“Oh,” Amy said.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said with a charming smile. “I’ve changed my ways, hand to God,” he said, holding up his hand. “I was like a kid in a candy shop—I’d never had girls that interested in me, but in college, the groupies started to come around.”
“Wait…what groupies?”
“Collegiate and professional golf has groupies. You didn’t know that?”
“Does anyone know that?”
“Probably not,” he admitted with a grin. “We call them the PGA—Player Groupie Association.”
“No wonder you like golf.”
“That is definitely not the reason,” he said. “I loved golf from the time I could hold a club. My dad is a golf fanatic, so I had a set of clubs practically before I could walk. I was so focused on it for so many years that no relationship I had ever made it very far.”
Jonah had a golf set before he could really walk, too. Big, brightly colored golf clubs and plastic balls the size of melons that he used to whack against the patio doors, no matter how many times she told him not to.
“I remember being at the club with my dad, running around the practice green while he and his friends chewed cigars and putted,” Harrison continued. “Must have been destiny.”
“Destiny,” she mused. “Do you really believe in it? Like the preordained kind?”
Harrison appeared to think about it. “In some ways, I do. I can look back on my life and see how certain events might not have happened had I not been in the place I was. Usually because of golf. This dinner, for example.” He cast his arm over the table and the food. “Golf.”
“That’s so weird. I thought it was art,” Amy said. But was this destiny? This dinner, which was as close to a date as she’d had in a very long time? She watched him cut his steak. He looked even more fit and handsome with the lights of Christmas twinkling behind him. It was probably the martinis, but she never felt so warm and fuzzy toward people she’d only just met. Especially men.Wow.She really was suffering some midlife thing, wasn’t she? Yeah, and so what? She’d gone through a divorce where the one guy who promised to be faithful and always there for her wasn’t. No wonder she was having a small crisis of confidence. She really was entirely too cynical when it came to men.
“It’s not their fault they were born with a penis,” Julie had said to her once. “You can’t hateallof them.”
“Don’t you believe in destiny?” Harrison asked.
“Umm…”
“Wait…you have that look on your face.”
“What look?”
“Like you think I sound like someone who lives in a yurt.”
Amy laughed. “Nope—I haven’t picked up any yurt vibes yet.”
“Thank God. Not that there’s anything wrong with a yurt. Except…it’s a yurt.” He grinned. “So, destiny? Are you a believer, or no?”
“Okay, here goes. I think I used to believe in destiny.” She put her fork down and glanced around them. “But I don’t know anymore. I don’t know if destiny was the name I gave to things I liked, or if I was really destined for this life in some way. Either way, I’m not complaining. I mean, not complaining much.” She bit her lower lip. She’d done a lot of complaining in his presence. “Okay, I’m notconstantlycomplaining…and as I hear myself talk, I realize I need to work on that. But the point I’m trying to make is, how can I really know that I was maybe meant to be an artist? How can I really know that I made the right decisions all those years ago? I guess that’s why this contest is so important to me.That’swhat feels like destiny.”
“And if you don’t win?” he asked. “Will you consider that destiny, give it up, and say you were never meant to be an artist? Or will you keep trying?”
“I honestly don’t know. How sad is that? I don’t even know how committed I am.”
“Ahh,” he said with a flick of his wrist. “Does anyone ever know how committed they are? Isn’t everything really an in-the-moment decision? Trying to decide what it all means before you’ve even painted the pictures puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on one contest.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” she said. “You’re a smart golfer.”
“Nope. Just had my fair share of therapy,” he said, settling back. “I had to see a sports psychologist a few years ago because I couldn’t get out of my own head.”
Andhe was a man who’d had therapy. And admitted it. Was shebeing pranked? Had Julie found this man and put him here to prank her? “You did?”
“I did. Have you ever heard of the yips?”
She shook her head.
