“So this is a crusade, a cause?”
“Exactly. But now I want other women to take up the mantle. We’ve been told for years to date older men, but we can snag younger men too. Much younger men.”
Helen becomes more excited. “You’re amassing followers, aren’t you?”
“So many we should form an army.”
Helen can’t get enough of this. She slaps her palm on the arm of the couch. I take that as a cue to keep going. “I believe women can do what men can do. And we don’t have to feel bad. We don’t have to explain ourselves. We can just do it.”
The audience loves this, they are enraptured. I am going to end this on a high note. No one will remember that I bowed out the same day. They will remember the message and a generation of women who come after me will collect Trophy Husbands and they will remember this moment when I led them to the promised land of equality.
“I can’t imagine you’ve had any trouble finding takers though. So where do we stand in your quest? You’ve been dating JP and Craig and this guy Chris, but we never saw the video from that date. Are you really going to go through with this? Are you going to walk down the aisle?”
I open my mouth to answer, but no words come out.
Helen is a pro though and she ably fills in the silence with humor. “What I really want to say is can I help you pick out your dress? Maybe help you get a tiara for your hair, a little princess crown or something? And maybe we can schedule your wedding to the Trophy Husband winner to air on TV too?”
The prospect sounds horrifying, and it’s as if there’s a weed in my stomach, twisting its way around my insides, latching onto my organs. A few hours ago, I thought the cause still mattered. I thought the point was worth making. But despite the new threats from Todd, the lying is gnawing away at me, and I don’t want to feel consumed by revenge anymore. If he’s going to go after my business, I’ll have to deal. That’s what lawyers are for and my friend is married to the best of them. I’ll get through whatever mud Todd slings my way just as I got through the break-up – with a little help from my friends.
A million thoughts race through my mind in this instant, a million voices. Chris saying ‘When this point is no longer important to you, that’s when you should call me again.’ I hear Andy’s words: ‘He doesn’t care what you do. He doesn’t care if you prove him wrong. I doubt Amber cares either.’ I hear Hayden’s daughter: ‘I think you should find a nice boy. I want you to be happy. I want you to find your sailboat in the moonlight.’ And my sister Julia: ‘ When I find someone I can actually talk to that’s when I’ll know I’ve found the one.’ The voices grow stronger, louder, like a Greek chorus, echoing in my ears.
And that chorus guides me on to this moment. To this truth: there’s no more getting even, just living my life, moving on.
Helen is staring at me, and I can tell she’s getting ticked that I’m no longer rattling off quips and snark. This is TV, after all, and she doesn’t want any dead time. I don’t want to let her down. I want to give her something good. And I realize this is the perfect way for me to move on. To drop the anger, to say goodbye to getting even, and to step into my future.
“Actually Helen, I have a confession to make.”
She rubs her hands together. She’s glad this segment may be back on track. “Do tell.”
I take a deep breath. “The contest is over.”
“Over?”
I nod. “Yes, I made the decision this weekend, and I’m announcing it now for the first time. It’s over because I don’t want a Trophy Husband. It’s over because I don’t want to marry a younger man just to get even. It’s over because no contest, no boy toy, no hot young thing will ever change the fact that my ex-fiancé ditched me for another woman. But most of all, and most important, it’s over because I met someone along the way, and he’s the one I want. And there’s one more thing I want to say, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this on your show.” I look to her as a flock of nerves descends on me, beating their wings. But I have to live with this vulnerability. I have to be okay with it. I think I am.
Helen is surprised with the curveball, but she’s not a national TV show host for nothing. “As long as you don’t swear on my show.”
“I didn’t just meet someone. I fell for him. I fell in love with him. I couldn’t help it, and he swept me away. That’s what happened. That’s how I feel. Like magic, and music, and everything the love songs promise. The kind where there’s no question about it, and it can’t be any other way. And that’s why there will be no Trophy Husband, because if he still wants me like I want him then I’m here to say that I’m much happier with a boyfriend than I could ever be with making a point.”
