5. Misadventures in Eating

This was my first ever real date. With an actual woman. I was going to rock it, just like I did everything else I put my mind to.

The doorbell rang and my heart leapt into my throat. Game time. I dragged in a deep breath and headed to open it, plastering on what I hoped was a casual smile.

"Hey," I greeted Willa, unable to stop my eyes from roving over her form-fitting jeans and the pretty pink sweater she was wearing. I swear I was just admiring the color and not staring at the way her boobs were so soft looking and round, just begging for me to press my face between them.

She looked incredible with those stray loose curls that weren"t pulled up into her ponytail framing her face. Willa was a beautiful, curvy woman who made my brain short-circuit just thinking about her.

Bad brain, bad, bad brain. Get on track.

"So, uhh, where are we headed?" I asked, rubbing my sweaty palms against my jeans.

"This little hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese place over on 120th. I"ll show you where to go."

"Okay, cool." I tried not to let my nerves show. This was already so far out of my experience zone. Shouldn"t I be taking her somewhere fancy for a first date?

As we headed out to my car, she looped her arm through mine, and I couldn"t breathe for a second. The sweet vanilla scent of her hair wafted around me and her body was pressed against my side. Was she trying to kill me?

Don"t screw this up, Kingman. This might be your only chance.

By the time we arrived at the run-down little shopping plaza, my palms were straight up drenched. The first date checklist I"d downloaded was basically already thrown out the window. I didn"t even know whether I was supposed to open her car door or not.

Luckily, Willa didn"t seem to notice my internal panic and grabbed my hand to tug me along as we approached a run-down looking restaurant with a strange name on the weathered sign.

"Pho seventeen," I said, reading the name out loud. "Is this a restaurant?"

"It"s not faux, like fake. It"s pronounced fuh, as in fuh-cking incredible. I hope you like it." She beamed up at me. "Supposed to be the best ph? in Denver, or so the internet reports."

Inside, it was just a small room crammed with tables and chairs, decorated with enormous photos of green tree"d islands on a lake, and a picture menu on the opposite wall. At least I"d have a clue what I was ordering, even though none of it looked even vaguely familiar. The aroma of spices did smell good though.

A tiny man around a hundred and seventy with a drawn face and glasses emerged through swinging kitchen doors. He pointed for us to choose from any one of the four top tables and went to grab us some menus.

I pulled out a chair for Willa and her eyes crinkled smiling up at me. Check one off for the first date etiquette list. I really fucking wanted to show her I could be more than an athlete. I was also a gentleman who would treat her right.

Once she was seated, I slid in next to her instead of across. Side by side was more intimate, and I stretched my arm along the back of her chair as if it was no big deal, then wrapped my arm around her shoulder. Nailed it.

Willa laughed and shook her head at me. That was not the reaction I"d been hoping for. Before I could analyze what I"d done wrong, our waiter handed over the menus. Thank god for those pictures. I"d definitely be pointing, even though there were words in English too. None of them were anything I"d ever heard of outside of the noodles and rice.

Our waiter looked bored until Willa opened her mouth. "Xin chào. T?i mu?n ??t hai t? ph? tái."

At first the waiter looked at her like she was on crack, but quickly broke into a smile and replied. "?! B?n nói ti?ng Vi?t r?t t?t! T?i r?t ?n t??ng."

I watched, awed by Willa"s expressive face and the way she talked with her hands, marveling at how at ease she seemed speaking in a whole other language.

They said a couple more things to each other, and then the waiter headed toward the kitchen, hollering something to whoever was working in the back. If I had to guess, it was something about the crazy-hot white chick in their dining room who spoke Vietnamese.

She turned to me with a grin. "I hope you don"t mind that I just ordered for us. They totally speak English, but it"s fun for me to surprise them with my mediocre-at-best Vietnamese. They never expect a chubby white girl to know a word of their language, even when I"m in Saigon."

I couldn"t resist reaching out to tuck an errant chestnut curl behind her ear. "You"ll have to teach me how to order too."

The first date guide suggested that I teach her how to do something on our date, but I doubt she wanted to know how to read a defense or memorize the play book. I"d been trained to make snap decisions on the field, so I was using that skill now to call an audible on this play and flip the script on the dating playbook just like she had on the waiter.

Before I could pull out any of the other smooth lines I"d planned to try out on her, the waiter reappeared with a tray holding a pile of leaves and sprouts, and two steaming bowls of broth with noodles and pink slices of beef. He set them down and I stared at the food I was sure was from Mars or Venus. "Isn"t this what Klingons eat?"

"This is ph? tái, a pretty classic version, not generally found on Kronos," Willa teasingly explained and grabbed a handful of the leaves, which she tore up and sprinkled across the soup.

The fact that she got my Star Trek reference made her ten times hotter.

Next, she grabbed some bright red but tiny peppers, broke them in half and added those to the broth too. "But I"m impressed that you thought of gagh, and I"m about ninety percent more attracted to you now."

