Trophy Husband (5 page)

“Indeed, indeed he is,” I say, nodding.

“And has this breed ever been spotted
before?”

I shake my head. “Not in captivity at least.
Not that we know of.”

“So this is uncharted territory if you
will.”

I nod knowingly. “Very uncharted territory,
my friends. Very virginal fields here. In fact, the Trophy Husband
is so rare that few know what he looks like, what he eats, where
one lives. Worse, we’re not sure what he wears or what he requires.
But we are going to find out. Because tonight marks the beginning
of Project Trophy Husband.”

Erin is eager to play. “We know one thing
about a Trophy Husband. He has to be younger. A lot younger.”

“You’re right. But how much younger?”

Erin raises her hand, an excited student
eager to keep answering. “Well, you’re only twenty-seven, so
there’s not much wiggle room. So I say he must be between
twenty-one and twenty-three. Super young, and super hot, and
besides I can vouch for the appeal of a twenty-two-year-old
male.”

Hayden leans forward placing her chin in her
long hands. Everything about Hayden is long. Her nickname is
Giraffe. Her legs are endless and skinny. She has the flattest
belly this side of Hollywood and equally thin arms. “Tell us more
about this vouching.”

I flash her a smile. I’m glad that she’s
going along with this. That I convinced her this project will be
for the best. That it will be exactly what I need for the closure
she wants me to have. I need Hayden’s support in my life.

Erin leans in conspiratorially. “Well, you
know I have a twenty-two-year-old client. Not the swimsuit model.
But this other guy is a cyclist. He’s on the LemonHead team or
something. He comes in once a week, usually Monday mornings. I
think that’s his off day. He has a perfect body. Not an ounce of
fat on him.”

Julia points frenetically to the notepad.
“Write that down. That’s good. Perfect body. Not an ounce of
fat.”

“So basically we’ve got three things,” I
say. “Twenty-one to twenty-three. He needs to be hot. And he needs
to be in spectacular shape. Where do we start? I mean, we have
Dybdahl. Who’s next?” Then I gulp. Because here’s the part where I
have no clue. Yes, I can tell you whether that skirt goes with that
shirt, I can sing Karaoke in front of a crowded room, and I can
make a prank phone call if properly dared. But ask me to find a
man? I met Todd when I was twenty-one. I have been with one man for
the last six years, and before then I was with boys. And not very
many.

My momentary tough façade fades away, my
all-business persona slipping off to the hall closet. I’m just
McKenna right now. McKenna who got fooled by her boyfriend, who got
duped and dumped and left, with a dress to send to consignment,
dishes to be returned, and a cake that was donated to a homeless
shelter. I hear the residents that day enjoyed it, and for some
reason, that made me cry even more. Not that crying is hard for me.
I’m the girl who listens to Billie Holiday and Elvis, and dreams of
these foolish things. Things like love, and trust, and hope. Things
like faith in another person. My heart winces for a moment, and a
rebel tear forms.

Then, a voice pipes in, a small but strong
little voice, coming from the other side of the kitchen. “What
about the Fedex Guy?”

Hayden whips her head around. “Lena! What
are you doing up?”

Lena smiles innocently. “Well, you always
say he is cute and I heard you ladies say you were looking for a
cute guy…”

Hayden scuttles her back to bed, this time
shutting the door all the way and returning to the table.

“So tell us about your Fedex guy,” Erin says
with a sly grin.

But I don’t return the grin. Instead, I feel
a thousand seeds of doubt planting in my belly right now. I drop my
head in my hands and mumble, “Who am I kidding? I’m not going to
get a man. I don’t have a clue. I’m the girl who was left at the
altar. Who would want me?”

“Who wouldn’t want you?” Erin counters.

“And besides, I’m twenty-seven. Shouldn’t I
be, I don’t know, forty or something before I think about a Trophy
Husband?”

“Why should age be a barrier? A Trophy
Husband is just that – a catch. A pretty young thing. That’s what
we’re going to get you, and you have what it takes to land a trophy
husband whether you’re twenty-seven or thirty-seven. You don’t have
to be Hugh Hefner’s age, McKenna.”

