First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1)

by Abigail Barnette

  Considering how helpless Ian felt over what had happened to their siblings, I couldn’t blame her for wanting to keep the rest of them safe from every kind of hurt possible. “I know. And I promise, I’m not out to hurt Ian. That’s the last thing I would want to do.”

  “She’s not worried about you hurting Ian. She’s worried about him hurting you. Because of the cheating.”

  The puke feeling from earlier returned with such a vengeance that I clenched my back teeth before I could speak again. “Right. Because he cheated on Gena,” I bluffed, hoping I was wrong.

  Bill nodded as he rinsed the suds off the plate I handed him with numb fingers. “Annie’s worried because she thinks once someone cheats, they’re going to do it again, no matter what. But that’s not always the case. Ian and Gena had real problems.”

  Ian and Penny had some real problems, too. He’d cheated on his wife? And he hadn’t told me? Worse, he’d lied to me about it. “Yeah, the thing about how she didn’t want to have kids.”

  Bill frowned. “Gena wanted kids. They went to a fertility specialist and everything.”

  The air in the room became very thin. The blood drained from my face and my extremities, racing toward my suddenly pounding heart.

  “Oh, gosh.” Bill’s face was ashen. “I said too much.”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s fine.” I flinched at the sound of the back door opening.

  “Bill, you look like you’re going to pass out,” Ian said with a laugh. “What did you do to him?”

  I would not cry. I absolutely forbid myself from crying. I turned to Ian. “We were just talking about you and Gena.”

  Ian’s eyes went wide. “No, no, no.” He looked to Bill and Annie before his eyes flicked back to me. “Penny, it’s not what it probably sounded like.”

  “I don’t think this is the proper place to discuss this,” I said, and I could have sworn it was my mother’s voice coming out of my mouth. “Let’s go talk about it in the car while you drive me home.” I gave Annie and Bill truly grateful glances. If they hadn’t welcomed me into their home, I wouldn’t have found any of this out until it was too late.

  I really owed them one.

  “Thanks for inviting me today. It really was a lovely meal. I definitely got to know someone better.” My voice cracked, and I turned for the door.

  In the living room, Danny lay on the couch, watching an episode of some car show on the television. He sat up when I grabbed my coat off the rack by the door.

  “You’re going?” he asked, and though I felt terrible for not responding, I couldn’t trust myself to speak.

  I ran out to the car then stood stupidly on the sidewalk, because I didn’t have the keys.

  Ian was just a few moments behind me, pulling his coat on with an agitated curse.

  This isn’t the place for this. This isn’t the place for this, I reminded myself. But I couldn’t hold back. “Thank you for bringing me here. I got a much clearer picture of who you are.”

  “Penny, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this,” he tried to assure me.

  “You’ve been saying that a lot, lately.” But he did have a perfectly good reason last time. At least, he’d said he had. His dinner with Carrie Glynn only seemed innocent without the knowledge that he was a liar and a cheat. Now that I knew…

  “And you’ve been assuming the worst of me a lot, lately,” he argued. “Get in the car. I don’t want to have this fight on the sidewalk in front of my sister’s house.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do!” I shouted. I was so angry I didn’t care who overheard us. “And don’t try to be fucking reasonable about this. You cheated on your ex-wife!”

  “I didn’t cheat on Gena!” He started off shouting but quickly lowered his voice to that maddening calm tone again. “I told Annie that I cheated on Gena so she wouldn’t know the real reason we got divorced.”

  “On what planet is that supposed to make sense to me, Ian? ‘I didn’t want my sister to know that my marriage broke up because of this totally not horrible reason, so I told her I was a complete asshole instead?’” Did he think I was an idiot?

  “I know it sounds implausible—”

  “Implausible?” I laughed, because it was that fucking ridiculous. “Ian, why should I trust you?”

  “When have I lied to you before?” he demanded.