Huh. I was not expecting Willa to be a Trekkie. But if that"s what she was attracted to, I was going to let my Trek flag fly. "Star Trek is my jam, Imzadi."

Willa paused, her hand mid-air, and gave me a look that I absolutely couldn"t interpret. "I"m way more Lwaxana than Deanna."

Ah, she was testing me to see if I was really a Trekkie or not. "If I remember correctly, they both had a thing for Riker, and I"m the man when it comes to throwing my leg over a chair and sitting in it backward."

She gave me the tiniest of nods, licked her lips but didn"t reply, and went back to preparing her bowl of gagh. I was both planning our next date where we watched whichever Star Trek episode or movie she deemed was the best in full surround sound in my living room, hopefully while making out, while also watching in stunned fascination as she built up the concoction in front of her.

She added bean sprouts, some deep brown sauce out of a squeeze bottle, and then bright red Sriracha in thick swirls, topping the whole thing off with a squeeze of lime.

So weird. But it did smell great and not at all like hot worms.

"We"ll have to Star Trek and chill sometime, huh? Now you try," she urged, pushing a plate of garnishes across to me. "I"ll walk you through it."

My brain was stuck on the "and chill" part of her offer and I thoroughly mangled several sprigs of herbs and added way too much Sriracha, until I had a questionable-looking mound in my bowl. "I"ll provide the Star Trek and you bring the chill."

Yeah. I"d just said that. Dumb. I"m a football player not a Casanova, Jim.

Luckily, there was a fork and one of those big Chinese-style spoons, so I didn"t have to embarrass myself too badly trying to eat with the chopsticks. I"d made enough of a fool out of myself tonight.

Willa did use her chopsticks, and I watched her loosen the pile of noodles and mix all the garnishes and goop we"d piled on top into the broth. I did the same but with my fork.

"Bon appétit," she said and deftly lifted a pile of noodles from the bowl into her mouth, slurping them right up. I maybe stared at her mouth for a minute too long before I ducked my head and did my best to twirl some noodles onto my fork. One bite, and I nearly moaned out loud. "Oh man, this is fuh-cking delicious."

Willa grinned around a mouthful of noodles. "Told ya. Denver has quite the Vietnamese community, and that means great Vietnamese food right here in the Rocky Mountains. Who knew?"

I nodded vigorously, slurping up another big bite of the savory soup. Drops of the broth dribbled down the noodles hanging from my mouth, off my chin, and onto my shirt. So much for dating manners. I slurped those noodles right up and licked my lips.

"Hey, Hayes?" Willa"s voice had dropped to a low, sultry register that made my body lock up. I glanced over to find her watching me intently, that full bottom lip caught between her teeth.

"Yeah?"

Leaning in close, her eyes danced with mischief. "If you"re that enthusiastic about slurping noodles, I can only imagine how good you"ll be at other things you can do with your mouth."

Oh, ho. My dick went nuclear at her brazen innuendo, arousal zinging straight through my heart and down my spine. So, we were onto the sexually charged flirting phase of the date, were we? We"d skipped a few steps on my checklist, but I was down for the changeup if it meant she was thinking about all the things my mouth could do to hers and her body.

Not that I knew what I was doing, but once again, I"d learn, and I was always a straight A student.

I went to lean in and whisper in her ear that I was particularly good at using my mouth for entertaining purposes, but instead, I upended the tray with the bottles of sauce and the full jar of chili oil.

"Fuck a duck." I cut the litany of swear words I wanted to say and blinked down at the hot mess that was now my crotch.

Willa burst into peals of laughter, drawing looks from the other patrons. I couldn"t even be mad, not with how light and free her humor was. She reached over to dab at the spots on my jeans with her napkin, still giggling.

I grabbed her wrist and held her hand in place about two centimeters from my dick, both wanting her to touch me and knowing better than that. "Willa."

The words I wanted to say, that she shouldn"t touch me there right now, wouldn"t come out. It was only her name, and that was a strained whisper.

"Hayes." She was still smiling, but there was a sultry twinkle in her eyes and her voice was just a whisper too. "Maybe we should get you home and out of those pants."

"Yeah, that"s an excellent idea." I pulled out my wallet and threw a hundred dollar bill on the table. That should cover the food and the mess.

Willa grabbed my hand and pulled me back out to the car so fast, you"d think she was on fire. I certainly was. Thank goodness it was a super short ride back to my place. Not that I had a game plan for this. The stuff I"d been studying must have been old-fashioned as shit, because it implied there wouldn"t be any action until date three at the earliest.

I hadn"t even read up on the first kiss yet. Damn it. I called upon my ancestors to bestow upon me natural skill and ability to kiss the daylights out of a girl.

I"d planned to romance her, woo her, court her, so she could fall… well, maybe not in love with me, but at least in lust. Whatever it was we were doing now was a whole hell of a lot more fun. She made my head spin, and I didn"t know whether I loved it or wanted to throw up from being on her roller coaster ride.

No one in my life was like Willa.

