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

Author:Abigail Barnette [Barnette, Abigail]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

To my great disappointment, Penny had a bit of business to take care of at her office—Sophie and her friend were stricter bosses than I’d imagined, making their assistant work on a national holiday—but it gave me a chance to gain some much needed spiritual guidance.

I didn’t call Danny right away. Instead, I cleaned up the whisky spills from the night before, made my bed, then grabbed my rosary and headed up to the deck.

Gena had never understood my need to pray. She’d never disparaged it, but she had never seemed quite comfortable with it, and that had, in turn, made me feel quite uncomfortable doing it near her, or when she was aware of it. So, I’d hidden it, telling her I was going up to sit on the deck or in the enclosed solarium to read, and she’d been perfectly happy with that explanation. Now, even though I was alone, it seemed natural to sit in the sun, surrounded by God’s creation of land and sky rather than my creation of steel and concrete, and meditate on the joyful mysteries. I put on my sunglasses and sat on the chaise, kicked my feet up, crossed myself, and tried to clear my head as I methodically mumbled my way through the Apostle’s Creed.

I made it halfway through the second Hail Mary of the first decade before I realized I was drifting again and again to thoughts of Penny. Can you really hold me accountable for this, Lord? You threw her into my path. The chain of beads sagged in my hands, and I tipped my head back against the cushion. Danny would tell me that if something was interrupting my prayer, that was the thing I needed to pray about.

I love her. And I think it’s too soon. And I’m too old for her. I thought of 2 Corinthians, the bit that said, “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” Renewed was putting it lightly. I wouldn’t say I was wasting away; my knees popped every time I stood, and if I got a cold it was a month-long event these days, but wasting away was a long way off, I hoped. Long enough to be a good partner to Penny? To start a family with her?

If I was going to start a family with anyone, why not a woman who was younger? Just in case? It was a grim view, but if we were to have a baby in two years, I would be in my seventies before the kid graduated high school. If I found a woman my own age, it would be the same. And it would be all fertility treatments and horror, the kind Gena had wanted to avoid, and even then, a woman having a baby in her mid-fifties was an exception, not an expectation. Penny wanted to be a young mother, and I wanted to be a father, soon.

Then again, Penny could be hit by a bus in five years, and I would still be in the same position.

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