Practice Makes Perfect: A Novel

The moment I’m finally inside Will’s room, panic sets in.

Did I just willingly enter the room of the great seducer (which no one calls him but absolutely should) Will Griffin? I’m not prepared enough for this. What if he proposes we take our lessons to the bed? Oh gosh—what if he was serious about those condoms, and he intends for us to sleep together?! Am I going to be able to resist the temptation of all that is Will? Do I want to resist? If I didn’t, it would require admitting I’m still a virgin, and I think that’s something I’d rather he never know.

But then I look around at his room and relax with a little laugh. There’s one of Mabel’s standard quilts on the bed (courtesy of Gemma’s quilt shop, Comfort Quilts), and there are several decorative trinkets on the dresser and bedside tables. A random owl. An antique clock. A pillow embroidered with the words Pretty as a Peach sitting in the middle of the neatly made bed where the top edge of the sheet is folded down primly. The only evidence that Will stays here is the cell phone charger plugged into the wall and the folded clothes on the dresser. Other than those, nothing suggests a modern-day version of a rake is staying here.

Clearly, I have nothing to worry about.

The door suddenly opens and Will rushes in, closing it behind him.

He leans back against it like he just outran a bear. In his butterfly hand is a piece of white siding. “Damn, Annie, what are you turning me into? I’m now at a new level of awful after having to deliberately rip off a piece of Mabel’s siding before they all came to look! Of course I told her I’d fix it for her—but I feel like I’m going to have bad dreams after seeing how proud she looked at me for offering to fix it after I was the one who ripped it off.” He’s still wearing the same black cargo pants and green tee from this morning, but now he has a roguish, excited smile in place. It fades when he takes in my expression. “Why are you smiling like that?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” I say, waving him off and still not able to hold back my chuckles.

He cocks his head skeptically and tosses the piece of siding onto the bed. “Okay, it’s clearly not nothing. What’s with the laughter?”

I shake my head and give in to it, laughing until little mist droplets form in my eyes. “It’s silly. But I was a little nervous to hang out with you in your room tonight because of your reputation. But then when I realized you’re living in one of the Golden Girls’ rooms, I didn’t feel so worried anymore.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he says, looking highly offended now. “Why don’t you feel worried anymore?”

“Because!” I say, laughing again as I think of Will trying to seduce me on top of that blue-and-white-checkered quilt. “Look at this room! The only thing you could hold in here is a Bible study.”

“Psh,” he says looking away and then back again with a grin I’ve come to know as a precursor. “You think this decor matters one bit? If I wanted to seduce you, the frills on a pillow aren’t going to stop me.”

“Nope—sorry, I call bull crap,” I say, sitting on the end of the very wholesome and unsexy bed. “Here I was thinking that Will Griffin would live somewhere with satin sheets and a record player in the corner where he could offer to show me his favorite slow jams that would set the mood. A real den of iniquity—”

“Well, I don’t love that name.”

“But really, it’s just getting me in the mood to go to the farmers market! Does this thing even…” I bounce on the mattress a few times. “Oh my gosh! It doesn’t even squeak, Will! What kind of a ladies’ man are you?!” I lose it, falling back on the mattress with a devastating laugh.

He watches me with a smile. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Quite. Because, you, sir, are a disgrace to bad boys everywhere by living in a room like this! I’m tempted to take pictures of you standing there with the Bless This Mess embroidery behind you and then sell them to BuzzFeed.”

Will steps toward me with a lazy smile. “All right. Get your ass up.”

I feel drugged and loose-limbed from joy as I sit up and take his outstretched hand. “Where are we going? To make some jam in the kitchen?”

But then my breath catches in my lungs when we get to the door and Will whirls me around so that my back is flat against it. “Because you’ve insulted my very carefully practiced reputation, your lessons start now. I’m going to demonstrate a few things—skipping lesson one, which I’d planned as light first date flirting—and we’ll jump all the way to lesson seven: postdate seduction for when you’re ready to take someone to bed.”

Oh Lordy.

“But first, I believe in absolute consent at all times. So I need to know if it’s okay for me to touch your hands—and only your hands?”

I swallow and nod, feeling my pulse throb against my neck.

“Words, Annie. I need to hear you say yes.”

I clear my throat. “Yes.”

