First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) (24 page)

Penny’s father didn’t seem to care about the
money as much, asking, “That must be hard on your personal
relationships. Have you ever been married?”

“
I have. Recently divorced.”
I wasn’t ashamed of it. Well, I was ashamed of it, at least, the
dishonesty between Gena and I that had led us to the tipping point.
But that wasn’t any of their business.

James just grunted an, “Mm-hmm,” in
response.

“
I’m sorry to hear that,”
Deborah said, but whatever kindness or sincerity I may have
detected in those words immediately evaporated when she added,
“I’ve heard spousal support is quite costly in this
state.”

You’ve got to be fucking
kidding me.
First, she’d tried to lure me
into her snide judgments about Penny—over a fucking haircut!—and
now she was openly fishing for details on my income.

“
Why don’t you just ask me
how much money I have?” The moment the sentence was out of my
mouth, I regretted it, because Penny tried to laugh it off. I
should have been
playing
it cool, not
losing
my cool. These were her
parents, and while I didn’t care for them, she probably did. For
her sake, I would swallow all sorts of overly personal
inquiries.

The waiter came back to take our orders,
blissfully unaware the he’d waded into the most chilly dinner south
of the north pole. Though I’d resolved to be polite, no matter what
Penny’s mother threw at me, I couldn’t help getting a slight dig in
while I could. Before the waiter walked away, I added, “Tonight is
on me. As a gesture of gratitude for having such a wonderful
daughter.”

I didn’t take my gaze from Deborah’s as I
said it. I wanted her to feel every ounce of the anger that had
been steadily growing in me since she’d disparaged Penny’s haircut
and called her a problem child. And they seemed like the type whose
free meal would taste like ashes knowing that the person who’d paid
for it felt he made more money than them.

“
Hey, here’s something fun.
Ian comes from a really large family. Isn’t that interesting?”
Penny was that one determined sunbeam that thought it could chase
away an entire storm front.

Deborah reached for her water glass. “Oh?
How large?”

“
I’ve got two brothers and
four sisters.”
And two dead
ones
, the cruel, ever-present voice of my
memory taunted.

“
Do they all live in
America?” James asked. Maybe his disdain would be tempered by the
fact that we were the immigrants of the European
variety.

I shook my head. “Just one sister. She and
her husband live in Brooklyn, not far from me.”

“
Such a large family.”
Deborah chuckled and shook her head a little, a body gesture that
read,
there but for the grace of my higher
social station…

“
Yes, well, we’re Catholic,
so it’s to be expected,” I told her, the way I always followed up
the revelation of my large family.

Penny’s body went still, as
though she were avoiding the T-Rex in
Jurassic Park
. Deborah’s facial
expression was similarly frozen. I wondered for a moment if she
would tell me that her father had been murdered by a nun, she
seemed so offended.

“
Really?” she asked. “And
are you…religious?”

She could have asked me if I was a pedophile
and sounded less disgusted. Prying into my financial affairs was
one thing, but I wouldn’t put up with someone criticizing my faith.
I was no fucking St. Peter, and I wouldn’t deny Christ for this
woman. Though the answer seemed obvious, I turned her question back
on her. “I would say I am, yes. I attend church regularly. And you?
Are you religious?”

Now it was
her
turn to feel
insulted. Good. “No. I don’t have a taste for it.”

“
A bunch of superstitious
nonsense,” James grumbled. Was his shtick being the cranky old man
in the corner or something? If so, he should have been winning
Oscars left and right for it.

Penny leapt to my defense. Or, more aptly,
Penny threw herself on the conversational grenade. “Well, I’m
pretty superstitious.”

“
Against our best efforts.”
Her mother’s eyes rolled so hard I was surprised they didn’t detach
and pop out onto the table. “Believe me, darling, we haven’t
forgotten.”

Jesus. The woman couldn’t address her
daughter without passing up the chance to criticize her. I couldn’t
imagine why these people bothered to speak to Penny at all, or her
to them. The more they talked, the more Penny shrank in on herself.
The wonderful light that always seemed to surround her wasn’t just
hidden under a bushel. It was crushed under a mammoth load of
bullshit.

“
You can’t really plead
innocence, yourself,” Penny said, with a laugh that was obviously
forced. “You believe in the family curse.”

“
The family curse?” Her
mother frowned. “There isn’t any family curse.”

“
I’m intrigued.” I turned to
Penny and smiled, hoping she would sense the encouragement in it.
“What’s the family curse?”

