Crushing On The Billionaire (Part 1)
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Authors: Lola Silverman
CRUSHING ON THE BILLIONAIRE
Part One
By: Lola Silverman
Copyright © 2015
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
I wished that I could come right out and say it, just throw my head back and announce to the world that I had a huge, inescapable crush on my best friend’s dad.
But that wasn’t something I felt like I could admit.
“Hey, Loren, ready to go?”
I peered up from my seat beneath a shady tree on campus to see Shawn, my best friend, standing over me, smiling. And that was the main reason I couldn’t admit my crush—because Shawn was the only person I would want to tell, and he probably didn’t want to hear about me jonesing after his dad.
“You’re out of class early, aren’t you?” I asked, taking his proffered hand and allowing myself to be hauled up from my grassy seat.
“No, I was actually late,” he said, looking down at his cellphone. “It’s already almost five o’clock. Daydreaming again?”
If he only knew.
Put yourself in my shoes. When I first met Patrick Paulson, I was an awkward college freshman in a new city; I was eager to make friends and had been invited over to a veritable palace by Shawn, Patrick’s son, for a pool party.
Imagine, if you will, walking, stunned, into a fully-enclosed indoor swimming pool, bright sunshine magnified by the glass ceiling, shocked speechless by the finery of your new friend’s house, and then nearly knocked backward by the vision of some water god leaving his liquid world and gracing the rest of us land dwellers with his presence.
Patrick’s body gleamed, as he walked across the patio to get a towel, water droplets turned golden by the sun overhead. Water sluiced off his bare, cut torso and abdomen, which heaved slightly as he panted. He must have just finished with some laps or some other heavenly pursuit. He was fair-haired with green eyes; Shawn had apparently taken after his mother more than his father.
Patrick invited us to stay as long as we wanted.
“You could join us,” I said, feeling shy for one of the few times in my life.
He had cocked his head at me before grinning—wide, white, perfect. “Maybe next time,” he said, winking at me.
It was enough to set my freshman heart to pounding and ignited fantasies that made me blush in the light of day.
Fast forward to my life now, as a senior at the same college, best friends with Shawn, and in possession of a throbbing, aching crush that I’d nursed tenderly over the course of nearly four years.
It wasn’t the kind of thing I could tell anyone, especially since the only person I would tell—Shawn—was kind of related to the subject of my long sighs and frequent fantasies.
It also didn’t help that I tended to spend so much time at the Paulsons’ house.
Maybe if I’d have removed myself from that situation, instead of spending almost every afternoon and evening hanging out with Shawn, I could’ve ignored an eighteen year old’s crush on her best friend’s dad.
But as the years passed, I would notice…things. Things I couldn’t be sure of. Things I didn’t dare linger over too long. The way Patrick would always find time to say hello. He had to at least like me, didn’t he? Maybe he was just being polite, but he’d always offer me food, drink, or anything he had on hand that he thought I might like.
I would turn around to say something and find him staring at me. He’d quickly flick his gaze elsewhere, but it was too late. I’d seen it, and I tallied it in my inner ledger of evidence that Patrick was returning my crush.
I was about to turn twenty-two, and I was more than aware of when a guy liked me or took interest in me. But as a senior here in San Francisco, aware that one chapter of my life was about to close just as another one was opening, I felt a small tingle of urgency. I’d admired Patrick from afar for years, trying to guess what he might think about me. Who knew where I’d end up after graduation?
I just didn’t want to sigh to myself ten years from now and regret not having pursued something that felt so real to me.
“Loren?”
I’d drifted right past Shawn, even though I was riding with him to his house…to Patrick’s house.
“I’m so sorry,” I said and laughed, a peeved Shawn pouting at me. “I had this idea…”
“Yes, yes, another idea,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I have an idea. Let’s hurry up and get to my place, so we can have a beer and debrief about our senior projects.”
I smiled. “All right. The idea won’t wait, but neither will our senior projects.”
“You’re lucky you at least have an idea,” he said, as we walked along the brightly lit sidewalk. It was one of those unseasonably warm days that had all of the San Francisco natives moaning and exposing pale shoulders in rarely worn tank tops, but it reminded me of the surprise swelters Los Angeles often endured. It didn’t matter that it was October and the hot weather surprised everyone. I liked the way the sunshine warmed my bones. Was there a place in this city where I could capture the duality of this glorious weather and the people who were ready for fall to embrace us fully? There was such a mixture of people enjoying and loathing the weather that I knew I had to capture it on my camera, somehow.
