again. If it fell to me to be the man who protected her from that, I would take the job and perform my duties as thoroughly as possible.
We finished eating and took our dishes to the kitchen, still not saying much, either of us. It made me nervous, and it showed in the way I practically shouted, “Hang on a second, and I’ll wash these.”
I wasn’t about to run the behemoth dishwasher for a set of plates and glasses, so I would hurry through the washing up by hand.
“How about I wash, you dry?” she offered. “You paid for the food, the least I can do is help with the manual labor.”
“Sounds like a deal.” The mention of food, and the place where we were standing, triggered half of my purpose for bringing her back here. “I remembered what I wanted to show you.”
Her face animated, probably out of relief that we would have something to talk about besides the emotional carnage at dinner.
I opened a cupboard door, proudly displaying the contents, the result of my recent shopping expedition. I’d bought staples like soup and pasta and oatmeal, as well as a few things for a recipe I’d taken the initiative to look up online. When I figured out how to pronounce “quinoa” I would make it for her.
“You went grocery shopping!” she exclaimed, much in the same way a person would congratulate a toddler who’s used the potty for the first time.
I hadn’t realized she’d viewed me as so helpless.
“And look at this.” I opened the refrigerator to display the eggs and orange juice, steak and Swiss chard inside. “Now the beer won’t get lonely.”
“I’m so proud of you!” Penny rose on her tiptoes to throw her arms around my neck. The hug was far too brief for my liking. After the night we’d had, physical contact reassured me that we were still as into each other as we had been last week.
“I thought you might be.” I grabbed a dishtowel and slapped it over my shoulder in anticipation of impending wet dishes. Then, I pulled my phone from my pocket. Music. Music would keep us from lapsing into another bizarre silence. I hoped. I pulled up iTunes and dropped my phone into the dock that connected to the intercom system via Bluetooth. I had absolutely no music she would recognize, I was sure of it. I was suspended eternally in the 1980’s.
Music was better, back then.
“Oh, wow. I haven’t heard this in ages,” I said, whistling under my breath as the opening bars of a song started. “My iTunes library is too big.”
“Stop trying to impress me,” Penny quipped dryly. “What song is this? He sounds like Paul McCartney.”
“Close, it is a Beatle. George Harrison.” I predicted there would be many times in our future that I would have to explain some relic of days past to her. “‘I’ve Got My Mind Set On You.’ It’s so fucking catchy you’ll still be listening to it in your sleep this time next year.”
I caught a flash of her smile in profile. I wondered how many nights we would spend in this kitchen, doing the washing up, smiling together about one thing or another. Just enjoying each other. I imagined us as we were now, but tired; her with her hair pulled up messily, and toys strewn across the floor, me exhausted from work but grateful to be home with her and whatever little monster we had sleeping upstairs.
I wanted that with Penny. I’d prayed on it, I’d begged God for a sign that I should be with her, that I shouldn’t be with her… I didn’t think the Lord dealt in fortune cookies, but he’d done stranger things in Bible days. When I pictured my future family, Penny was by my side.
She was by my side, now, running water in the sink, standing there with her sophisticated new haircut and her tight black dress that looked like it would come completely undone if I just tugged the belt at her waist. All I wanted, the only thing in the world, was to be able to hold her and see a future beyond the scene at the restaurant tonight.
I swung the dishtowel onto the counter and said, “Come on. Dance with me.”
She shook the water from her hands. “In the kitchen?”
“Humor me.” I didn’t wait for a rebuttal but pulled her to me with an arm around her waist, and clumsily dragged her about in a fast half-waltz.
“I always do.” She kissed my cheek then pushed away from me, our hands still joined, so I could spin her under my arm. She stomped on my toes accidentally. It was a mess.
I caught her before she could fall and laughed. “We’ll have to take lessons sometime. We can’t be a truly chic and sexy couple if we can’t dance like we’re making love on the floor.”
She blinked up at me. “That would be some really terrible dancing.”
