“You have cool tee-shirts.”
I laugh a little.
“I noticed that about you the first time I met you.”
“You did?” I ask, not in a questioning way, but to keep up the conversation.
“That time at the electronics store, the first thing I noticed was you were hot. The second thing I noticed was you were funny. The third thing I noticed was you were really cool. And the fourth thing I noticed was you had on this cool tee-shirt with a squirrel waterskiing on it. I like a chick with a good tee-shirt collection.”
I smile. Or maybe I beam. Because I don’t know which of those four things I like better – being thought of as hot, funny, cool or stylish. I like them all, for different reasons, but I have to say he saved the best for last. He likes my tee-shirts, he likes my style. He likes what makes me me, and that’s enough for me to feel totally under his spell, body and heart.
“No one has ever said that to me,” I say with a smile, pushing my hair back, leaning my head a little to the side, deliberately flirting with him. I am doing those things behavioral scientists say men and women do when they write their “Science of Flirting” articles: sit closer, make eye contact, flick their hair. I am the “Science of Flirting” right now and I don’t care. I’m not flirting because he’s a contender, I’m not flirting because he’s my partner in crime. I’m flirting because I want to. And I am pretty sure when Chris smiles back at me, a sparkle in his eyes, that he’s flirting for the same reasons. I linger on his eyes for a moment, his Hawaii eyes, pools of green that strip me bare with the way he looks at me when his playfulness shifts to intensity.
Then I break the gaze because it’s getting late. “I should get going. My dog probably misses me.”
He pays the bill. “Since this wasn’t an official date, I’m going to skirt the Trophy Husband rules and be the gentleman here.”
We head out of the Tiki Bar and walk slowly up Fillmore. At the top of the hill, I see Erin’s maroon Prius. I point to it.
“These are my wheels.” I click on the key to unlock the car. Then I reach for the door handle. But it doesn’t open. I try again. Same thing happens. “Damn. What is up with these hybrids?”
“They have to calibrate to your heart rate.”
“Then how the heck am I supposed to drive it home?”
“I know a trick,” Chris says.
“You do?”
“Remember, McKenna, I’m a software engineer by training.”
“Software engineer. Car burglar. They’re practically the same thing these days,” I say, as I turn to face him.
“Want to give me the keys and I’ll show you?” he asks, holding open his palm for me.
But before I can pull away, he closes his fingers over mine, gripping my hand in his. That’s all it takes. Within seconds I am in his arms, and we are wrapped up in each other. His lips are sweeping mine, and I press my hands against his chest, and oh my. He does have the most fantastic outlines in his body. He is toned everywhere, strong everywhere, and I am dying to get my hands up his shirt, and feel his bare chest and his belly. But if I did, I might just jump him right here because I am one year and running without this. Without kissing, without touching, without feeling this kind of heat.
He twines his fingers through my hair, and the way he holds me, both tender and full of want at the same time, makes me start to believe in possibilities. Start to believe that you can try again, and it’ll be worth it. His lips are so soft, so unbearably soft, and I can’t stop kissing him. He has the faintest taste of Diet Coke on his lips, and it’s crazy to say this, but it almost makes me feel closer to him. Or maybe I feel closer because he’s leaning into me, his body is aligned with mine, and there’s no space between us, and I don’t want any space between us. I want to feel him against me, his long, strong body tangled up in mine, even though we’re fully clothed, making out on the street. I don’t know how it happened, but somewhere along the way I’ve grabbed his tee-shirt, my fingers curled tightly around the fabric.
He breaks the kiss, but I don’t let go of his clothes. I don’t let go of him. “I wanted to kiss you all night.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, that key thing was just an excuse. Sometimes you just have to hit the button a few times to get the car to open.”
I laugh. “So you said that to kiss me?”
He nods. “Totally.”