Her lips quirk up, as if she’s assessing me. But then she looks to the studio audience. “What do you think?”
They clap and they cheer, and soon there’s a collective sort of “aww” coming from the crowd.
Helen pumps her fist and nods appreciatively at me. “I love this woman! She had the crap kicked out of her by love, and she got up on the horse and rode again. Forget revenge fantasies. You are the poster child for taking a chance again at love.”
I like that title better. A lot better.
Chapter Nineteen
I wait in the lobby for Tristan. I keep checking my phone, but Chris won’t have called because he hasn’t seen the show yet. It won’t air until this afternoon. Even though all my instincts tell me to run over to his apartment, jump into his arms and smother him in kisses, the reality is I am in a holding pattern for hours. It’s as if I’m flying cross-country, sans phone, sans connection to the world, until later today.
Soon, Tristan reappears with a thumb drive. He hands it to me with a flourish then kisses my cheek. “In all its technicolor glory. Now, don’t post it until four-thirty. That’s when the segment will have run live. You can post the clip anytime after.”
“Promise.”
“You are a brave woman, and I hope that man knows he’s damn lucky to have you.”
“I’m damn lucky if he’ll still have me.”
Tristan gives me a confident wave. Then he leans in to whisper. “And if you met any men along the way who bat for my team, you just send them my way.”
“You know, I might actually know someone for you. Take a picture with me.”
He drapes an arm over my shoulder and smiles for the camera as I turn my phone around to capture us. Then I take down Tristan’s number.
* * *
Andy has never looked happier than when he shoots today’s video. He high-fives me when it’s over. “I cannot wait to edit that clip in. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you. Her show airs in about thirty minutes, so we can run when my segment is over. But let me know the second it’s live, okay?”
“I will.”
“Oh, and what do you think about this guy?”
I tap the photos on my phone and show Andy the one I shot a little while ago. He peers at the screen. “He’s not bad,” Andy says, and there’s a flirty sound in his voice. My Andy is back. My Andy helped bring me back.
“He’s single.”
“Then he’s really not bad.”
“He lives in San Francisco. He has a good job.”
“You really can’t resist engineering things, can you?”
“No,” I say with a laugh. “Do you want me to set you up?”
“Sure.”
Then he waves and drives off.
* * *
I brace myself when Hayden bangs on my door. I answer it, hunching my shoulders forward, fully prepared for her to launch a verbal attack of why did I have to learn this on TV and how could you keep this from me?
But she’s the first to congratulate me. “I heard the news. You sneaky bitch! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” I say, but I’m smiling. “I guess I was scared.”
“I am pretty frightening.”
“I didn’t want to let you down.”
“I wi
ll be seriously let down if you don’t tell me everything now.”
So we move from my doorway and sit on the steps, and her eyes grow wider at the Fish Out of Water Studios part, they become saucers when I tell her about Qbert, and then she shrieks as I recount the news of my on-air admission.
“Wow,” she says, with something like awe in her voice. “I feel like that has the making of some crazy romance novel.”
“Oh, stop it with you and your romance novels.”
“No seriously. The best ones have these crazy plots, and earth-shattering orgasms, and then some big gesture like confessing your love on a billboard, and then the happily ever after.”
“I’m hoping for the latter. But I feel terrible. You guys worked so hard to help me find a Trophy Husband and I just bailed on it.”
“We cheered you on because we thought it would make you happy. Because we thought you’d be able to move on.”
“So you’re not mad at me for dropping the contest?”
“I told you, McKenna – I’ve always wanted you to be happy. Whether you’re happy with a guy, without a guy, with an older guy, with a younger guy, even if you decided to go girl on me. All I want is for you to be happy. I could never be mad. Especially because you are crazy and insane and you make us do things we haven’t done since college.”
“But now it’s all over.”