“Great.” He steps closer—so close that his chest is almost brushing mine, and his bluish-gray eyes are searing through me. That suddenly feels like way too much distance. Will’s gaze holds mine—mesmerizing me as he intertwines our fingers. Slowly. Intentionally. Never has my skin felt so alive.

His hands are big and calloused and warm. Slowly he raises both of my hands above my head and presses them back against the door. Not too hard, not too soft. Just the right amount of pressure. Speaking of pressure, my body is now dying for him to close the gap between us. To press me to him and…I don’t know, just do something!

My lips part and Will’s eyes lower—watching the moment as it happens. The smallest of curves touches the corners of his mouth before he drops his lips to the side of my face. His breath brushes against the shell of my ear and tickles every nerve ending in my body—fertilizing them and somehow growing more. New sensations I’ve never known surface in the pit of my stomach and…lower. He smells so good. Feels so good.

“First things first…” Sweet molasses, his quiet, rumbly bedroom voice is hot. “It’s never about the room. The room doesn’t play a part in sex.” His voice is deep and amused and confident. This is exactly how I imagined he’d be in this situation. No—better.

As promised, he touches nothing but my hands. I am slowly perishing.

He continues—his breath hot and heavy against the side of my face. “In a bind, a closet, a bathroom, even a car will do just fine.” His mouth lowers even farther to breathe against my neck now. Never touching me, just breathing. “Decor doesn’t matter.” He moves up my throat as he speaks, and on to the other side. I angle my head like I want to make sure he reaches every spot and crevice. “Because if I’ve effectively captured her attention through the date, from the moment we’re alone, her pulse will be racing, and her mind will be absorbed with touch and breath and so much desire that the color of my damn bedspread won’t even cross her mind once.”

His mouth is at my ear again, and his hands continue to hold mine pinned above my head with a delicious gentle pressure that makes me squirm. One I didn’t know I liked. Didn’t know I needed. Now I’m afraid I’ll feel deprived of it for the rest of my life.

Will moves from my ear, fanning his breath across my jaw to hover just in front of my lips now. “Annie, open your eyes and look at me,” he commands, and until that point, I didn’t even realize my eyes were shut.

When my eyelids spring open, I feel drunk. His gray gaze is dark now and heavy on mine. I feel desperate for him to tip forward and kiss me. His thumb tracks back and forth over the inside of my wrist. I barely remember what I was here for today or what my name is, for that matter. All I know is my pulse is drumming loudly in my ear, and it seems to be saying the same thing over and over again. Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me.

With his mouth only a centimeter apart from mine, he smiles. “Believe me?”

I nod silently.

“Great,” he whispers and then releases my hands. My arms fall limply at my sides because I am a sack of Jell-O at this point. Will, however, is completely unaffected and goes back to the couch. “Come sit down so we can talk about the lesson plan.”

For a moment I can’t do anything but stand here and lean against the door. My insides are blazing. My stomach is all twisted and bunched, and I feel absurdly let down that he’s over there and I’m over here.

“H-how did you do that?” I say, finally finding my voice as my feet carry me in a daze back to the couch. My brain isn’t working right yet, so instead of sitting, I stand here like a robot waiting for its next command.

Will grins and hooks a finger in the baggy back pocket of my shorts and tugs me down to the couch. I sit, wide-eyed.

“Confidence,” he says, picking up his laptop and opening it.

I lean over and shut it again.

He chuckles.

“But how?! What if you don’t feel confident?” I’m not sure I’ve ever felt confident a day in my life.

“You fake it, Annie.”

“No way.” I shake my head in disbelief. “You don’t fake that kind of confidence. All of that…” I circle my finger toward the door where the ghost of Annie who had never been seductively entranced by Will Griffin still lives, “…was natural for you.”

He grins. “Not true. I was nervous.”

I take in his pirate eyes with the dangerous black rim around his irises, the tattoos wrapping down his arm with the masculine veins that universally turn everyone on, and last but not least, the rebellious wave of hair that flops down above his brow every time he rakes his hand through it. “I don’t believe you for a second.”

Will’s eyes narrow on my face, jaws clenching as he debates something. And then Will raises his hand level between us. That’s when I see it. His hand, that beautiful, strong, inked hand, is trembling. Will Griffin is shaking from touching me.