That was one handy distraction from my big crush on Patrick. I practically lived and breathed for photography. It was the whole reason I was in San Francisco in the first place, attending the art institute.
It was my truest passion.
I resisted an urge, now, sitting in the passenger seat of Shawn’s car, to go back over some of the photos I’d taken today. The camera had seen me through more than three years of school, and the battery was shot.
My camera was persnickety, cantankerous, belligerent, and a host of other unpleasant adjectives usually reserved for cranky old men. Its back display was cracked from the time I’d dropped it—hard—on the sidewalk, and I counted myself lucky that it still worked. It was grossly outdated—even by point and shoot standards now, but it had gotten me my best grades—assignments shot out of rhythm from the rest of the photography students, just the soles of my shoes slapping the pavement as I walked and shot and walked and shot until one of our batteries, the camera’s or mine, gave out.
These days, it was usually the camera.
If I had a big shoot or a big project, Mercedes Valdez, head of the photography department, would usually let me check out one of the department’s cameras. However, I couldn’t just check it out for shooting on my own time, and my own time was when I got the best material.
“I wish you’d share one of those famous ideas with me from time to time,” Shawn was saying, wheeling out of the parking lot and down the road. “I have no idea what I’m going to do for my senior project.”
“Oh, this isn’t a senior project idea,” I said, shaking my head. “This is an idea for today only—or for as long as this heat wave lasts.”
“I hate how hot it is,” he sighed, and I had to hide a smile. He was such a native San Franciscan, protective of the coolness. I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of him; I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of anything, anywhere.
“I’m not your project, am I?” he asked, glancing over at me as he drove. He couldn’t hide a twinge of hope—part of the self-absorption I’d come to recognize from many of the visual art students. I was sure his fragile but loveable ego would really like that.
“Part of it, maybe,” I answered, snapping another picture, making him smile. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but leading him on was probably no better. “Oh, there it is. Stop, stop!”
I made him pull over halfway through the commute to his house, spotting a native San Franciscan stubbornly encased in jeans and crouched beneath an umbrella to ward off the hot sun. Next to him was a pair of tourist girls in barely there sundresses, snapping photos of themselves on a cellphone. Perfect. That was the duality I’d been hoping for.
Shawn tossed me a beer that I nearly dropped before clutching its coldness against my chest.
“Close one,” he said, laughing and shaking his head. “That would’ve been a terrible way to start off the afternoon.”
“It wouldn’t have spilled,” I protested, well aware that there was no defense to my wretched clumsiness.
“Probably not, but it would’ve exploded in your face when you tried to open it.”
“I would’ve slipped it back into the refrigerator and gotten a new one,” I said, pushing my chin out stubbornly. “And maybe it would’ve exploded in your face when you didn’t know which one it was.”
“Would you really do that to me?” Shawn asked, his warm eyes sparkling.
“Hell yeah, I would,” I said, tapping the top of the bottle emphatically before wrenching it off with an opener. It fizzed dangerously close to the top, but I intercepted any overflow quickly, engulfing the opening of the bottle with my mouth.
“Whoa!” he exclaimed. “What film did you learn that one from?”
“Don’t be disgusting,” I said, lowering my lashes demurely, as I took a chaster sip from the beer bottle. It was a craft beer from one of the local breweries. Shawn had made it his personal goal to wean me off of Miller Lite and introduce me to the finer brews in life. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I loved the craft beers he always gave me when I came over to his house—I just couldn’t afford to buy them on a regular basis. Right now, I was on a Miller Lite budget.
“So, what did you think about the senior projects meeting today?” he asked. I followed him out of the kitchen and into the den.
I tried to play it off, tried not to show it, but every time I came to his house—well, his dad’s house—I was amazed. Shawn lived in an absolute paradise. Anything that a person could want was here. There was an indoor pool and hot tub, a fully-stocked bar at all times, a game room with billiards and everything else, and much more. You could see the bay from nearly floor-to-ceiling windows—and those ceilings went all the way up.
It was a completely different place than what I was used to. I’d grown up with foster parents who were forced to watch what they spent, and I’d become frugal, too. To see a house like this, where no expenses were spared and where whoever had built and bought and decorated this home wasn’t sure what to do with all that money, was amazing.
I remembered a massive toy float that had appeared in the pool one day during our freshman year. It had mounted water guns and drink holders, and I realized that it was probably close to the price of the mortgage my foster parents paid every month to keep on living in the tiny house they owned.