“We may have to resort to egging people’s home or toilet papering trees.”
“Such low-brow pranks.”
“I am confident with enough time you will devise something new.”
“And I went out with him too the night of our girls night out.”
“You broke the golden rule of a girls night out,” she says admonishing me. Then she rolls her eyes. “Besides, I figured you were talking to someone you liked that night. Even though I’m so totally bothered and completely annoyed that my best friend has fucking fallen in love.”
* * *
But I don’t hear from Chris all through the evening. I don’t hear from him even after I forward him today’s episode of The Fashion Hound. I don’t hear from him as I walk Ms. Pac-Man, as I give her dinner, as I heat up pasta for myself. As each minute of radio silence from him passes, I want to rewind the day, to do it over, to do something, anything, differently.
I brace myself for the inevitable – for more silence as I read through emails, and comments and posts from viewers of The Fashion Hound. Most of them are thrilled, they love love, and stories of love, and big showy declarations, and they’re dying to know what Chris said.
But naturally with my luck, my efforts fell on deaf ears, and I’m back where I started. Alone, with a six-pack of Diet Coke and a bad attitude for company. I open the fridge and crack open a can when my phone rings. I feel that burst of hope that it might be him, then the fear that I’ll be disappointed.
When I grab it from the table, I see his name, and I know that at the very least I’ll have an answer.
“Hello?” I ask nervously as I put the can down on the table.
He doesn’t respond. Instead, I hear the notes of a song I know so well, a song I want to live in, a song I want to feel inside and out. It used to be torture. Now it feels like joy, and you’d need industrial strength cleaner to wipe the ridiculous grin off my face. Then I realize where the song is coming from. Outside my window.
I drop my phone, run down the stairs, my dog following close behind, and open the door. He’s here. At my house. On my steps. Looking casual and cool in cargo shorts and an orange faded tee-shirt that fits him well as he holds his phone up high and plays my favorite song. To me. For me. I want to hug him. I want to kiss him. I want to be with him in every way. Because he’s here. He found me. He came to me. I’m so damn happy right now I could power a rocket to Jupiter and back.
“So you really like this guy, huh?”
“Totally.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s crazy in love with you too.”
“I was about to chew off my leg if I didn’t hear from you.”
He laughs. “I would have called sooner, I swear. I was in the studio all evening and there’s no cell reception, so I didn’t see your email til just now. Then I watched your show, and –” he stops, and gestures to the dog, who’s wagging her tail. “I think she wants me to come inside.”
“I want you to come inside.”
We don’t make it to my bedroom. I place my hands on his cheeks and start kissing him on the stairs the second I shut the door. He responds fiercely and we are all lips and tongue and teeth crashing into each other in an anthemic song of kissing, a big epic tune of music, and passion, and hope. Of falling in love again. Of letting go and starting over. He lifts me up and I wrap my legs around his waist, and he carries me up the steps, and lays me down on the couch.
He looks at me, appraising me, and I feel so vulnerable, but so right about this, about him, about us, as he trails his hand down my bare leg. I sigh, as he kisses my ankle, then makes his way to my calf, stopping to plant a tender, but hot kiss behind my knee, and soon I am wriggling, and wanting, and needing so desperately to feel him.
“I am so incredibly in love with you, McKenna. You have no idea how awesome it was to watch that segment. It was the coolest thing ever because I totally feel the same. You are everything I have ever wanted in a chick, and I’m so glad you’re mine.”
I am flying high right now. “I am totally madly in love with you, Chris,” I say, just because I can. Then, in a lower voice, I breathe out his name. “Chris.” I don’t have to ask. He knows it’s time. He knows I’m ready.
He strips off my skirt and I pull off my top, not caring where they wind up.
