Instant Love Read Online Free PDF

working their tails off trying to come up with something genius that would change everything, make them rich, make them famous, and set them up for life in every way imaginable, and West had already done all that, made it look as easy as looking both ways and crossing a street. But then he’d just checked out, gone to Thailand and India and all the other places they could only dream of going if they could just get the time off, and then he came back sometimes and just hung around, showed up at parties and talked shit like that. He had simply ceased to be tolerable.
    “Well, I used to do something,” said Danny. “I invented some software, I started a company, I sold it, and now I’m rich and won’t have to work again for a long time. So I mostly travel now. I just got back from a month in India.”
    He took a sip from his plastic cup casually. It was a well-practiced sip. What do you say after that? You just sip instead.
     
     
    SARAH ’ S EYES widened, and she looked prettier. He was the kind of man who looked “good on paper” as her mother sometimes said. Sarah had always tossed that phrase around in her head when she heard it, let it travel like a curious bird. To be good on paper meant something entirely different to her. It meant a face that would be beautiful to draw, a face with character: deep lines on a forehead fresh from worry, a nose with a bump on it from a skateboarding accident, or ears, slivers like a partial moon or sturdy soup spoons like hers. Now here was someone who had something different, a brilliant story to tell, and a fantastic life to be led.
    She took down her hair, played with her elastic. Now she was lovely, and excited by him. And she fell in love with him, or loved him a little bit just at that moment. It had never occurred to her that she might actually meet a rich man who could take care of her. She could suddenly see the future with him so clearly.
    There were trips to be taken (India! She hadn’t even considered India. It was enough that she had made it to Seattle), and she wouldn’t have to work those weekend shifts for extra cash; he could help with little things probably.
    She found his plain looks problematic, though (He was to become handsome only as an older man: his soft jaw would harden significantly with determination, and the wisdom he was already striving to achieve would eventually imbue his eyes with an irresistibility), and envisioned how a decent haircut and a little bit of stubble could change everything about him. They could move in together, and she could get out of that basement and into his apartment, which she was certain was spacious and lovely. (In fact, she was wrong. He was a simple man who hated to be wasteful. He lived in a small studio with big windows and a lofted bed, downtown near the water. There wasn’t really room for another person. It was a deliberate move.) Sarah Lee was smitten.
    Melanie and Doug were slow-dancing on the grass. He was humming to her. He dipped her.
    Sarah thought: And she and Danny could dance, too. Did he like to go dancing? Did she like to dance? That’s what people in love do.
     
     
    DANNY SAW HER love, but he’d seen it all before, even though he hadn’t been a millionaire that long. At first he was coy about his success when meeting new people (“I’m taking time off from work right now,” he would say when they would ask him what he was doing. Or, wryly, “I’m unemployed.”), but the truth would eventually tumble out of his mouth as if he were a kid excitedly reporting an A on a spelling test over dinner—“I sold my company and now I’m free.” Sometimes it would spill out because he wanted to share his excitement, and other times he knew it was the only way a girl would pay him any attention.
    Either way he hated himself when he did it for attention, but he couldn’t help it. He had earned those bragging rights. He had given up most of his senior year of college (There was a girl, then, a nice one