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

wasn’t having any sort of squeezing chest pain at
the casual mention of Gena being my ex-wife.
    “ Yikes,” Penny said, and I
realized why number four had been bolded and underlined. She took a
deep breath and asked, “Well, how many do you want to
have?”
    “ Ex-wives?”
    She rolled her eyes. “Kids. How many kids do
you want?”
    “ Not as many as my parents
had.” I wanted to dispel that idea, right away. “Three or four, at
most. But I’d be happy with just one. You?”
    “ Three, I think. Any more
than that and they can overpower you.” She folded the foil around
the rest of her sandwich and fished a napkin from the
basket.
    “ Isn’t that the truth?” I
hesitated to ask my next question. Mostly because I didn’t want to
learn something about her that would make this new, exciting
connection futile to pursue. But I’d made this mistake once, and I
needed to know before I became too attached to the idea of Penny.
“About when, do you think, you’d like to have kids?”
    She sighed, and her mouth pressed together
like she was holding back the answer. “I’m still really young, and
I know that. But I want to have my kids young. Within the next two
to three years.”
    “ Well, it would never work
out between us,” I said with a smile, to let her know I was joking.
“I was going to wait another fifteen years.”
    “ Oh, shut up,” she laughed.
“But seriously, that’s a pretty important one. If we ended
up…”
    “ You’re right, it is
important.” Were we agreeing on when we were going to have
children? It felt like that was what was happening. There was
clearly a reason people weren’t supposed to talk about this on a
date. “I would say that if something were to work out, and I were
to find myself in a committed relationship within the next year or
so, and things were just right… I’d be ready to start. I’m not
getting any younger. I just turned fifty-three in July, so the
clock is ticking.”
    She seemed pleased with my answer. Then, her
face fell as she read the next item. “Okay, we talked about number
four, so let’s go on to number five. ‘Don’t talk about sex.’”
    “ We just did, in a
roundabout way,” I reminded her. “Unless you don’t know where
babies come from. In which case, I have some shocking news for
you.”
    Her eyes met mine. There was absolutely no
humor to be found anywhere in her expression. “Look, Ian. I have to
tell you something, and it might be a deal breaker.”
    “ All right,” I said
cautiously. “I suppose if it is, this is only our second date, so
it’s better to find out now?” I wasn’t sure of that, myself.
Sitting there next to Penny was like orbiting a beautiful star.
Though I didn’t believe in love at first sight, I did believe in
potential at first sight. It wasn’t difficult for me to imagine
being with Penny six months to a year from now. Whatever she had to
say, I would try not to make a snap judgment on it.
    She took a deep breath, which made me
extremely nervous, though I wasn’t sure what I was dreading. Then
she said, “I’m a virgin.”

Chapter Five
     
    There was no
way I’d heard her correctly. “I’m sorry, what?”
    Her cheeks practically glowed, she was
blushing so hard. She looked down at her hands twisting the napkin.
“I’ve never had sex with anyone.”
    “ Huh.” There wasn’t anything
I could say to that. I didn’t think I’d ever met a virgin over the
age of twenty. At least, not that I had known of. “Well, I hope
this isn’t a deal breaker, but I’m not.”
    She laughed, a short, sharp bark that didn’t
sound entirely comfortable. “You have no idea how often I hear
that.”
    “ I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to
offend you.” This was a bit of a minefield. I didn’t want to pry
when we still didn’t know each other well, but there was a huge
difference, in my mind, between going slow and not going anywhere.
“Do you mind if I ask why?”
    “ No, I don’t mind. The why
is, I