His hand makes it way from my waist up to my hair again. I move closer to kiss him and find myself sighing when my lips meet his again, in a new kiss, a slower kiss than the one by the door, the kind of kiss that’s a promise of what’s to come. He tastes so good, these sweet soft lips of his. I touch the soft fabric of his tee-shirt and my right hand drifts down to his abdomen, to the waistband of his shorts. I feel his hands exploring too, as he reaches around to my back, unsnapping my bra. He tosses my bra to the side of the coffee table and places his hands on my breasts.
“Mmm, these are great,” he says, like a kid in a candy store.
“They’re real, you know,” I say, a little boastfully.
“Oh, I know. And I like it that way.” He plays with them more, cupping them, licking them, kneading them, pretty much unable to take his hands off of them. “Ever since I met you I have wanted to get your shirt off.”
“Don’t take this the the wrong way, but I should tell you I have felt the same about getting your shirt off.” Then I lift his shirt up and over his head. I run my hands across his arms, his chest, his trim waistline with just the right amount of cut to his belly. I trace the outline of his abs with my fingers. He’s firm and toned and I want to keep running my fingers across him, sort of like when you can’t stop touching a rabbit’s coat, and the sensation, the feeling, the touch draws you back for more. Then I make my way down to his boxer briefs.
“I’m going to need to take these off.”
“Be my guest,” he says as I strip off his underwear. He’s naked next to me, reaching for my panties, taking them off swiftly too.
“I hope you have a condom because I don’t,” I say.
“I had a feeling we might need one,” he says and reaches for his wallet inside his shorts, and I’m so glad he had the foresight to bring one, because I can’t wait a moment longer. He rolls it on as I watch him. God, he’s beautiful, all of him, every inch of him, and he’s here with me. He wants to be with me, and he’s so fucking sexy as he prepares to enter me. I place my hands on his shoulders, but then he shifts so he’s on his back and he moves me on top of him.
“I have a feeling you like to be on top.”
“However did you know?”
“Just a wild guess.”
I lower myself onto him. I draw a sharp intake of breath, close my
eyes and let the feeling of him filling me up take over me. Then I open my eyes again and look down at him. His hands are on my hips and he moves slowly inside me. It’s a deliciously lazy kind of rhythm, in and out, long and leisurely strokes that reach every part of me, and intoxicate me with the most wonderful drug of him. Of Chris. Of being in love. As he moves in me, sparks fly through my whole body, racing through my blood, through my veins. I close my eyes, because reality is too intense right now to have to see it. I just want to feel right now. So I lean down to kiss him and he draws me against him, my breasts pressing into his chest. “I have to tell you, Chris. It takes me a long time. A really long time.”
“I don’t have anyplace to be,” he whispers. “Other than with this girl I’m crazy in love with.”
So I make love to my one-time business partner, my erstwhile partner in crime. He is none of those. Right now, he’s here with me, just me, as I touch his strong chest, then as my hands fumble in his soft hair that I love like crazy. There is no hidden agenda as I linger on the feeling of him all the way inside me. There is no game as he moves me up and down on him, holding me close, holding me near.
He brushes a strand of hair away from my face, and touches my cheek, then my neck in a gesture that floods me with so many emotions that scare the hell out of me, but feel so good too. The way he holds my hips as he drives into me is as consuming as it is tender, making me tremble, because we are so connected, so in tune that I know now what perfect means. This is perfect with him. This is more than perfect.
He is everything I could ever want, and he’s mine.
I’ve never cried during sex, and I hope I never do. But in this moment, I am overwhelmed with the intensity of all that I feel for him. I want as much of him as I can have, and he fills me so completely as I quicken the pace, moving in synch with him, in a delicious sort of rhythm that builds as he drives me higher, and my belly tightens and I draw in a deep breath, and then he brings me there.
It’s a waterfall, crashing over me, in my body, and in my heart, and so I bury my face in his neck, as I say his name louder, and my voice nearly breaks, and I hope he knows it’s because his name is the only one I ever want tumbling forth from my lips.
Trophy Husband Page 17