  “You told me that Gena didn’t want to have children. Bill says that the two of you saw a fertility doctor.” I folded my arms over my chest, because it was cold and because I felt like I might need to hold my heart it. “You apparently smoke, that’s out of left field—”

  “I smoke an occasional cigarette, that doesn’t make me a murderer!”

  “But it does mean that there are some fairly simple things about you that you haven’t bothered to share with me. Do you think if you just don’t tell me things, they don’t count?” My throat stuck shut. I pressed my fingers to the sudden throbbing in my temple. “How do you really know Carrie Glynn?”

  Please, tell me I’m being paranoid. Tell me I’m too suspicious. Tell me something I can believe, so I can still love you.

  A muscle in his jaw shifted. “We used to work together. And we slept together a few times.”

  I gulped in air, the last desperate gasp as I sank into the reality of what this conversation really was.

  We were breaking up.

  “I would have told you—”

  “And you and Gena. Did you try to have a baby?”

  He looked away. That stupid look away that made it so he didn’t have to commit to confronting reality. “We did see a fertility doctor. And we did try to have a baby, for over a year.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. My tears went from hot to shockingly cold on my cheeks.

  “Penny, I promise you, all of this… It seems indefensible. I know that it must look like I’m this…pathological liar, but I’m not.”

  Was there an explanation? Or would it just be more lies? “No. You cheated on your ex-wife, and you lied to me about it. You know what I just went through—”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, I am not Brad!” Ian shouted, finally losing his cool. “You were hurt, and I understand that, but I’m not going to be punished for something someone else did to you. If you need to work out your feelings about your last relationship, feel free to end this one!”

  An hour ago, we’d been fine. And now, we were…

  Oh god. We were over.

  “Just take me home,” I said. All the fight had gone out of me. I just wanted to get away from him, to retreat to my bed and stay there all weekend. Which sucked, because I’d been planning on spending the weekend in his bed. The thought crushed me. “No, wait. Take me to the nearest train.”

  For a guy with a passionate need to explain himself, Ian sure was silent on the drive to the nearest station. And I was glad. I didn’t want this to be happening, but I would be an idiot if I let him lie to me, anymore.

  As he pulled the car up to the curb, he finally spoke. “I don’t want to break up, Penny.”

  “Well, you don’t really get a say,” I snapped. It was easier to be angry than sad.

  “I was going to say,” he began again with emphasis. “I don’t want to break up. But I do wonder if you and I both needed more time to get over our last relationships.”

  Why did you say that? I wanted to punch myself. If you’d just said you don’t want to break up, either, maybe you’d still be together. Maybe this wouldn’t be happening.

  “I do love you, Penny. But our timing is…” He stopped. “Maybe I go to Nassau, and when I get back…”

  “When you get back, you won’t have lied to me?” I didn’t want to face it, but that was the truth. No amount of time was going to change my hurt. Ian had lied to me, he’d probably cheated on me with Carrie fucking Glynn, and now, he was going to move to the Bahamas for a year and a half and probably cheat on me there, too. There was no sense in setting up some stupid long-distance maybe and waiting around for him. �
�When you get back, I’ve spent two years waiting for you, without being with you, on the off chance that you’ll be different?”

  He didn’t have an argument for that, and I didn’t care to pursue one with him.

  “I love you, too,” I said, my voice breaking. “Or at least the parts of you that were real.”

  “Penny—” he began, but I pushed the door open and got out. I closed it behind me, silently praying, Please follow me. Please stop me. Don’t let me walk away from you.

  My feet and brain had better sense than my heart. I kept walking. I didn’t need another liar. I didn’t need another guy who would hurt me. I needed the man I’d been in love with this morning.

  I’d never really had that man at all.

  I heard the car’s tires as he pulled away, and I stopped where I stood, my pulse pounding so hard in my throat that I thought it would choke me. I wanted to run after him, screaming and waving my arms and promising that I could just ignore the gigantic lie he’d been feeding me for months.