“Thank god for that, but I haven’t dated,
haven’t been involved, and haven’t a clue about men in the modern
age. Hayden’s daughter is trying to set me up with the Fedex guy!
Because that’s like the only chance I have and I’ll probably bungle
that one somehow.” I look up at the crew. Their sympathetic eyes
stare right back at me. “This is silly. I can’t do this. I’m not
cut out for this.”

Erin slaps her palm on the table. “You are
one hundred percent cut out for this. Men do this all the time and
there’s no reason a woman can’t. They are always scoring younger
chicks. Constantly. Besides, you have everything you need to snag a
Trophy Husband. You sold your business for a ton of cash, you’re
loaded at twenty-seven, so why the hell not?”

“But,” I say, starting to protest more, to
tell them all I really want is a date with one good guy.

“No buts,” Erin says firmly. “You have been
in a funk for a year. Totally understandable, and no one expected
otherwise. But this is your chance, McKenna. This is your light at
the end the tunnel. Your way out of the sadness.” Erin sounds so
earnest as she reaches across the table and clutches my hand. “This
is the perfect way to get back in the dating saddle again. By
making it fun. By turning the tables. By having a crazy good time
with a hot young guy.”

“I know guys, but still. I just want –”

Hayden chimes in. “What do you want,
McKenna?”

“I want,” I start to say, and there it goes
again. The hitch in my throat. The stinging in my eyes. The start
of that horrible shaking feeling in my chest that says another
round of tears are going to take over. I am so tired of this. I am
so exhausted from the way my stupid emotions have controlled me. I
don’t want to be this person anymore. “I want to move on.”

“Then do it,” Erin says and bangs a fist on
the table. This is a way to move on that’s fun. You are single and
you are hot and you deserve to have a grand old time on the dating
circuit.”

I scoff. “I am not hot.”

“Have you looked at yourself in the mirror
lately?” Hayden asks. “You’re a babe, McKenna. You’re tall and
you’re thin and you have good boobs.”

Erin jumps in. “And you have that blond hair
and your crazy, wild greenish-blue eyes.”

“My hair isn’t even natural! Guys, stop it,
please!” I insist, covering my face with my hands, embarrassed by
their compliments.

I hear heels clacking across the floor. Then
I feel a hand on my shoulder.

“You are McKenna Bell.” It’s Julia. She’s
one year younger and has always been my biggest champion. “You are
going to do this. Not only is this exactly how you’re going to get
over that d-bag, but this is bigger than you. This is bigger than
all of us. You are Title IXing when it comes to the sport of
dating. Remember in high school? You were the one who lobbied the
school district for girls to play baseball, not just softball. And
you didn’t even play softball. You’ve never even played sports.
You’re the ultimate girlie-girl. But you did it because you have
always been the biggest champion of Title IX.”

In twelfth grade I petitioned the high
school to let girls play baseball. I wanted to show that girls
could handle the hardball, they could take the heat. It took nine
months of campaigning, researching, petitioning and being the
squeaky wheel. The school decided girls could play baseball in June
of my senior year. Sure, I never caught a screaming fast baseball
in a well-worn catcher’s mitt, and probably never could. But that
didn’t matter. The girls who came after me did, and girls at
Sherman Oaks High School still play baseball today. I know because
I’m one of the biggest donors to the girls baseball program at my
alma mater. They’ve won three championships in the last ten years.
They rock.

“This is no different,” Julia continues.
“This Trophy Husband quest. It’s about leveling the playing field
when it comes to the sport of dating younger and hotter. This is
your turn at the plate, and you’re damn well going to take it.”

“I am?”

“You are.”

“You’re sure?”

“I am so sure I’m beyond sure.”

I take a deep breath and nod. I can do this.
I’ll treat it like a sport, a game, a project because those are
things I can handle. Dating for a cause is far more manageable than
dating for me. There’s no safety net there. Here, I have a built-in
shield. Maybe dating for sport is precisely how I should get back
in the game.