To say that Shawn and I were mismatched as friends was probably an understatement. For one, my academic focus was in photography, and his was in visual arts with a specialty in painting. We didn’t have much reason to cross paths very often on campus, but on the very first day of our freshman year, we had, both of us looking for an introductory art survey course that everyone was required to take.
He was looking around, befuddled, and his expensive jeans were splattered with dots of paint, as he studied a cellphone and a set of papers that were stapled together.
“Are you lost?” I asked him, approaching him because something about his appearance—maybe his dark eyes and dark hair—reminded me of my foster parents. I also couldn’t stand to see people struggling, and he was most definitely struggling.
“I’m supposed to get to the art survey class, but I have no idea where it is,” he said, peering at his cellphone’s screen. He had a smartphone, one of the ones that talked to you, but I had only just been gifted with a flip phone so I could call my foster parents now that we lived apart.
“Is your phone going to tell us where it is?” I asked, looking at it quizzically. He’d pulled up a campus map on the screen and was comparing it with the printout of a map they’d given us at orientation.
“I think one of these is out of date,” he said, holding the paper in another way. “I don’t know which one though. Wait. You’re going to art survey?”
“Yep.”
He looked at me with the same warm eyes as my foster parents, and it was the first time I really felt at home at the art institute.
“Well, do you know where it is?”
“Nope.”
He grew even more confused at my nonchalance and acceptance.
“It’s the first day of class, and I don’t want to make a bad impression,” he said. “We really need to find it before we’re late.”
“Well, what does the voice in your phone tell you to do?” I asked, puzzled at his desperation. It wasn’t like they’d kick us out of school if we were late to a class on the first day.
“I’ve just come from where it told me to go,” he said, getting agitated. “So that’s why I’m checking the map they gave us, which says something completely different.”
“I guess we should check out that location, then,” I said cheerfully, patting his shoulder. “I’m Loren June by the way.”
“Shawn. Shawn Paulson.”
He stuck his hand out in what looked like a gesture that had been ingrained in him in his upbringing, and I took it, even though I didn’t think the casual introduction warranted a handshake.
We followed the sidewalks across campus, running into more and more confused freshmen on the way.
“Looking for art survey?” I asked each one we passed. They always nodded, looking vaguely panicked.
“We are, too,” Shawn said. “Where the hell are they hiding it?”
“I’m going to get expelled if I cut this class,” one worried girl moaned as we walked by her. “I swore to my parents I was going to get serious in college. What will they say?”
“They won’t say anything, because no one’s going to get kicked out just because we can’t find the class,” I said firmly. “Now, come with us. I’m Loren and he’s Shawn, and if we’re all late, there’ll be too many of us to get in trouble.”
And that’s how I pushed the doors open, leader of a crowd of twenty lost freshmen, into a sparsely populated lecture hall, the professor already droning on about the syllabus for the course.
“Nice of you all to join us,” he said with an acerbic bite.
“We have a topographical faux pas to thank for that,” I said, keeping my voice firm and bright, as several students around me cowered in shame.
The professor snorted in mirth, and I was relieved to dispel the tension. “That damn map listed the class in the wrong location, didn’t it?”
Everyone around me murmured in the affirmative, and we all settled in, no worse for wear.
It wasn’t until the class was over that Shawn approached me again.
“Thanks for…leading us to the Promised Land, I guess,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you sassed that professor—and that he didn’t bite your head off. I heard he was one of the toughest on campus.”
“See, if I’d known that, I would’ve been too nervous to sass him, and we all probably would’ve gotten warnings,” I said, laughing. “I hate that about reputations. I like not knowing what to expect. Makes it easier to surprise people.”
“You are surprising,” Shawn said, grinning easily, and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
He tolerated my tiny apartment for exactly one visit, hanging out to do some homework for that art survey course, before inviting me over to his house.
“Well, it’s my dad’s house,” he said while driving me out there for the first time. “Don’t give me that face. It’s different from some loser still living with his parents. You’ll see.”
“I wasn’t making a face,” I argued, laughing. “How dare you say I was making a face?”
The only face I made when we pulled up was one of awe at the sprawling complex where Shawn lived with his dad.
“I told you it was different,” he said. “Wouldn’t you still live at home if you were me?”
“I think I would,” I said, thunderstruck at the opulence.
Now, though, the place had become like a second—or third—home to me. I ate there almost as often as I ate on campus, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually made myself a meal at my apartment. Shawn and I considered each other such close friends that we rarely spent a day apart. He was as close as a brother to me, and I’d never had siblings before. I loved it.