  Instead, I got on the train.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Okay, Bella Swan,” Rosa said, plopping down beside me on my bed. “Time to get up.”

  “It’s Saturday,” I mumbled, still facing the wall.

  “Yes, and you have been spending every Saturday in bed.” She gave my butt a push. “Get up. The holidays are over. You’ve got to get past this before Valentine’s day or you’ll spiral even worse.”

  We’d been going through this every Saturday since mid-December. Rosa had been fine with it at first, and it hadn’t affected my job performance…much. But even I had to admit that this whole weekend depressive thing wasn’t healthy all these weeks later.

  Health be damned. I still wanted to wallow, and January was a perfect wallow month. “Just leave me here. I’ll die an old spinster, like the curse says.”

  “The curse is not—”

  “I know the curse isn’t real. But I feel like I willed it into being. Look what happened.” I’d had the same conversation with myself over and over, trying to decide if it was a good thing I’d picked Ian for my first time if this was the outcome. It hurt bad. And I couldn’t tell if it felt so much worse than my other breakups because I’d had sex with him or because he really was supposed to have been my true love.

  No, he wasn’t my true love. Because your true love didn’t pretend to be someone he wasn’t. Your true love didn’t lie to you. I couldn’t remember a single fairy tale where Prince Charming had cheated on his ex-wife.

  “You have got to stop with this magical thinking bullshit. Do you really think this happened because you fucked him? People fuck and breakup all the time. That’s not a sign. It’s just something that happens.” Rosa sounded annoyed at having to repeat her lines in this conversation yet again. “Don’t you have that benefit tonight?”

  “Yeah, for Mr. Elwood’s charity.” I rubbed my eyes. “I really don’t feel like getting dressed up tonight.”

  “Normally, I would ask you if you absolutely had to go, but I don’t really care.” Rosa rubbed my back then plucked at my gnarly T-shirt. I’d slept in it and cried myself to sleep on most nights during the week. “Although staying home and doing laundry would probably be a great idea.”

  I pushed myself up and squinted at the time on my phone. It was almost two in the afternoon. I really did have to get up and start getting around. I would need a shower and to shave basically everything. My gown was black and strapless, so some light bronzing lotion on my shoulders wouldn’t hurt, either. I needed to do my nails—there wouldn’t be time to go to a salon—then put on makeup… Ugh. The whole process was exhausting. “No, I have to go.”

  “There’s that enthusiasm for life you’re known for,” Rosa said dryly. “But you might meet someone. Some rich someone.”

  “I’m not I the mood for rich.” I’d had rich. Or, at least, richer than I was, and about to get richer. “It didn’t go well.”

  I would take a guy I would have to financially support for the rest of our lives, just as long as he wasn’t a liar.

  “Wow, your phone has been blowing up,” Rosa said, reaching for it on the nightstand. “Are you answering it?”

  “Just for work stuff.” I said with a shrug.

  “Is he still calling?” The way Rosa said it made it sound like Ian was stalking me, and he wasn’t. He’d tried a few times before he’d given up. My voicemail had messages from him in it, but I hadn’t listened to them. I’d been telling everyone my voicemail wasn’t working.

  “He hasn’t called since before Christmas. Maybe he’s already gone to the Bahamas.” The thought hurt me more than it should have. He seemed farther away. Then again, if he wasn’t in New York, there was no chance of running into him anywhere. Like at the benefit tonight.

  “You haven’t checked your voicemail since before Christmas?” Rosa’s long curls rustled as she shook her head. “Penny…”

  “I know.” I took the phone from her hand. “Is there coffee?”

  “It’s two in the afternoon,” she reminded me.

  I gave her my best big, pleading look.

  “Fine.” She stood and headed to my door. “But only if you check your messages.”

  She was right. I had to do it, sometime. Besides, I didn’t have to actually listen to the messages. I could wait until they started playing and hit the delete button. If I was fast enough, I never had to hear his voice.

