Trophy Husband

by Lauren Blakely

  I played arcade games for fun when I was a kid, for release when I was left curbside by my ex. But I have never used video games as foreplay. I have never known video games could be foreplay. Here with Chris in some semi-private room at an electronics store, of all places, it feels like foreplay. It feels like he could turn me around, place his hands on my cheeks, and pull me in for a kiss. The kind that makes the world fall away. That leaves you powerless to resist, helpless to do anything but be consumed with an endless kiss. Nothing else matters, and the kiss is all there is, all there was, all there will ever be.

  Until it becomes more than a kiss. It becomes heat in your blood, and a roaring in your ears, and you have to clutch the guitar so you don’t turn around and show your hand to him. Show it in your eyes, and in the way you part your lips, and in the words that threaten to tumble from your lips. Words like I want you so much.

  Words I pin down inside me so they can’t escape.

  He leans in a little closer this time and nearly whispers in my ear. “You can open your eyes now.”

  I inhale deeply and open my eyes. I feel wobbly from the way he’s touched me, from the way I’ve let my thoughts spin into a dark and dangerous place of possibility. It’s one thing for me to visit with his mouth in my fantasies; it’s entirely another to witness my thoughts spin wildly with him inches away. He grasps my shoulders so I don’t fall. Then I press start on Poison’s Talk Dirty to Me. I hit the green notes, then the red notes, then the yellow ones. Then the next set and the next. I even nail a long note, then another, then a whole sequence of so-called “star-power” notes, and I give in to the game. I channel all my desire right now into the playing, and I am jamming here, rocking out to a video game, the pseudo-music taking my mind off the fact that I want Chris to talk dirty to me.

  I finish my first song. I raise my hands in the air. Victory.

  Chris smiles, big and wide, the teacher proud of his student. “Fast learner are you,” he says in Yoda’s voice.

  “You’re a Star Wars geek too!”

  He shrugs sheepishly. “You want to play some more?”

  I nod vigorously and then spend the next hour knocking out several more songs and even making it through my very first guitar battle, where I own the guitarist from Rage Against the Machine after two tries. By the time we turn off the game, I am feeling pretty energized. So I buy my own used copy of the game and walk out of the store with Chris.

  “Want to grab a bite to eat? I know a taco shop around here.”

  “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

  So I take him to a hole-in-the-wall taqueria, a true Mexican place, with orange Formica booths and countertops and a menu that’s half-English, half-Spanish. We order chicken quesadillas to share and two Diet Cokes.

  “I don’t want you caffeinating alone,” Chris says to me, as he carries the soda cans and two glasses back to the table.

  “How gallant of you.” He pushes a can toward me. I squeal inside with delight. He didn’t open it for me. He didn’t rob me of the soda-can-crack-open. He is gallant. I open my soda and pour it into a glass. He does the same with his.

  “Gallant McCormick, that’s what they called me in school.”

  “So where’d you grow up? Let me guess. San Diego? Since you have the whole California surfer look going on.”

  He shakes his head. “Brooklyn of all places, but I hate cold, so I got the hell out of town for college.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Stanford.”

  “Stanford?”

  Ha laughs. “What? Just because I’m not wearing a pocket protector or a business suit?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I just was surprised. I guess because you’re so laid back. You’re the video game guy, you’re a hipster. You don’t seem like a Stanford stiff.”

  “I studied software design.”

  “Wow. You know some serious shit.”

  “That I do.”

  “So what’d you do after college?”

  “Got a job designing software for video games,” he says. The waitress brings us the quesadillas. Chris says thanks and she leaves. “I did that for a couple years and then decided I wanted to do my own thing. So I started consulting, doing business strategy and whatnot for companies in the gaming space. Got asked to speak at conferences, then started video blogging, then the video blog turned into a TV show. And here we are now, me and my gaming empire.”

  “And here we are now, indeed.”

  “And you, McKenna Bell?”

