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

also
do.”
    Yeah, right. “Beyoncé lives in this city. But
I appreciate the endorsement.”
    There were steps into the pool, but Ian was
by the ladder, so I used that instead, trying hard not to slip and
fall like an idiot as I eased myself down backwards. The water was
warm enough I didn’t do anything super uncool like shriek or tiptoe
once my feet touched down. “Isn’t this nice, though?” I asked,
sinking down to cover my shoulders with water. It felt uneven to be
half-in, half-out. “It’s not crowded like those pools you have to
pay for.”
    “ And much less Axe body
spray, I’m sure.”
    I dunked my head under. If I
were alone, I would reemerge like Ariel breaking the surface
in The Little Mermaid . That seemed just slightly dramatic, so I came up and pushed
my hair back like a normal person. Ian was still just standing
there. A sudden realization occurred to me. “Can you
swim?”
    “ That’s something you should
have asked before you got me into this pool, isn’t it?” He pointed
at the number on the warning sign on the wall. “It’s only five feet
deep. I think we’ll be fine.”
    I held my hand up to indicate exactly where
the water would hit me, which was somewhere around my eyes. “You’ll
be fine. I’ll be in trouble.”
    “ I promise I won’t let you
drown,” he vowed then plunged under the water himself.
    I kicked onto my back and settled into a
float, staring at the canopy overhead. When he resurfaced, I mused,
“You won’t let me drown. That’s in my top five must-haves for
boyfriends.”
    He drifted toward the deep end. “One of my
top five requirements for girlfriends is buoyancy. How long can you
float like that?”
    Having your ears underwater is not conducive
to conversation. I’d caught his words, but they’d been muffled. I
stood, laughing. “For a while. I wouldn’t try to do it across the
English Channel or anything.”
    He smirked. “So, you’re vetting me as a
potential boyfriend?”
    That was a weird question. Why else would I
have gone out with him in the first place? Even weirder, what was
he doing with me if he wasn’t interested in being my boyfriend? “Of
course I am. That’s what dating is about, right? You go on a date
with someone to see if you like them enough to have a second date.
Then you go out on the second and subsequent dates to find out if
you want to see them exclusively. And then, you start seeing them
exclusively—”
    “ And they move in, you spend
a few years in that type of domestic bliss, then you get married,
grow apart, and finally divorce.” The words rolled out of him on a
tide of bitterness that made my heart ache for him. He looked
immediately remorseful. “I’m sorry, like I said, it’s—”
    “ Been a rough day,” I
finished for him. Could I ever sympathize. After Brad had dumped
me, I’d spent the next few weeks in a constant state of
anti-romantic protest. I’d gone along on Sophie’s bachelorette
weekend in Vegas, and it had been fun, but the whole time, I’d been
silently resenting being around three people who were madly in
love, two of which were in love with each other. “Believe me, after
what I went through with Brad, I was ready to give up on dating and
other people in general before Sophie set me up with you. But I
don’t share your unhappy view of the relationship evolution
chain.”
    “ You’ve been cured of that
pessimism?” There was more disbelief than hope in his
question.
    “ I was never really
pessimistic to begin with.” I smiled, because I wanted badly to
convince him, though no one had been able to convince me back then.
“I believe that, someday, I’m going to find the person I’m meant to
be with. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have gone out with
you.”
    “ Fair enough,” he conceded.
“For what it’s worth, I’m very glad you did.”
    “ I am, too.” And I was. I
really was. Even without the numerology report to back it up, even
without the fortune cookie that