“I’m glad you tricked me,” I whisper, as he bends his head and kisses my neck, blazing a trail of sweet and sexy kisses down to my throat, and it’s almost sensory overload the way he ignites me. Forget tingles, forget goosebumps. That’s kid stuff compared to this. My body is a comet with Chris. I am a shooting star with the way he kisses me. I don’t even know if I have bones in my body anymore. I don’t know how I’m standing. I could melt under the sweet heat of his lips that are now tracing a line down my chest to the very top of my breasts, as he tugs gently at my shirt, giving himself room to leave one more brush of his lips, before he stops.
He looks at me, and the expression on his face is one of pride and lust. He knows he’s turned me inside out and all the way on.
“That was so unfair of me,” he says with a wicked grin, as I finally loosen the grip on his shirt. The fabric is wrinkled in the middle of his chest, marked by my need to hold him close. “Getting a headstart like that on all the other candidates.”
How can there be any other guys after a kiss like that? It’s a kiss to end all kisses, it’s a sip of lemonade in a hammock on a warm summer day. It’s a slow dance on hardwood floors while a fan goes round overhead, curtains blowing gently in the open window.
If he feels half as much for me as I do for him, then I want to sail away with him in the moonlight, and that scares the hell out of me. I have to extract myself before I let this go any further. I don’t mean the contact. I mean the way my aching, broken heart is reaching for Chris.
I channel my business self. My other side. The strong, tough side that won’t be hurt ever again.
“I should go,” I say.
Then he clicks on the car opener and I hear the doors unlock. He opens the door for me and I slip into the front seat. He’s about to close the door when I say, “Do you want me give you a ride home?”
He shakes his head.
“But Russian Hill is at least a couple miles from here. Let me drive you.”
“I’ll walk. I like the city at night.” Then he leans in to me, gently pushes my hair back and looks at me with a truly devilish smirk, his green eyes twinkling. “Besides, if I got into that car with you I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off of you. And we all know that really wouldn’t be fair to the others.”
“My, aren’t you considerate,” I say, keeping it light. “Goodnight, Chris.”
“Goodnight, McKenna.”
Then I drive away, watching Chris begin his long walk home in my rearview mirror. I head down Fillmore Street toward the water and he’s no longer a speck in the distance.
He’s gone.
* * *
As I drive back to the Marina, I do what girls, what women, always do in these moments. I replay the kiss. I put it on repeat in my mind. The way he grazed my neck with his hand, the way he lingered on a strand or two of hair, stroking it, touching it, like the shy but sexy Spanish guy did to Laura Linney in Love, Actually the night of the Christmas Party. She went wild inside, shivering with delight. I feel the same. I want to pull over on the side of the road. Pull over and lean my head back and close my eyes and just remember. But I keep driving, wriggling a bit in my seat as I find myself getting more turned on, getting wetter, the more I think about Chris, the more I think about what might have happened in this car if he’d taken me up on my offer for a ride home. I think about rolling up to a stop sign somewhere on a quiet street and going for another kiss. Then stopping on the side of the road and turning off the engine, then the lights, then climbing into his seat and making out in a parked car, a friend’s car no less, as he kisses me more. The
kind of kiss where I let go, where I breathe out his name in a long, slow, lingering sigh that borders on a prayer. The kind of kiss that winds down my body, lips against my belly, fingertips grazing my waist. That makes me want to rock my hips into him, to let him take me places I haven’t been, as I let him inside me, all the way in. And when he’s there, it feels so right, so good, so deliriously out-of-this-world, that all I can do is say his name in a breathless, ragged kind of whisper as I struggle to form words because all the things he does have made me come undone for him.
Like a good boyfriend would do.
As I pull into my own garage I am struck by a simple thought: it would be kind of nice right now just to have a boyfriend, just a boyfriend, nothing more.
Chapter Thirteen
I don’t usually have questions about whether to fight or flight. I’m almost always on the side of fight. But when I see Amber a few days later power walking with her baby strapped to her chest, all I want to do is flee.
Because Amber is the living, breathing manifestation of all that I never was.
Good enough to keep a man walking all the way down the aisle.
