First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) by Abigail Barnette Page B

and
foot traffic. Yet I hadn’t seen any of it. I’d been too focused on
Penny.
    “ Yeah. I just noticed,
myself. I guess I was so caught up in—” She motioned to the basket
between us. “Here.” She picked it up and moved it, then scooted
closer. “We still have room to stretch out. I want to do something
I haven’t done in a really long time. Since Pennsylvania,
actually.”
    Through various wiggles and shimmies, she
ended up lying across the blanket, her skirt neatly tucked around
her legs, her hands folded over her stomach. She looked to me, then
nodded up at the sky dotted with thick, fluffy clouds. “You have to
look up.”
    This was a cause for mild panic. I’d never
checked in a mirror, but I was sure lying down wasn’t my most
flattering angle. Still, I did as I was told and settled down
beside her, far too conscious about my stomach. After this, I was
going to join a gym, and that was final. “I assume we’re looking
for shapes.”
    “ Yes. And then I’m going to
judge whether or not you’re a weirdo or a pervert based on the
shapes you see,” she said with a content little sigh. Her arm shot
up, and she practically shouted, “Oh my gosh, that one looks like
boobs!”
    “ I was going to say an ice
cream sundae, but look who’s the pervert now.” I tilted my head.
“The sky today looks like something out of a cartoon.”
    “ Those are cumulus clouds,”
she explained, then said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like a
know-it-all.”
    I turned my head to look at her. “You don’t
sound like a know-it-all. But you do apparently know it all. First
octopuses, now this?”
    “ Octopods,” she corrected
me. She winced and didn’t face me. “Sometimes I can be overbearing,
I know.”
    The casual nature of her
apology gave me a clue that she might be used to begging
forgiveness for her intelligence. And she was intelligent, almost
intimidatingly so. Which was probably why she felt the need to
apologize.
    Who had made her feel like that in her past?
The shitty ex-boyfriend? Her parents? Looking at her, I couldn’t
imagine why someone would want to dim the light she exuded.
    “ Hey, no. Don’t do that,” I
said, and she finally turned her face my way. I pushed up on my
elbows, praying she didn’t hear how loudly my shoulder cracked, and
said, “There’s nothing wrong with being smart, Penny. Jesus, I’m
fifty-three, and I didn’t know what that kind of cloud was. I don’t
remember what any of the clouds are. I would have said
cumulonimbus.”
    “ Nimbus is only added if
there’s precipitation involved,” she said, and caught her bottom
lip between her teeth as if to shut herself up.
    My desire to touch her presented itself in a
physical and a psychological ache. I wanted to do something to make
her feel less lonely than she looked in that moment. The smile she
gave me was forced, as though she were braced for rejection.
    “ Penny…” There wasn’t any
reason to dance around what I wanted to ask her. “Can I kiss
you?”
    Her chest rose, suspended on a breath she’d
taken but didn’t release. She nodded slowly. “Yes, please.”
    Yes,
please . Those words did something to me.
Something I definitely couldn’t act on in a public park. I rolled
to my side and brought one arm over her waist, propping myself on
my elbow to lean over her. Her eyes were wide, the pupils nearly
obscuring the brown of her irises. Her lips parted, and her hand
came up to rest on my shoulder as our mouths touched. And that was
all it was, at first, and all I had meant it to be. Just a touch,
just to test the waters. And it would have been enough; her lips
were as soft as silk, and I could have coasted on the memory of
that sensation for some time. But she lifted her head and opened
her mouth beneath mine. What the fuck was I was expected to do at
that point?
    Her tongue slipped against my bottom lip.
She tasted like the nectarine she’d just eaten, and I wanted more.
I stroked my tongue against hers,