  I tell him my story, growing up in Sherman Oaks, college at UCLA, a few years at Violet Summers, the fashion brand, then launching The Fashion Hound with Todd’s help, then the sale. “So there you go. You know my story. What’s yours?”

  “I just told you my story,” he reminds me playfully. Then I feel him tapping my foot once, twice under the table. Is he playing footsie? Is this how flirting works?

  My face turns red. I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know anymore what I meant when I said what’s your story. How is it I can be so good at suggesting how to assemble outfits, but so bad at knowing how to interact with a handsome man?

  “You mean am I involved with anyone?” he asks.

  Fire engine red now. I am totally, one hundred percent fire engine red. Was I that obvious?

  “Sure,” I manage to say, but the word comes out all choppy, as if it has ten syllables.

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  I fight the urge to grin broadly like the Cheshire Cat.

  “But you, you’ve got men all over,” Chris adds.

  Yes, but you’re the one I really want to date. If only you were twenty-three….Why did I have to take that oath with my girlfriends? You can’t break a girlfriend oath. That’s like fifty years of bad luck if you do. Not to mention it’s against the code. I can’t go against the girl code, no matter how much I want to forget Trophy Husbands right now, and focus only on how the heck I can date this one guy.

  “I narrowed the candidates down to about twenty of your guys and then my brain just stopped. I couldn’t figure out how to weed them down to some sort of reasonable number.”

  But none of those twenty are as devastatingly handsome as you.

  He shakes his head, amused at my predicament, then lays his hands on the table. “Have your viewers vote on the top five.”

  My eyes widen. “Chris! That is a great idea. That’s really perfect. It involves viewers more. Makes them feel more vested in the show. Gives them a voice.”

  “Exactly. They feel a part of it. They are a part of it. They will have had a role, a hand, in picking your next mate. You can even have them decide who gets a second date and so on. You can shoot video of the dates and post clips and let them choose.”

  “I love it! It becomes even more of an interactive show.” I point at him a few times, shaking my head appreciatively. “You rock,” I say, wishing he could be one of the twenty, one of the five. And then I could date him. And dating him wouldn’t be political, it wouldn’t be to get even, it wouldn’t be to make a point. It would be for the simplest of reasons. Because I want to.

  He smiles back at me, his sea-green eyes sparkling. I think again of Hawaii, of a beach, of a secluded island cove when I look into them. For a second, I feel like I am being hypnotized. Maybe I actually am. Because I can’t seem to take my eyes off of him. I can’t seem to break the gaze, nor can he, and now he’s looking at me in this more intense way, not just the flirty way, but in a way that takes my breath away. A way that says I wasn’t wrong, I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t delusional for thinking there were unsaid things at lunch. He looks at me as if he wants to know me, wants to see inside me, wants me to open up to him. And that’s when it occurs to me. That’s when everything comes together in one crystal-clear blaze of brilliance.

  Business. I am good at business. So I keep it on the business level.

  I lower my voice. “Chris, I have a fabulous business idea. I think you should be one of the initial twenty.�
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  He laughs, kind of surprised. “You’re not serious. Are you?”

  I nod several times. “This is a business proposition pure and simple. You’re a businessman and I’m a businesswoman, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you are trying to reach girl gamers for your show. You said that two days ago. Well, let’s do more than a promo. Let’s make you a candidate. You said your Wikipedia page has you at twenty-three anyway. So you could be twenty-three, you can pass for it, and obviously viewers will vote for you. They’ll pick you as one of the five to date. And then you’ll be on my show in a bigger way than just a promo. You’ll be a contender. You know as well as I do that brand integration is the way to go.”

  “I love it when you talk dirty, McKenna.”

  “You know it’s true,” I say emphatically. “You become part of the Trophy Husband project, then my viewers will get to know you, they’ll check out your show, they’ll check out you and bam. You are well on your path as you reach out to female gamers.”

  “Okay,” he says slowly. “I like the way you’re thinking. I like everything you’re saying. And yes, I do need to get the word out about my new show. But there’s one teensy, tiny little problem.” He holds up his thumb and index finger to show a small amount of space.