  My hand trembled. I couldn’t ignore this forever. I knew it was going to suck, but I would have to just forge through. I hit the voicemail icon and entered my password.

  “November thirtieth, three P.M.,” the voice droned robotically. I wanted to hit delete, I really did. But another part of me whispered, This is the last time you’ll hear his voice. Then, it was too late.

  “Hey, Doll. It’s me.”

  Doll. My face crumpled into an ugly cry at the word.

  “I know you don’t want to talk to me. But I’m hoping that you will, eventually. When you do, I’m here.” There was a long pause, and I imagined him looking away, running his hand through his hair, unable to think of what to say next. “I love you. I hope we’ll talk later.”

  I sat there, paralyzed for a moment, then hit delete. It was like cutting off a finger.

  “December seventh, Two P.M.” All the calls seemed to have come during work hours. Not at drunk o’clock at night.

  “Hey, Doll. It’s me.”

  I hiccuped back a sob.

  “I was just hoping… Ah, I don’t know what I was hoping. I love you.”

  The message ended, and I hit delete again. It wasn’t any easier.

  The next two messages were the same, just days apart, both of them beginning, “Hey, Doll. It’s me,” and ending with “I love you.”

  Then I got to the fifth message, the final time he’d called me, the day before Christmas Eve.

  “Hi, Penny.”

  I covered my mouth to stifle the shocked wail that welled up painfully in my chest.

  “This is the last call, I promise. You don’t want to speak to me. But I had to let you know… I never lied about how much I loved you.”

  Loved. Past tense.

  “You made me so happy. And you’re worth so much more than you believe you are. Please, don’t forget that.”

  That was where the message ended. No “I love you.” No promise that if I wanted to talk, he would be there.

  I’d thought we were over before, because I hadn’t been speaking to him. I’d thought I was letting the relationship die. Instead, it had languished on life support, until Ian had been forced to pull the plug. Listening to these messages, I felt like we were actually, finally over.

  Now that his offer had expired, all I wanted was to speak to him, to tell him how stupid I’d been.

  I must have been crying louder than I thought, because Rosa knocked on my door, then barged right in. She sat beside me on my bed and pulled me into her arms, petting my head and soothing me like I was a child.
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  It was over. Ian and I were over. And I still loved him.

  * * * *

  The Elwood Rape Crisis Resource Center was a huge building on the Lower West Side. It used to be a bank before it had been remodeled into the hulking facility it was now. There were several floors for inpatient mental health services, as well as counseling offices and a temporary shelter for people who needed to escape abusive situations. There was also an education and conference center that took up most of the lower level. Sophie had given a tour to those of us who would be working the party, and she’d explained her husband’s commitment to his cause.

  He’d been all over the media lately, lauded for being open about being a survivor himself. I was impressed by how willing he was to talk about the frame of mind that had kept him from acknowledging his assault for decades and his belief that better education and a more open dialogue about rape would help victims seek help when they needed it.

  He’d spent so much of his own money on the place, he’d gone from tenth richest British person to the thirteenth. When I’d first heard those figures, I’d thought, “Oh, boo hoo,” but that had passed quickly when I’d realized exactly how much he’d been willing to part with. It was no small potatoes.

  The gala ball tonight was to raise even more money, and from the looks of the crowd, they would get it. The brightly lit atrium was filled to capacity with people in black tie. I’d seen a large percentage of the faces around me in magazines and on television.

  I was pretty sure I’d just been in the bathroom with Gillian Anderson. But it could have just been another inhumanly beautiful person.

  Guests milled around the fountain, a bronze rectangle with water that flowed down both sides, and waiters wove around with trays of champagne. The stairs curving to the second floor in a long arch could have come out of a palace in a fantasy movie, the first step an impossibly wide circle, the rest growing smaller the higher they got, until they were normal stair size.

  I wondered if Ian’s firm had a hand in designing this place, but those stairs definitely didn’t seem like his style.