I open my eyes. Take a deep breath. Try to keep it together. “That was our name.”
“It’s a beautiful name too,” Amber says. “She’s such a beautiful baby, and so smart too. She’s with my parents right now over in Marin. But I miss her and I’ve only been away from her for an hour.”
“We’re madly in love with being parents,” he adds.
That does it. He might have cut out my heart with an Exacto blade, but I won’t let him know it’s bleeding again. I have to get away from them.
“You should really get back to her then,” I somehow manage to choke out as I stand up, and grab my bag, doing everything not to trip and fall as I leave my food on the table, and rush to the restroom, where I slam the stall door and let the tears rain down. My shoulders shake, my chests heaves, and I am sure I look like a wretched mess. After several minutes, I check the time. But I know they’re still out there, so I stay inside this stall as other patrons come and go. I camp out in the safety behind this door, registering each minute.
Until an hour passes.
Then I unlock the stall, splash water on my face, and touch up my mascara and blush.
I don’t feel human, but I can at least pass for one again. I open the door a crack, spotting the table where he delivered his latest crushing blow. I thought I was over him. I thought I couldn’t be more over him. But seeing him with her reopened everything I thought I’d gotten over by playing Call of Duty and shooting bad guys every night for the last several months.
I head for the counter, pay the hostess for the food I didn’t eat, and then I leave The Best Doughnut Shop in The City. Another wave of sadness smashes into me when I realize I’ll never be able to come to my favorite diner again. He’s ruined this place for me.
I’m so ready to go home and curl up with Ms. Pac-Man for a bit, so I hurry over to my car, where I see a white piece of paper tucked under the wiper, flapping in the wind. Now I have a parking ticket? Now my karma bites me in the back? No, this should be the day when I find a winning lottery ticket on my car, not a parking ticket.
I turn around to peer up at the sign. The white and red sign very clearly says Sunday mornings are free. I glance at the curb. It’s not red. There’s no hydrant nearby. I scan the block. Down near the corner of Hayes Street, I see the meter boy, wearing his uniform of blue shorts and a blue short-sleeved button-down shirt. I grab the parking ticket and march down the street to confront him.
He’s slipping another ticket under the windshield of a lime-green Prius. “What’s up with the ticket, Meter Boy?”
He turns around to face me and I feel like I’ve been blinded. He is shatteringly good-looking. His face is chiseled, his light blue eyes sparkle, his brown hair looks amazingly soft. I can’t help but give him a quick perusal up and down. It’s clear he is completely sculpted underneath his parking attendant uniform. Every single freaking inch of him. He smiles at me, straight white teeth gleaming back. He’s so beautiful, my eyes hurt. It’s like looking at the sun.
My ticket rage melts instantly. My resolve turns into a puddle.
“Oh, hi. I saw you earlier when you parked.”
“You did?”
He’s smiling at me, giving me some sort of knowing grin that unnerves me. He’s probably all of twenty-one, just like Amber. He does not posses the tire that the men I see – at the coffee shops or dog parks – wear around their midsections. No, this fellow, owns a pair of noticeably cut biceps and an undeniably trim waist. Why have I not spent more time hanging around the meters in this city with its bevy of beautiful, young, sexy parking attendants?
“Hey, I’ve got some other cars to deal with. But call me later.” Then he winks at me. He crosses the street.
“I didn’t park illegally,” I shout at him.
He smiles again, that radiant smile still strong from across the street. “I know.”
I stand there for a moment, befuddled on the corner of the street. Call me, he said. How would I call him? I look at the ticket in my hand and flip it over.
There is no check mark on it, no official signature, no indication of a parking crime. Instead, there’s a a simple note: “You’re gorgeous. Give me a call sometime.” Then there’s a number.
I shake my head. I’m floored by the turn of events. By the shift in my day from utter crap to a pick-up line. Okay, McKenna – which is more implausible? That your ex-fiancé had a baby with her? Or that an achingly handsome young meter man wants you to call him for a date?
I walk slowly back to my car, still in a daze. I reach my Mini Cooper and lean against my car for just a minute, not caring if the backside of my sky blue skirt picks up dirt – a skirt I snagged when my girlfriends Hayden and Erin stole me away for a wine country spa weekend to forget all my woes, and it didn’t work, but I did score some cute clothes at a vintage shop I found next to a bowling alley on the drive home. I flip the ticket over again, looking at Meter Man’s number. Then I glance one more time down the street and see him on the other side now, writing out parking tickets. He must feel my faraway eyes on him, because he looks up and waves at me. He mimics the universal sign for phone, holding up his hand against his ear, thumb and pinky out. I can’t help myself. I laugh at the incredulity of this all. I read the note yet another time. “You’re gorgeous. Call me.”
There’s a part of me that wants to lock myself inside and have a pity party. To call my girlfriends and let them help me drown my sorrows as they have done every single time I’ve needed them to in the last year. But if Todd can change everything about himself, maybe I can too. So I go against my natural instinct to retreat. Instead, I pull my phone from my purse and dial the meter man’s number right then and there. I watch him off in the distance as he extracts his phone from his pocket.
“I’m glad you didn’t make me wait.”
Be still my beating heart. He’s hot, he’s nice and he’s flirty.
“I’m glad I didn’t wait either. So, what’s your name?”
“Dave Dybdahl.”
I try not to laugh at the odd alliteration of his double-D – wait, make that triple-D – sounding name.
“Dave, why’d you leave this note for real? You’re not trying to pull a joke on me and I’m really going to have some massive parking fine?”
He laughs, then assumes a very serious voice. “I never joke about parking meter matters,” he says and I’m liking that he’s got a little sense of humor working underneath that fine exterior. “I saw you get out of your car before you went into the diner and I thought you were pretty. Want to go out sometime?”
I laugh again. A date. I don’t have dates. I have shooting sessions with video games. I have crying fests with my girlfriends. I share a king-size bed with a lab-hound-husky.
And I have a hope that it all may change. That this life of the last year is not my life to come. That this day is the nail in the coffin on my heartbreak. That the songs I listen to could someday be sung for me. The ones about mad, crazy, never-gonna-let-you-go love. Maybe with Dave Dybdahl. Maybe with someone else.
“Why not? I’ll call you later to make a plan.”
“I can’t wait.”
I hang up the phone and stare at it again, still not sure if that conversation really just happened. I push the phone back into my bag and it suddenly occurs to me that Todd doesn’t have to be the only one who gets to win here. I am single, I have a good job, an awesome job in fact, and I’m not bad looking. (Some might even say I’m gorgeous. Who would have thought that?)
Todd took my heart. He took my name. He took himself. He gave it all to Amber, his Trophy Wife. But that moment in the Best Doughnut Shop in the City doesn’t have to be the last word, does it? He doesn’t deserve any more tears. He doesn’t deserve any more of my pain. There is no more room for sadness or hurt.
I have to move on and I finally know how.
Because my brain has hatched the perfect plan, right here, right now, thanks to this handsome young meter man. I can turn the tables. I can even the score and take up t
he mantle for all the jilted ladies, young and old. This is no longer about me. There is something bigger at stake here. I have been presented with a rare opportunity. This isn’t just happenstance. This isn’t just coincidence.
This is real parking karma at work.
Because if the unbelievably hot Dave Dybdahl thinks I’m cute, then maybe, just maybe, I could land a hot young thing, a delicious piece of arm candy, a boy toy. Maybe Dave Dybdahl, maybe someone else. Because Dave will be just the beginning of my new project.
I am going to score myself a Trophy Husband.
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