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

want to respect that.”
    That was sweet. In theory. He was still
turning me down, and I couldn’t help but worry this was all because
I’d lost my temper at those women, and now he was reevaluating me,
in general. But that was stupid, because he’d just said he liked
me. So what was the problem?
    “ I’ve got an idea,” he said
suddenly. He pointed toward the two teenagers down by the water,
drawing the castle. “I’ll be right back.”
    He walked off with purpose, calling out,
“Hello there,” and crouched down to talk to them. I wasn’t sure
what he was doing, but he took out his wallet and gave them a bill.
Was he buying drugs?
    One of them ripped a few pages out of their
sketchbook and passed it to Ian, then took a pencil behind their
ear and handed it over. Ian stuck out his hand, gave both the
people a hearty handshake, stood, and came back like nothing weird
had just taken place.
    “ Um…what was that?” I asked
him once he got close enough to hear me.
    “ Oh, those are my new
friends, Nate and Lexi. Lexi was kind enough to sell me her
sketchbook.” He held up the pencil. “What do you say? May I draw
you?”
    I took a breath and made a surprised noise I
couldn’t control. “Wow. Yeah. I can’t believe you would pay someone
for their sketchbook, just to draw me.”
    He shrugged. “Money well-spent. It gives me
an excuse to stare at you without being creepy or uncool.”
    I pulled my legs criss-cross applesauce
beneath my skirt and sat up straight. “Okay, but if you’re going to
draw me, you have to make my nose a little shorter.”
    “ Never. Your nose is
perfect.” He sat across from me and flipped the wire-bound
sketchbook open. Then he looked up at me, and I wasn’t sure what I
was supposed to do. I must have looked nervous, because he smiled
and said, “Just relax. You’re not sitting for your presidential
portrait.”
    “ I’ve never had anyone draw
me before. It’s kind of nerve wracking.” And sexy. To have someone
scrutinize you so closely was exhilarating. I’d never experienced
that before, since I’d spent large enough chunks of my life trying
to be seen but not looked at. Like a pretty vase or
something.
    God, that was sad. It was even more sad that
it took a virtual stranger being nice enough to just look at me,
really look at me instead of letting his eyes pass over me on the
way to the next thing to realize how miserable my view of myself
had been until that moment.
    “ It’s nerve wracking for
you? I’m the one performing here.” His gaze darted down to the
page, and he made his first marks. I couldn’t see, but it seemed
like he’d drawn a really fast circle. The pencil jerked around in
short, sharp, but very deliberate movements. He kept looking up at
me, and his expression was inscrutable. I found myself doubting
every part of my face. When he looked too long at my chin, was it
because it was too prominent? What did he think of my lips, that
his eyebrow twitched up like it did?
    I knew what I thought
of his lips.
    The silence was suddenly stifling. The park
seemed loud and irritating, when it hadn’t been before. I had to
distract myself, even if it meant distracting Ian. “I’m trying to
not say anything. I don’t want to break your concentration.”
    His brow furrowed as he studied the page.
“You’re not going to break anything, Doll. I’m almost finished,
anyway.”
    Doll ? Was that a cute pet name? It was our second date, so I
assumed he used it for just any woman he was attracted to. It still
gave me warm feelings in my stomach. “Doll?”
    His face went beet red, and he kept his gaze
trained on his drawing. “It’s like honey, or baby. It just slipped
out. More creepy second date behavior on my part.”
    “ I’ll just interpret it as
you being comfortable enough with me that you could accidentally
give me a cute nickname.” I tried to imagine six months from now,
hearing him call me “Doll” every day. I could have melted. “Where
did