My mouth and my heart were
saying very different things. I couldn’t have cared less about some
family legend. I didn’t even want to consider that the people
sitting across the table from us were her family, at all.
Don’t listen to them, Penny. Look at me. Look at
me and understand how incredible I believe you are.
There was no way to communicate that to her at the
moment, and I felt like a caged animal. All I wanted was to spring
free and shred her parents to pieces, so they could never make her
feel the things I saw in her eyes.

“
I’m dying to hear it
myself,” Deborah said, while James sat in serious
contemplation.

“
You know, the curse where
if a woman in your family sleeps with a guy, that means he’s her
true love, and if you do anything to mess it up,
you’ll…never…”

Oh, Penny.

“
Oh…” Deborah made a
disappointed noise with her tongue. “That story? Darling, that was
years ago.”

“
I know, but—”

“
We made all that up,”
Deborah continued, exasperated. Not because she’d been caught it a
lie, it seemed, but because Penny had been stupid enough to believe
it.

“
After what happened with
Ashley, we couldn’t be too cautious,” James added.

I didn’t know who Ashley was, and I didn’t
know what the consequences of the supposed family curse were. But I
did know from Penny’s quiet, “You… You lied?” that it had been
something she’d taken very seriously.

“
Outright forbidding you
from mooning over boys wouldn’t have worked,” Deborah explained,
almost smug at her clever parenting.

I wanted to throw my water
in her face. Penny’s attitudes toward sexual intimacy had never
seemed particularly puzzling to me. They had simply existed as
another facet of her personality, and I’d had no reason to question
it. Now, it seemed clear as day: Penny wasn’t a virgin because
she
wanted
to be.
Penny was a virgin because she’d though she
had
to be.

“
You were so obsessed with
tarot cards and horoscopes, so we exploited that a little,” Deborah
went on.

“
We didn’t think you’d keep
on believing it.” James sipped his wine, obviously put out by the
fact that his daughter had fallen for their lie too effectively.
“It was like the Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus.”

“
The Tooth Fairy,” I found
myself echoing. Beneath the table, my hands shook with rage. I
couldn’t punch Penny’s father. I certainly couldn’t punch Penny’s
mother. I couldn’t punch anyone; I wasn’t the punching type. But it
would have felt very, very good to.

“
But for years…” The hurt in
Penny’s voice may as well have been an actual knife through my
heart. “You guys, I’ve been afraid my entire adult
life—”

“
We told you that you took
all that superstitious nonsense too seriously,” Deborah said, her
voice going up toward the end of her sentence.

They had told Penny some lie about never
finding true love if she had sex with… Well, I wasn’t sure what the
stipulations were. But they’d lied to her to discourage her from a
perfectly natural part of life, and judging from Penny’s reaction,
she hadn’t wanted to abstain from it, at all. Now, they were trying
to blame her for their lies?

I couldn’t let that stand. “But you actively
encouraged this superstition, didn’t you?”

“
Penny…developed early,”
James said, clearing his throat as though the very thought of his
daughter reaching adulthood was disgusting to him. “And she was
never the brightest bulb when it came to people. Animals, yes,
science…but she didn’t exercise the best judgment.”

Deborah nodded, as though screwing up your
child’s attitudes toward sex in a way that had a lasting impact on
their lives was a totally normal thing to do.

Granted, having grown up Catholic, I wasn’t
entirely foreign to the concept. But this instance seemed
particularly cruel.

“
We were sure she was going
to be an unwed teenage mother, and we did not have the patience for
that, at all,” she added.

They hadn’t had patience? For parenting the
child they’d chosen to bring into the world? I could see the
problem, now. They’d wanted a child, but they’d wanted a child who
would live up to their very narrow criteria for acceptability.
“This has affected Penny her entire adult life, you realize,” I
said, grasping at straws to make them understand what a horrible
thing they’d done to this woman, who I loved fiercely enough that I
wanted to flip the table we were sitting at, I was so enraged on
her behalf. “You don’t feel even a little guilty about that?”

There was Deborah’s laugh again, the
dismissive burble that sounded more intentionally mean every time
it vomited from her rubber band neck. “Try parenting a
disappointing child, Mr. Pratchett. Then, you’ll understand that
desperate measures must sometimes be taken.”

Penny’s head sank on her shoulders. Her gaze
fixed on her lap. She looked like a child berated over bad marks at
school. I wanted to comfort her, but how could I without giving her
parents an opening to further opine on all of her flaws?

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…”