  “What’s that?”

  He holds up his hands, as if to protect himself. “Now, this isn’t personal. This isn’t about you. But, I don’t want to be a Trophy Husband.”

  I give him a look. A look that says you can’t be serious. A look that rebuilds my barriers and protects me from letting him see too far into me, into the truth of this business deal. That it’s not merely for business. But that the game might be the only way I can move closer to him without revealing all that I feel for him. In my body and in my heart. “Chris, this is a business deal. You and I are business partners. I am not asking you to move in, I am not asking you to be my man, I am not even asking you to be my boyfriend,” I say, deliberately not adding husband to the list. I make a mental note of the fact that I can’t even breathe the word husband, let alone bear to utter it.

  “But I kind of thought that was what this contest was all about.”

  “Yes and no. It’s about proving a point,” I say, returning to my platform, like a politician. My talking points. Because the more he questions me, the more I lose sight of my goals. The more I lose sight of the game. Because there’s no game with him whatsoever. Everything I feel for him is so scarily real, but I can’t let him know that though.

  “So you’re not actually going to go through with this? The marriage thing?”

  “All I want to do is prove that a woman can play a man’s game. So play with me. It makes things interesting to have you on the show.” I pause, then continue. “This is the Web. People want to laugh, they want to be entertained. They want to see people do wild things they can’t do on regular TV. They want us to be daring. They want us to do the things they can’t do.”

  Chris shifts back and forth a bit, considering.

  I go for the kill. “And you like to play games. C’mon, you’re a gamer, Chris. This is the ultimate game. Come on my show and play my game and let’s see if you can win.”

  “Oh, those are fighting words that cut straight to my competitive heart.”

  “Good. I knew I could hook you that way.”

  “So you want me to be your pretend boy toy for the sake of making a point?”

  “Dude, I totally want to make a point with you.”

  “Now it does sound like you’re talking dirty to me.”

  I quirk up my lips and I’m not sure what comes over me, but maybe it’s the fact that I’ve already had his hands on me, his mouth on me, that in my fantasies he knows what I taste like. So I say, “Maybe I am.”

  Chris rises and switches sides, sliding into the booth next to me. My heart leaps into my throat. My belly does a flip flop, and I am warm all over. Wait, make that white-hot when he fingers a strand of my long hair, playing with it. Does he have any idea what he does to me? Can he tell that I want to be tangled up in his arms? That I want to him to move me under him, to slide inside me, to lay his hot body on mine as he takes me? “You know, if I’m going to be a candidate, I think it’s only fitting, don’t you think, for me to kiss you?”

  “You mean to sort of test the waters?”

  “Make sure we’re a good fit.”

  “So this would be like a business partner kiss?”

  “Since we’re in business together, yes.”

  “Then this would be a business kiss.”

  “All business.”

  “Okay, Chris. You may business kiss me now.”

  His hand finds its way to the back of my neck and the feeling of his firm hand on me makes me shudder. I close my eyes reflexively, letting myself feel that little zing that rushes from my belly down to my toes and back up again, as he leans into me, his soft lips brushing mine, his hand still gently resting on my neck, his fingers playing with my hair. It’s not a long kiss, just a few seconds, but enough time for me to notice his lips are soft and full, his breath tastes fresh, and that even a even a starter kiss from him feels a bit like magic and music and falling all in one. He pulls away slowly, his lips taking their time leaving mine.

  It’s better than all my fantasies. It’s ten million times better. Because it’s real, and it’s tangible, and it’s happening, and he’s touched me, and I want so much more. I want him. All of him.

  I am an open book now – my lips parted slightly, hoping for more, my shoulders rising and falling. My eyes telling the truth, I am sure. He has to know. He has to know this is more with him. That this can be everything.

  As he breaks the kiss, the look on his face says he liked it, and he wants so much more. I recognize the look, because I’m sure I’m his mirror image right now.

  Plus, now I can date Chris.

