Trophy Husband (16 page)

“You know, McKenna,” he says, rubbing his
thumb and forefinger along one of my bangles. For a second, I think
he’s going to say something about my penchant for accessories. But
instead, he kind of nods at my tee-shirt, at the crown hanging off
the last letter in the name of the “Scottish Play.”

“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.

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.