The design had sold for just under $10 million.
Thud.
“What did you do with the money?” Lauren had asked when, a month or two into their courtship, he’d volunteered this information.
“I paid my mom back for college. Set some aside for grad school. Banked it. Started a 401(k). Set up a scholarship. You know.”
“No, I don’t, since I’ve never made ten million dollars.” She smiled. “Did you do anything fun?”
He thought about that. “I sent my mom on a vacation,” he offered.
Turned out, he’d sent his mom and her best friends, Sumi and Ben Kim, on a monthlong vacation, first-class airfare and hotels, so they could visit Korea, Thailand and Australia. Private tours in the big cities, a designated credit card so he could pay for all their expenses.
“Did they love it?” Lauren asked, hands clasped in front of her.
“They did.” And that was that. But he smiled, and his smiles could say more than ten thousand words.
Joshua Park owned his apartment—a soulless but expensive two-bedroom in a new building near the river. It was a sharp contrast to her tiny but beautiful loft in a refurbished mill building, complete with original creaky floors and brick walls. While her apartment was cozy and charming, Josh’s was bleak, aside from the view of the capitol’s beautiful dome. He had a kitchen table but no kitchen chairs, two plates, two forks, two glasses. His living room held the medical chair, a couch, a huge TV, and a giant desk with five different computers. His bedroom contained a bed with one pillow. No art, no rugs, no throw pillows. He didn’t have a car but did have a retirement fund.
Aside from food, she couldn’t see that he spent money at all, adopting a painfully dull cargo shorts and T-shirt look that made him look seventeen years old.
“So being a spendthrift,” she said. “Not a problem, I’m guessing?”
“The money’s there if I need it,” he said. “But I can’t think of anything I need right now.”
“Except for the love of a good woman,” she said. “Which money can’t buy, of course.”
“I have that,” he said, and her heart thrilled, because they hadn’t said those words yet. Then he grinned. “My mom. She’s a very good woman.” And because he was so serious and quiet much of the time, his joke meant all the more.
Oh, she had it bad.
His second patent, which he finished while still at RISD, was a needle that could sense blood flow under the skin of newborns and children, minimizing bad sticks and bruising (and misery). He could’ve sold that one; instead, he made the design free, as Jonas Salk had done with the polio vaccine. He co-designed a battery-powered tool that replaced the old-fashioned mallet orthopedic surgeons used in joint replacement, then reworked the design for pediatric patients. Now he was working on a warming bed for premature babies that would sense drops in their heart rate and breathing.
He was incredible. Brilliant, philanthropic, hardworking, focused, driven, kind.
He also lost track of time, went days without showering and had terrible eating habits—takeout way too often, or dinner consisting of Flamin’ Hot Doritos because quite often, he simply didn’t hear the buzzer or see the text from the delivery service. He made several pots of coffee every day but forgot to take more than a sip or two, resulting in numerous mugs lurking on flat surfaces, the bitter smell of old grounds thick in the air.
In essence, he was a hermit. A beautiful hermit with a bad haircut and terrible clothes.
“Why don’t you have your own company?” she asked, sitting one night in his sad living quarters. “You know, a giant eco-friendly building with meditation rooms and massage therapists roaming the halls, looking for tight shoulders. On-site daycare, company retreats in the Himalayas . . .”
He smiled. “You could design the space for me.”
It was her profession, after all. “Done. I’d even give you a discount.”
“I’m not really that kind of guy. I like being alone.” He blushed a little. “But I also like having you here.”
She felt a warm squeeze of pleasure. “And why is that?”
He shrugged, biting down on a smile. “You smell nice.”
“Better than stale coffee and old pizza?”
“Let’s not get crazy.” Then he kissed her, his mouth slow and warm, his hands pretty damn excellent for a guy who didn’t get out much, and yes, she was in love.
Since Josh had virtually no social life and communicated with people only via technology and only when absolutely necessary, she tried to open up his life a bit. He wasn’t agoraphobic . . . he just worked a ton, and was on the shy side. Socially awkward, rather than socially anxious. He hated loud noises, like fireworks or roaring motorcycles, which made him agitated, saying the sound hurt his brain. In groups, he had a time frame before he would shut down like a phone that abruptly lost its charge—a half hour at first, then an hour as she wooed him out more and more. But he also said he had fun, once he relaxed a little. He told her he was on the spectrum and wasn’t great at picking up cues all the time. “So if I’m being a jerk, please tell me,” he said one night, in bed, post-nooky.
“Ditto,” she said, smoothing back his hair. His earnestness . . . it got her right in the heart. “For the record, you were wonderful this past hour.”
She took him hiking, surprised that he could outpace her when, to the best of her knowledge, his only form of exercise was walking from kitchen to desk to bedroom. Then again, her asthma was worse at different times of the year. But if she got out of breath, he’d stop and look at her with those dark, dark eyes lit with that gleam of light, and she’d feel so seen, so protected and loved, that maybe it wasn’t the asthma. Maybe it was just love stealing her breath.
Love at second sight. Even though he’d insulted her way back when she was a twitty freshman, she had to give him points for being right. She had been shallow. She had been measuring her worth in cuteness, good cheer and popularity.
She didn’t anymore. Her father’s death, her mom’s change in personality, the birth of Sebastian, her involvement in things like the community center, her desire to do well at her job . . . she’d grown up.
She wanted to be worthy of a person like Joshua Park.
Three days after they had run into each other at the Hope Center, when she had boldly taken fate by the horns and asked him out, Lauren was in a committed relationship. Just like that. There was no conversation or discussion—they just were. They talked every day. Texted more than that. Saw each other a few times a week, then nearly every day. She woke up smiling because of him, and even though she was generally a happy person, she now understood what had been missing in her life.