  Chapter Eleven

  “She’s been fed and she had an afternoon walk, but if you can take her out for twenty minutes when you stop by, that would be great.”

  I gather my purse and keys as I finish up the instructions with Ms. Pac-Man’s regular dog-sitter/dog walker/dog trainer. I hired Wednesday Logan when we adopted Ms. Pac-Man and I’m also the one who attended every dog training session and implemented the instructions. But who’s counting? Oh, wait. I am.

  “Can you be sure to leave an invoice for me on the kitchen table?” I add as we chat on the phone. “I left cash for you already, but if you can leave an invoice that would be great.”

  “Absolutely,” Wednesday says. “I can’t wait to see Ms. Pac-Man again.”

  “And don’t forget if you run into Michelangelo, stay far away.”

  “The horny pug, right?”

  “Yep. She growls at him every time. But it’s totally his fault. He tried to hump her once and she’s not into that.”

  “Of course not. She’s a lady dog.”

  “Exactly.”

  I end the call and meet Hayden to catch a bus to Fillmore, since Julia has decided we need a Girls Night Out and we’re meeting her at the Tiki Bar, a loungy-bar with tapas and big, fiery drinks. She said the place is usually packed with young, hot men in their early twenties.

  I’m wearing my new V-neck Macbeth shirt, a short flowy skirt, and a pair of red heels with a buckle strap. The whole ensemble can be had for under $100 and I shared the shopping details with my viewers last week. Our stop is a few blocks away from The Tiki Bar, so we get off the bus and walk the rest of the way. My phone chirps from my purse and I answer it.

  “Hey, it’s Chris.”

  “Hey there. What’s going on?”

  Hayden instantly looks back at me. She might as well have boy radar. She can glean within nanoseconds when you’re talking to a guy. Well, any good girlfriend can. It’s in our DNA. It’s a requirement.

  “So I guess if we’re really going to be partners in crime, I need to send you a photo to post, huh?”

  “Of course. You have to p
lay by the rules.”

  We cross the street, Hayden deliberately staying two steps ahead. This pace is part of our DNA too; we are genetically programmed to give a fellow girlfriend the two-step spread during guy calls.

  “Rules. I do well with rules,” he says, and his voice is super flirty, and it makes me feel melty.

  I adopt a sharp but playful tone. “The rule then is you need to send a picture soon. I announced yesterday on the show that I am posting pictures tomorrow night for voting.”

  “Oooh, giving me orders already. I like that. Makes me feel like a boy toy.”

  “Better watch out, Chris. Soon, I may be asking you to arrive at my house and pretend to be the pool boy.”

  “I could totally do a cabana boy look for you.”

  “If I had horses you could be a stable boy.”

  “Giddy up.”

  I laugh, and so does he, and the sexy banter makes me feel, for a moment, as if Todd might not be the last word in my life when it comes to men. Then I tell myself to settle down. We’ve only had one kiss, and besides, this is all just a game.

  He’s a gamer, and his competitive instincts are firing on all cylinders. That’s all this is.

  I see the Tiki Bar just ahead. The code dictates you must complete all phone calls to guys before entering the appointed location for a girls’ night out. Phone conversations are only permitted in the window of time immediately before entering the establishment, and phone loitering is specifically forbidden.

  “Hey, Chris. I have to go. It’s girl’s night out, so let me call you later.”

  “Enough said. Talk to you later.”

  “Who was that?” Hayden asks, as we walk inside The Tiki Bar, but it’s noisy, and there’s a part of me that’s afraid of saying the truth out loud – that was the guy I’m majorly crushing on. Because if I voice those words, they become real. If I keep it to myself, maybe I can protect myself from heartbreak, so I pretend I didn’t hear her as we make our way to my sister. Besides, they want this for me. They want me to see this Trophy Husband quest all the way through. Julia is already holding court at a corner table, a garish pink drink with not one, but two umbrellas in front of her. It’s ironic, her drinking this, and she knows it. She, the uber-cool bartender, is drinking a strawberry daiquiri because it’s an ironic act.