I pulled into the driveway in front of my house, and before I even turned off the car, she twisted, rolled across the bench seat, and straddled my lap. I was too stunned to warn her about getting her pants messy on the leftover condiments on my crotch.

"Good thing you have such long legs, or I"d have a steering wheel up my ass." She wiggled said ass and honked the horn, which had her laughing again. I loved how much she smiled and laughed when she was with me.

I"d tell her so, but I was apparently having an out-of-body experience, because I couldn"t move or talk or breathe or think with her on my lap.

Willa cupped my face between her palms and leaned in, brushing her lips across one of my cheekbones, which ignited my face to the temperature of lava, then glanced at me and smiled like the Cheshire Cat before she pressed her lips to the other side. "I like you, Hayes Kingman."

"I like you too, a hell of a lot."

"I can tell." She ran her teeth over her bottom lip. "Unless that"s a football you"ve got in your pants."

It was not.

"Have you ever done this before?" I don"t know why I blurted that out, and I knew it was a mistake the second it hit my lips.

"Had sex in the front seat of a car?" She grinned and shook her head. "No. Have you?"

"I"ve..." Shit, was I supposed to admit I"d never had sex in a car or anywhere else? This was the one instance in my life I was not the head of the class. I wasn"t ready for this. I hadn"t studied how to please a woman in bed yet. I thought I"d have more time.

But if this was what Willa wanted, I was ready to learn on the job. So I didn"t say anything and simply shook my head.

She stared deep into my eyes, all the way to my soul, and then blinked a few times. "Oh. You, sweet, sweet man."

Fuck.

Everything in Willa"s body language and face changed. She moved off my lap and opened the car door on her side.

Fucking fuck fuckity fuck fuck.

I got out too, my mind racing through scenarios to assure her I was not some inexperienced simp who wouldn"t be able to get her off. Willa tipped her head to the side and frowned,jerking her head toward the living room windows. "My cat"s here again."

I was buying cat treats for that cat, because this was my way back in, or rather how to get her to come inside where I could redouble my efforts, but on my turf. I shrugged and tried hard to keep the smile off my face. "Oh no. How does he keep getting in?"

"I swear that cat is part ninja." Willa wrinkled her nose and waited for me to open the door.

"Be careful, he"s..." I watched Willa take in the line of gaming chairs, multiple monitors, and stacks of consoles carefully placed in position for our weekly live streams. My not so grownup side was on full display for her. Maybe this whole idea of having her on my turf wasn"t so smart after all.

"You guys have a pretty intense setup. You and your brothers play a lot?" Willa said, giving me a sidelong glance.

I rubbed the back of my neck. "Uhh yeah. The twins, Isak, and I live stream games together sometimes."

"That"s... interesting." She turned back to the shelf, hands on her hips. "So how are we extracting the furry fugitive?"

The gray and white furball was perched atop one of the entertainment center shelves, grooming himself with a smug look.I tried reaching up and snagging the cat from the shelf, but he crammed himself so far back that I"d have to take the whole unit apart to get to him.

After staring at the layout a long moment, Willa grabbed one of the gaming remotes and unplugged it. "Oh, Seven. I"ve got a snakey snake for you to chase."

She got down on her hands and knees and started moving the cord back and forth, swishing it across the floor.

I forgot how to talk as she crawled across the floor away from me with her thick thighs and ass wiggling in time to the way she moved the cord.

"Quit ogling my butt and make yourself useful." She looked up at me from the floor with a grin that was insanely suggestive. "Any second now, Seven is going to try to jump down here and capture the cord snake. You gotta grab him and hold him tight."

I wanted to hold something tight alright, and it wasn"t her cat.

The cat stuck his head out and did his own butt wiggle. He jumped just like she said he would, and with a deft snatch, I plucked Seven out of the air. The moment I had him tucked under my arm like a football, once again, he started purring.I had a feeling this was going to become a routine for us, and I wouldn"t mind one bit.

Willa got up, unfortunately for me and my fantasy, and put her hands on her hips. "Seven, if I didn"t know better, I"d think you were doing this on purpose."

She took her cat from me and went straight for the front door. I wanted so badly for her to stay, but this date was over, and we both knew it. "I"ll walk you home."

I thought she was going to refuse, but then she nodded and gave me a soft smile that gave me fucking hope. It was only fifty yards around the corner from my house to hers, and she said a quick goodnight and disappeared.

God dammit. I was not used to blowing it, and that"s exactly what I"d just done. Instead of heading back to my house, I jogged over to Everett"s, hoping he was alone. Even though he rarely was on a game day. But there weren't any other cars in the driveway, which I took as a good sign.

I found him in the backyard, sipping a Fat Tire and listening to some Kelsey Best. Again. Unusual, but I was simply happy he was here for the consult I needed.

"What"s the best porn?" I was enrolling myself in the advanced level courses from here on out. I didn"t ever want to feel unprepared when it came to Willa again.

"That"s a bit personal, kid." He took a sip of his beer and turned the music off. "Just go search the categories on CornHob if you"re bored or looking for a new kink."

"No, I mean the best porn to learn how to please a woman."