“If I waited until I felt confident to live my life and do the things I want to do, I’d never live.” He stares into my eyes. “This lesson is one as old as time: Fake it till you make it. If you want something, pretend you’re the kind of person who’s not scared of it.”

I let out a huh sound as I sink back against the couch. “You do that?”

“All the time,” he says, still looking at me. “You should have seen me the first time I went skydiving. I actually thought I was going to shit my pants on the plane.” We both laugh. “But I told myself I was Tom Cruise at that moment and somehow it worked. Ended up being one of the most fun things I’ve ever done.”

I’m mesmerized by him. I pull my legs up onto the cushion, fully facing him. “You seem like a thrill seeker.”

He smiles. “I absolutely am. It’s addicting.”

“Were you that way as a kid too?”

Will looks away. “You mean when I dropped out of elementary school and joined the circus to work as a lion tamer? Definitely…”

Okay, that’s the second time he’s deflected a question regarding his childhood. Apparently, that means any conversation surrounding his adolescence is off the table. Interesting.

“What other adventurous things have you done?”

He takes in a deep breath, his chest expanding under his soft T-shirt. Oddly, my brain nose-dives to how nice it would feel to sink onto him and rest right there—in the crook of his shoulder. To have his arms encircle me and just hold me.

“Let’s see…during Amelia’s last world tour, I went ATV riding on the Atlantis Trail in South Africa. I’m scuba certified and have gone diving in a lot of places—but I think Mexico was my favorite. And hiking in Red Rock was awesome.”

“That’s a lot of ing words,” I say, suddenly realizing how little I’ve done in comparison to him. Once again, Will unhelpfully reads my face. He knocks his knuckles against my knee.

“There’s still time for you to do anything you want to do.”

I shrug. “I don’t think adventure is the life for me. Anyone who knows me will attest that I’m more built for a steady, safe routine. My dream is to get married to a nice man and have babies whom I can eventually pass down my flower shop to. Soccer games on the weekend and harvest parties in the fall. And all of it taking place right here in Rome. That’s my future.”

He holds my gaze and smiles softly. “Hmm.”

“What?”

He tips his head to the side. “It’s just that I’m not totally sure what you said is true.”

“It is,” I say, feeling a frown between my brows.

“Okay.”

“Really!” My voice is an octave higher than usual. “That’s what I want.”

He tips a brow, looks down, and opens his laptop. “If you say so. Now, for these lessons. Do you want to—”

I slam the laptop shut. “You really don’t believe me?”

The challenge in his smiling gaze cuts directly to mine. “No. I really don’t.”

“Why not?”

Will’s eyes feel like a caress on my face. “Because you told me not to call you Angel Annie. Because you wrestled me in your shop and then masterfully maneuvered me into being your dating coach. Because you read books about women who are pulled from their average lives and thrust into huge adventures where they thrive and find passion. Because even though you say you were relieved when you realized I lived in this old lady’s room, I could see the disappointment in your eyes.” His gaze drops to my lips, holds for two seconds, and comes back up again. “It seems to me, Annie, that you are just waiting for someone to give you permission to be yourself out loud.”

My heart trips over his words. I stay quiet. I wasn’t disappointed at the sight of his room—I was relieved. Right? Sure, I’ve had a crush on Will this whole time, but it’s not like I’m harboring any secret ambitions to be anything more than friends with him.

No, none of what he said was true. It can’t be true—because if so, then this void I’m feeling is not going to go away with the future I described to him. It’s going to get worse. And with Grandma’s health failing and so much change already happening all at once to Noah with his wedding, my family won’t be able to handle Annie having an early life crisis on top of it.

So I’m going to put his words out of my head and not dwell on them. All I need are these dating lessons so I can snag myself a husband and get married and live happily ever after just like my mom and dad. That’s it.

I look down when I feel Will’s hand gently splay across my knee. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t,” I say quickly, swallowing my feelings and looking up at him with the best smile I can muster. He nods slowly and turns his eyes to his laptop, opening it once again. This time I let him.

Without looking at me, he adds, “Tell you what, Annie. We’ll get you your committed relationship and your white picket fence, and if for some reason it doesn’t feel right and you want that adventure after all—” He looks at me. “Call me and I’ll come hold your hand on the flight.”

His words wrap around my heart and squeeze. And it’s in this moment that I realize BuzzFeed wasn’t able to capture the most wonderful expression I’ve seen from Will yet—tenderness.