Paul Hodgson stood facing the full length mirror in his bedroom and once again counted his lucky stars.
Tomorrow he would be married!
Long ago, Paul had given up on women. Heavily overweight and something of a slob, Paul had never been lucky at
love. He spent his teenage years playing video games and reading comics with his best friend Timmy. Neither of
them had gone to their proms or even had a single date during college. Now in his late thirties, Paul was
starting to lose his hair, he was fatter than he'd ever been before, and lived a lonesome hermit's life in a
horribly messy one-bedroom apartment.
Then he'd met Eve Jones.
Sure, she was gorgeous. A thin attractive redhead with pale skin and sparkling emerald eyes, Eve always turned
heads wherever she went. She had an impeccable sense of fashion, and always looked positively radiant in the
immaculately perfect outfits she put together. A naturally happy, bouncy, joyful person, Eve was practically a
saint who seemed incapable of bearing a grudge against anyone.
But there was something else about her.
It wasn't that Paul wasn't attracted to her physically. She was drop dead sexy! But far more importantly to
Paul, she was his best friend. The two had just naturally connected. Although Paul would never admit it to
anyone, there were actually times he forgot she was a girl! The two could just sit for hours playing video
games, discussing science fiction, or dissecting the fine points of comic books.
At first, Paul didn't believe Eve when she said she had been a cheerleader back in high school. Eve actually
had to get out her old high school yearbooks and show Paul the many, many photographs of her from back then.
She'd been the epitome of a cutesy, bubbly teenage girl – captain of the cheerleaders, star of the several
school plays and musicals, even the homecoming queen her senior year!
And on top of all that, Eve had been a perfect student academically, earning a 4.0 GPA and going on to
graduate from college (with honors, no less) with degrees in mathematics and quantum physics.
Eve also seemed to be the only person who understood Paul's job in theoretical computer science research. Paul
himself had turned out to be a lifelong college student, who kept earning degree after degree until finally
becoming a research professor at the university. The department seemed a bit embarrassed by him, and kept him
away from actually teaching classes. But they loved the academic publicity his cutting edge research into
artificial intelligence designs had earned the university.
And Eve somehow even seemed to grasp most of this! Truly, she was the smartest and most untypical girl Paul
Hodgson had ever met.
And tomorrow, she would become Mrs. Hodgson!
Truly, Paul considered himself the luckiest man on the planet.
What next?