She had something I never had. I don’t even know what it is about her. Is it her looks, all hourglass redhead? Or is it her body and the way she can bend? Or it is more? Is she funnier, smarter, more interesting? Does she love harder, better, more? How did he know in one night that he wanted to be with her forever?
I don’t have those answers as I walk my dog along the Marina bike path on a weekday morning. I don’t think I’ll ever have those answers. Worse, I don’t know if I’ll ever stop wanting them. It’s like there’s this raw wound inside me that can never be exposed to enough air to heal. I’ll never be able to treat it, so it’ll become a part of me, the ulcer in my heart that won’t ever go away.
And that’s why I want to duck and hide right now, to roll into a bush and curl up with my dog, like we’re two soldiers who’ve found a foxhole for protection.
But she sees me, and she waves and smiles.
Breathe deeply. Turn over a new leaf. I am Zen McKenna. I am cool, calm and collected McKenna, as I walk in her direction, imagining I am a guru, a yoga instructor, a therapist. I am serene, I am graceful, I am a mountain breeze.
“Hey, McKenna,” she says and stops.
Okay, so I guess I have to stop now too. But I don’t have to be nice because I’m not a yoga instructor or a therapist. I’m the jilted and I don’t like that the jilter is on my territory. “What are you doing in the city? Don’t you live in the suburbs?”
Amber pats the back of the sleeping baby on her chest. “I started teaching again. Gymnastics. I have a class with two-year-olds in about a half hour over in the Marina with some of the mommies there.”
“Oh, that is so sweet,” I say and somehow find the restraint not to fake gag.
“I love teaching, and Charlotte is a good baby. She sleeps during the class. But I also just love being an independent woman and supporting our family.”
“Oh,” I say and place my hand on my chest as if I am so touched. “That’s so lovely.”
“It’s important, don’t you think? That’s what your Trophy Husband quest is all about right? By the way, I love it. I love your show. And I just think we have to set examples. And mine is that I can be a working mom and help pay the bills.”
“That’s great,” I say through gritted teeth.
“And how is sweet Ms. Pac-Man?”
Amber leans down to pet my dog, the sleeping baby angling close to my dog’s face. I make a mental note to give the dog a bath when I return home. Then Ms. Pac-Man emits a low rumble. I snap my head and look at my dog. She’s pulling back her doggy lips and showing her teeth.
I yank her collar and pull her away.
Amber stands at attention, a look of terror in her eyes.
I’m about to admonish my dog, who has never been anything but sweet with kids, when I realize she wasn’t going after the baby. There’s Michelangelo up ahead, trotting in our direction, his wrinkly little face and beige puggy body aiming straight for one of Ms. Pac-Man’s legs.
A wicked sense of glee floods my veins. Because this isn’t just parking karma. This is all the karma in the world.
“I’m so sorry about that, Amber. Todd must not have told you?”
“Told me what?”
“Oh. Yeah. Ms. Pac-Man doesn’t like babies. Or kids for that matter. She growls at all of them. I’m working on it with her, but she’s just not fond of the littles ones.”
“Oh,” Amber says and nods in understanding. “That’s really good to know.”
“Isn’t it, though? All right, toodle-loo. I have to go.”
Thank the lord for horny pugs.
* * *
“Here’s my favorite part of dating. I get to do what I like best – devote my mental energy to assembling cute outfit combos,” I say to the camera, then model the newest ensemble I’m wearing for an afternoon coffee chat. “Here’s the worst part. You’re caffeinated all the time. Because you constantly have to go out for coffee for first dates. I have never had so much coffee in my life.”
We’re shooting outside today, so I gesture to the coffee shop near my house, Your Other Office.
“So I’m just going to head in and grab another. After all, I have a date in, oh, about two hours. And guess what? It’s Bachelor Number Four, thanks to you!” I point at the camera. “You know the drill. You picked ‘em for me and I’m doing the dirty work, going on the dates. So, in two hours, I’ll be reporting for duty and tomorrow, I’ll report back so you can choose who deserves a second date. So keep voting, keep sharing your thoughts on the candidates. Because this isn’t just about me. This is a communal effort, a collective Trophy Husband for all of us.”
