Lori Wilde - It Happened in L.A.

HER MOUTH WAS OPEN, but nothing was coming out. Mostly because she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. Holly, the woman previously known as Gwen’s best friend, had just told Paul that she couldn’t drive Gwen home. Despite the fact that she’d driven them both to work. Despite the fact that they lived in the same apartment complex. The excuse was obviously fake, but did that stop her?

“I’ll be happy to take her home,” Paul said. “Even though she beat me.”

“By two points,” Holly said, pushing in her chair and fitting her purse strap on her shoulder, the better to make her escape. “I have to run. Thanks, Paul. See you tomorrow, Gwen. Bye.”

So now she was standing next to Paul with nothing but a giant slice of awkward between them.

“It’s no big deal. It’s not as if you live in Connecticut.”

“I don’t want to inconvenience you especially since you had no choice.”

He pushed his seat in, picked up his machine and Holly’s, and they left. “I don’t mind.”

“Thanks.”

As they passed Carla, she gave Paul a lascivious grin. Paul barely noticed.

He made the lights of his Mercedes flash with his remote as they hit the parking lot. It wasn’t as warm as it should have been in April.

Paul glanced at her as they circled a behemoth truck. “I’ve got a jacket in the car.”

“Thanks, I’m fine.”

They reached his car, and he was very gentlemanly, as always, and yet the touch of his hand on the small of her back made her shiver. It was becoming something of an issue, these butterflies. Whether his hand landed on her arm or her back, it didn’t seem to matter. Alarmingly, tonight, in the middle of the game, all it had taken was meeting his gaze. She’d like to blame it on his looks alone, but even she’d stopped believing that. Something was happening here, and she had no idea what to do about it.

Once he was behind the wheel, he started the engine and the heater at the same time. The radio came on, too. She recognized the voice from NPR, but he turned that off before she could identify a topic.

“NPR, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m a fan, too.”

He got them out of the lot and on the way to her place with a minimum of fuss. She stole glances as he drove, the silence in the car not all that uncomfortable, except for, well…She put her hand on her tummy. It occurred to her that things had changed yesterday. He’d been so thoughtful. Gracious. Downright adorable. Dammit. And then today when he’d given that cap to Holly. She sighed. Baseball had leveled the field. There was a common ground between them and yep, that had taken their relationship into a whole new direction.

So much so, that she hadn’t thought about her sister more than a couple of times tonight. The evening had been really fun. Winning had been great, yes, but that wasn’t all of it. He’d laughed at Steph’s jokes, and Kenny’s, too. He’d been made fun of, and he’d accepted the ribbing with humor.

Yet, was he worth knowing? Outside of baseball, was there anything in him that she could admire? Did it matter?

They pulled into her apartment complex just as she decided that it did matter if she were to become friends with him. She didn’t take friendship lightly.

He found a parking spot pretty close to her apartment. As she grabbed the door handle, he turned to her. “Are you happy?”

She stopped. Debated laughing off the question, but didn’t. “Yeah. For the most part, I am. Why?”

Paul turned off the engine. “Do you think it’s because you’re close to your colleagues?”

She exhaled, curious. “That’s part of it, I guess.”

“What else?”

“I haven’t thought about it all that much. I like my work, but it’s not my whole universe. I’m usually busy. I play trivia, I go to old horror flicks, my book club once a month. I watch way too many games, but I guess it doesn’t matter because who cares? I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling.”

“Huh,” he replied, as if she’d said something he hadn’t expected.

“Why?”

He leaned back a little, staring at her in the semidark. “I’m damn busy, too. I love my work. I have most everything I could want. The car, the house, the women, the toys. But I don’t think I’m very happy.”

“You don’t think you are?”

“Okay. Gun to my head? No. Don’t ask me why, but that’s a very difficult thing to admit. I should be happy. I’ve got it made.”

“Have you felt this way for a long time?”

“Nope. I used to love every second of my life. I’m not even sure when it started to lose its shine. But the parties aren’t quite so fabulous, the wins don’t give me that jolt as often.”

She could tell it was true. Now that she could really see past the handsomeness, there was a sadness in his eyes. There was a decision to be made here. One that led them right off that predictable baseball-loving path. Did she want that? It seemed she did. “Come in. I’ll make us coffee.”

He smiled. “I’d like that.”

IT TOOK A BIT OF TIME to make the coffee and get settled on the couch. He sat at one end, she at the other, but since the couch was curved it made for easy conversations. She’d only put on the mood lighting and as she sat back against her pillows Gwen felt better about her decision to ask him inside.

Yesterday in the clubhouse and tonight at the bar had helped her to see Paul as a person. She’d been so ready to dismiss him as someone empty, someone like Autumn. It hadn’t been easy to admit that she had the same kind of prejudice as the people she disliked the most, but there it was.

Without knowing a lot more about him, she couldn’t say if the two of them could be friends, yet she was a lot more willing to find out. For him to admit his dissatisfaction with his life was a big deal. It made her like him more than their trip to the ball game.

“This is great,” he said, holding up his coffee mug. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Tell me something. Was there an event that got you thinking about all this?”

He didn’t seem to mind that she’d brought them round to their earlier conversation. “Nothing that stands out. Although I was listening to this guy who wrote a book about happiness.”

“Dan something?”

“Yeah. Dan Gilbert. Harvard guy, but I won’t hold that against him. He said that the things we think are going to make us happy usually don’t. Not for the long run.”

“Right, right. That we tend to use our imaginations to predict the things that will make us happy, when we’d be better off using outside resources. Other people who’ve gone through the experience.”

“That’s it,” he said. “The part that got me was how he talked about how our world is built on the supposition that more material goods equals more happiness. Not that I hadn’t heard that before, but it’s a damn hard concept to dismiss. Anyway, he also said that the happiest people were those with strong social connections. Family and friends. Like you have.”

“I’m not close to my family at all.”

“No, but you’ve created an alternative in your coworkers. I see how you all interact. It’s not like that for me.”

“Because you’re the boss?”

“That’s some of it, but not all. I suppose I could have made an effort to make friends with other CEOs.”

“But?”

He put down his cup. “Let me tell you about my poker night. I go once every month or so, if I can. Nothing too formal because we’re all busy, successful guys. We’ve known each other for years. And every single time I’m there, it ends up being a pissing contest.”

“Kind of like playing baseball trivia?”

He sighed. Picked his mug up. “Yeah. Kind of like that.”