“Loren. You are in such a daze today.”
I snapped back to reality with a smile, chugging my beer in apology.
“Well, we have a lot to think about, don’t we?” I fired back. “Senior project. Only the culmination of our four years of education. Nobody to let down, right? Only ourselves, right?”
“Don’t,” he groaned. “You’re going to give me anxiety about it.”
“Oh, come on,” I laughed, flopping down on some overstuffed floor pillows that dotted the thick rug in the den. “Don’t you have a million ideas buzzing through your head for your final project? I do.”
“That’s the difference between you and me,” Shawn complained. “You always have a million ideas, and I never have any.”
“Look harder,” I intoned, rolling over as he sat next to me and screwing my finger into his forehead. “You’re a brilliant artist. I’m sure your senior project is around there somewhere.”
He sighed and looked defeated. “I’m not as brilliant as you are.”
I loved the guy like a brother, but this was my least favorite part about Shawn. He really was gifted with a paintbrush in hand and a canvas in front of him—as long as he had a clear direction in mind. He had some of the highest highs I ever saw from any of the visual art students, but his lows were dismal. He could be chronically unsure of himself, and it slayed me. He was so good at what he did, when he really gave himself over to it, but he was often too busy being insecure.
“Stop it,” I said, swatting him in the same spot I’d poked him in the forehead. “Let’s brainstorm then. What’s been the best thing you’ve learned during your time at the institute? Your favorite project? Something you’re interested in right now? Something you’d like to pursue?”
“You guys aren’t drinking all of the beer, are you?”
I fell gradually silent as Patrick entered the room—Patrick, Shawn’s impossibly hot, impossibly rich dad. Quickly, I snapped my mouth shut and smiled.
“Just a keg or two, Mr. Paulson,” I said sweetly.
“Don’t sweet talk me, Loren,” he warned, eyeing the beers we had in hand and the trashcan at the doorway. “I know you’re up to no good when you call me Mr. Paulson.”
I’d call him anything he wanted me to. There wasn’t a wasted feature on the man—all tight angles and bulges in just the right places. He was young, and he looked even younger than what he was. He never came right out and told me when I cheekily asked how old he was, but I’d looked him up on one of the school computers one time to satisfy my curiosity—forty. The page that popped up gave me only the driest, most basic information, and the rest I learned over the years from what both Patrick and Shawn divulged to me. I never wanted to seem like I was prying, but I wanted to know everything I could possibly know about Patrick Paulson.
Patrick had moved to the area when he was just a teenager, passionate about coding and all things technology. There was no better place than Silicon Valley for those sorts of pursuits, and he fit right in. He fit in so well, in fact, that he met a girl his age, fell in love with her, and had a kid—Shawn. The love with the girl hadn’t lasted, and she left the baby with Patrick and moved on. That was just fine with Patrick, who was making an insane amount of money—more than enough to make sure his young son was well taken care of now and set for the rest of his life.
Shawn’s mother returned to his life when he was still in grade school, but only in the form of occasional weekend visits and only because Patrick thought it might be important to his son’s sense of identity. However, any affection that used to be there for her had long since passed.
Patrick was interested in anything new, anything cutting edge, and when he wasn’t leading his own tech company, he was investing in other startups. He amassed new projects like he amassed his wealth, and it enabled this cushy house and cushy lifestyle.
It also enabled that big, old crush I’d had on him ever since that first meeting by the pool.
I adored Shawn, and I enjoyed spending time with him, grateful for his hospitality every time he invited me over, but I looked forward—most of all—to seeing Patrick whenever I visited.
Shawn talked a lot about how busy he was, jetting here and there for various events and meetings and launches, but Patrick almost always made it a point to emerge from whatever he’d been doing to make his billions to say hello if he knew I was there. There was always that dazzling, white smile, the warmness that made me feel right at home…and then some…and that wink that made me suspect we had an inside joke, just between the two of us, that maybe I couldn’t quite remember yet.
“Dad, we’re discussing our senior projects,” Shawn was saying, interrupting my daydream about Patrick. “The beers are all business.”
“Ah, senior projects,” Patrick said, looking wistful. “You’re not worried about them, are you? They’re just a way to show off at the end of the year. Just show what you’ve learned. They’re not going to deny you your diploma if it’s not the best.”
“That’s not what I was led to believe,” Shawn said, taking a pull from his beer. “And why wouldn’t you want it to be the best? It’s the last thing we’ll be doing. It’s a way to leave our mark on campus.”