I salute the camera and give my usual sign-off. Then Andy turns off the camera and I sigh heavily. It’s getting harder for me to keep up the act, but I don’t want Andy to know.
“How was it?”
He gives a silent thumbs up. He packs up, staying quiet most of the time. I do my part, helping with the microphone, but decide to ignore his noiselessness. I counter it with chatter. “I’m exhausted.”
He gives me a harrumph.
“What should I talk to this guy about?”
“Don’t know,” he says curtly.
“You want to just add a ‘don’t care’ to the end of that statement?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, that’s kind of what you meant, right? Don’t know, don’t care?”
He stares at me for a second, then continues packing his camera gear.
“What is eating you?”
“You know what it is.”
I do. The same thing that’s eating away at Andy is what’s been eating away at me since that kiss with Chris on Saturday night. Since then I’ve been going on the requisite dates with the top five, and, as I predicted, the viewers voted for Chris as one of the five. The dates are chaste, as they should be at this point in a dating contest, and nothing has happened physically with any of them. Chris is the only guy I’ve kissed and he’s the only one I want to kiss. Even when I’m on other dates, my mind is on him. So I have to wonder if Andy’s instincts are right.
I close my eyes, then press my thumb and forefinger against the corner of my eyelids, squeezing them, trying to find some sort of answer. But I don’t even know what the question is and now my brain starts to hurt. I’m not in the mood for heavy reflection.
So I say goodbye to Andy and head to Your Other Office, trying to remember the name of the Trophy Husband candidate I’m meeting there soon. Craig? No, Craig was Monday’s date. Craig and I had pizza at lunchtime sitting by the water. We grabbed slices at Martino’s, a New York style pizzeria that uses the flimsiest paper plates possible. We walked a few blocks to the water, our plates sagging in the middle, grease threatening to spill out. We sat on the rocks just a few feet from the Bay, looking at the gorgeous Golden Gate Bridge. There is no more
stunning bridge in the entire universe. I have lived in the Bay Area for six years and have never once grown tired of our rust-colored bridge. Its beauty always captures me, whether I’m driving across it, watching it from the ferry, or gazing at it. The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the wonders of the modern world. It is a marvel.
But Craig disagreed. “That is such an ugly bridge,” he remarked as we sat down on the rocks. I choked on my pizza.
“What?” I said in between coughs.
“Man, if it were up to me I’d rip that sucker down,” he said, casting a disdainful look toward the bridge.
“You’re joking, right?”
He shook his head. “I’d make a sleek steel bridge. None of this suspension shit.”
“Maybe you could tear down the Sistine Chapel, slash The Nightwatch, and see if you can get Shakespeare banned from school curriculum too.”
Tuesday’s boy was a little better, but still no prize. His name was Jared, he was a computer repair guy, and a major fan of Chris’ show. But then all he did was talk about Let the Wookie Win. He told me he’d seen every episode twice. He told me he had added Chris to his Twitter account, so he got updates on Chris’ online “status” throughout the day. He was vying to become one of Chris’ “Top Friends” on Facebook, and could I do anything to help him achieve that goal?
I was already thinking of Chris the whole time during the date. With those constant mentions, it was as if Chris was running at a double-time loop in my brain.
As I walk into the coffee shop, I finally remember the name of today’s date. Jean Paul Peter. I don’t know his last name, but he has three first names. When he arrives, I switch on the iCam. The cards are all on the table now, so I’m going to share some of this date with the viewers. They’ll be happy since Jean Paul Peter looks better than his picture. He’s tall and built with lovely dark skin. He’s wearing jeans and a long sleeve pullover, one that can’t help but accentuate his sculpted arms. His hazel eyes are flecked with gold.
Trophy Husband Page 12