Read If I Did It for Free Online

didn't say it with attitude, and I didn't
pass judgment. I just said it: I know you met someone. Period.
There was nothing else to say.
When Nicole left, I poured myself a drink and sat on the
couch and tried to figure out what it all meant. Strangely enough,
by the time I'd finished my drink I felt kind of relieved. Nicole was
telling me it was over. It was that simple. For four months, I'd been
wining and dining her and sending her flowers anti being the per-
fect estranged husband, but now I didn't have to keep trying. I had
wanted her back, yes, but obviously the feeling wasn't mutual. She
was done with me. If I kept chasing her, what kind of fool would I
be? Hadn't the woman just told me that she was in love with some-
one else? So, yeah—I accepted it. My marriage was over. My wife
didn't want me anymore. It was time to move on.
    2
SO HAPPY
TOGETHER
From that night on, as God is my witness, I made absolutely no
effort to pursue her—never once talked to her about the possibil-
ity of reconciling—and I defy anyone to show otherwise. The fol-
lowing day, I called her—and I kept my emotions out of it. “I
thought about what you said, and I get it,” I told her. “Let's have
the lawyers help us get through this as quickly and as amicably as
possible.”
Maybe deep down I hoped she would say something—“Oh
no, O.J.! It's not like that! We can work this out!”—but that didn't
happen. She grumbled a little about the lawyers, but that was
about it, then she started talking about personal shit—managing
the kids' schedules, her crazy family, money issues, and so on—so
I tuned her out. I realized I was going to have to pull away from
    her completely, and when she paused for breath I told her that it
might be best if we didn't talk for a while.
“Why?” she said.
“We should let the lawyers handle it,” I said.
I'd seen plenty of couples in similar situations, and they
tended to get highly emotional during the proceedings, and that
generally made everything worse. As I said, I wanted to keep my
emotions out of it.
“Okay,” she said.
“Great,” I said.
I remember hanging up and thinking, Well, O.J, it's time to
get back in the game.
The funny thing is, during the previous three or four months a
lot of my friends—including Marcus Allen and his wife, Kathryn—
had been pushing me to start going out with other women, but I
wasn't interested. I thought I still had a chance with Nicole, and I
thought I should wait it out. I'll be honest with you, I'd been both-
ered by that one incident—when I saw her through the window of
her house, going at it on the couch with Keith Zlomsowitch—but I
would have been willing to forget it. The way I saw it—or the way I
rationalized it, anyway—a fling or two might actually be a good
thing, especially if it made her see that I wasn't as bad as all that.
Anyway, it didn't quite work out that way. At the end of the
day, we were headed for divorce court, and at that point it was
pretty much out of my hands.
That same night, I was out an L.A. club, with friends, when I
ran into a Hawaiian Tropic model I'd known years earlier. She came
over to say hi, and to offer her condolences. “I hear you and your
wife separated,” she said.
“We did more than separate,” I said. “We're getting a divorce.”
She was sorry to hear that, too, she said, but not so sorry that
she refused an invitation to dinner. She came over to the house a
few days later, and we had dinner, and all I could think was, O.J. is
coming out tonight!
Sure enough, after dinner we retired to the bedroom. Just as
we were starting to get serious, I heard someone at my front door,
so I excused myself and went down to see who it was. Kathryn and
Marcus were outside, and they'd brought a friend with them—a
woman. Her name was Paula Barbieri, and she was absolutely stun-
ning. I remember thinking that she looked a lot like Julia Roberts,
only prettier.
I invited them in and got a round of drinks, and I just