“That’s not what I meant, you pervert.” Although I could now add that to my mental bank of potential memories; Penny and me christening some new, suburban house and getting rug burn the whole while…
Her face went over all dreamy, and I worried she might actually need me to physically support her. “Did I make you swoon?” I asked. “Because if I did, I need to call some people and brag.”
She laughed, her eyes widening with surprise. “No. It’s just…you. Being you.”
Just me. My body flooded with confused hormones of fear and joy. I didn’t know what she meant by that, but I knew that I wanted her to always feel about me exactly the way she was looking at me now.
“You’re the one, you know,” she went on. “You’re my forever. I want it to be you.”
“I want it to be me, too.” I could barely feel my face, I was in such shock, but I knew I was smiling.
She licked her bottom lip. I wanted to lick her bottom lip, too.
“I mean it,” she said. “I love you. And I don’t really care about some artificial, socially constructed timeline that’s supposed to guarantee forever. Even if we broke up two months from now—”
I couldn’t stand the thought, let alone hearing it spoke aloud. I cupped her face in my hands and leaned down to kiss her. And a kiss wasn’t enough; I held her face, tilting her chin up so she couldn’t look away. “Never going to happen. So, there’s no sense in talking about us ever breaking up.” You’re going to sound insane if you say what you’re going to say, I warned myself, but really, it was no more insane than saying I loved her after four dates. “As long as we’re discussing artificial, socially constructed timelines, I’ve known for a while that we belonged together. It just wasn’t the sort of thing I felt like I could say without it sounding like… Jesus, I just didn’t want to sound like I was trying to get into your knickers.”
She didn’t run screaming from the building, so that was a good sign. She rose up for another kiss and draped her arms around my neck. “I have to tell you something, just so we can be totally clear.”
Her lips were soft and warm against mine, and they were all I could think of. So, all I managed in response was, “Mmhm.”
Her fingers threaded through my hair and pulled slightly. That got my attention. “I want to. Tonight.”
“Want to what?” It wasn’t that I didn’
t know what she was talking about. It was that I was the one all light-headed and swooning now, mostly from the southward rush of all the blood that should have been in my brain. “What, now?”
“Yeah. We could wait until after we do the dishes, but—”
“Fuck the dishes.” I gripped her butt and lifted her onto the counter, standing between her legs. Her skirt pushed up a little, baring her thighs. She grabbed the open collar of my shirt and jerked at it as though she would rip it off, and I thought, All I would have to do is unzip, push her panties to the side, and have her right here.
No. That wasn’t what tonight was about. Not if it was the night. “Wait, wait.” I covered her hands with mine and pressed them flat to my chest, to prevent her from undoing further buttons. “You’re sure you don’t want to wait for something more romantic?”
“I’ve been waiting for something ‘more romantic’ since I was thirteen years old,” she said, a bitter, weary expression dulling the light in her eyes. Then that light returned, as fierce a blaze as a burning building. “Can’t it just be enough that I love you?”
There it was. She’d said it. “It’s everything.”
Our mouths crushed together. My hands braced her at the small of her back as she crumpled greedy handfuls of my shirt in her fists. I had to tear myself away; I could have lost myself in doing that all night, but it also seemed like I might lose a perfectly good shirt under Penny’s fingernails.
“Should we go up to the bedroom?” I couldn’t take my eyes off her mouth, all swollen and shining. I was nervous as hell to meet her gaze.
When I did, she whispered, “Yes.”
Chapter Thirteen
Penny went up the stairs ahead of me, her hips swaying languidly from side-to-side with every step. I wanted to run my hands under her skirt, bend her over, and fuck right there on the stairs.
On this staircase? That would be suicide, I told myself, eyeing the open spaces between each step. Besides, I only had one hand at the moment; she held onto the other one like it was a leash, though she hardly needed to drag me after her. I popped the buttons on my shirt and followed her into my bedroom.
First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) Page 18