The game of love.

“So no more guys your age. No more older
guys,” Julia says.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Todd was too old for you anyway. He was,
what, five years older?”

“Six,” I mutter. Todd’s thirty-three.

“And guys older than you are now officially
verboten. Got that?”

I nod dutifully at my sister.

“Raise your right hand,” Julia
instructs.

I do as told.

“Repeat after me. I solemnly swear, under
penalty of breaking the girlfriend code that I will not date a man
older than me.”

I repeat her words.

“Because you are the poster child for this
movement, and you are getting back on the goddamn dating wagon and
finding yourself a much younger, much hotter, much more fun man.
Like Dave Dybdahl. Because Dave Dybdahl wants you, Dave Dybdahl
asked you out, Dave Dybdahl wants you to call him right now.”

Julia whips out her cell phone from her back
pocket and plunks it onto the table. “I have speaker phone and I’m
not afraid to use it. So get out your little camera because I know
this is going to be a blog entry tomorrow on how to dress for a
date with a hot young thing.”

Hayden flashes me a contrite look when Julia
mentions the camera, but I give her a reassuring wave, as I stand
up and run next door to grab my computer and shoot on the iCam.
Then in true junior high sleepover style – we might as well be in
our jammies giggling and munching on popcorn all night long – I
call Dave Dybdahl and ask him out, the computer cam capturing only
my end of the call since he’s still the innocent.

And the innocent says yes.

“Have you played the newest Halo?”

Before I can even turn around to see where
the voice comes from, I laugh.

“Have I played the newest
Halo?” I repeat as I consider the video game shelves at the
electronics store on Lombard Street where I’ve been contemplating
buying Modern Warfare, which is next to Halo. “Am I breathing? Am I
a sentient human being? I played it
and
saved the world from destruction
in twenty-five hours, thank you very much.”

Then I turn to my questioner and Holy Mary
Mother of Hotness.

I drop the Modern Warfare box along with the
camera box, and my jaw might have fallen to the floor too. I
contemplate reaching down to the floor to pick it up so I don’t die
from the embarrassment of checking him out. Because my questioner
is tall, trim, with light brown hair, kind of surfer boy length,
and these crazy green eyes, the sort of green that’s like the color
of the sea, if the sea were green, only really it’s blue. But you
get the idea. His eyes are like Hawaii. He’s wearing cargo shorts,
flip flops, and a black Nor-Cal tee-shirt that shows off the right
amount of tanned, toned arms. He’s so cool and casual, and it’s
completely my favorite look for a guy.

He hands me the boxes I just dropped. “Here
you go,” he says, and I wish his fingers had just brushed mine. I’d
take any sort of contact from him, even the barest trace of an
accidental one.

“Thank you.”

He smiles back at me immediately and then
makes a little bow. “Twenty-five hours. Wow.”

I’m a tad competitive so I can’t not ask how
he did. Plus, I’m totally digging his nearness to me right now.
He’s too hot to let walk away. Translation: he’s blazingly
beautiful and I want to keep looking at him. “Okay, I’ll take the
bait. What about you? How many hours?”

He waves a hand in the air.

“Oh c’mon,” I persist. “I told you.”

“Fine,” he says, then lowers his voice to a
whisper. “Seven hours.”

My eyes go wide. “Get out of here,” I say,
and give him a quick push on the shoulder, like a teenage girl
would do. Oh, those are nice sturdy shoulders. Too bad I’m not
smooth enough to let my hand linger on his shoulders, or drop down
to his chest. Right, yeah, because that would work — feeling him up
in the middle of the electronics store. But still, it’s a nice
image to tuck away in the mental files.

He just shrugs casually.

I shake my head. “No, that’s not how it
works,” I say playfully, enjoying the exchange with the perfectly
handsome stranger behind the warm green eyes. “You can’t just drop
a little nugget like that and not give me the goods. Tell me how
you got past the Forerunner Mission, because I was stuck there for
hours, getting killed over and over.”

I listen intently as Video Game Guy begins
detailing his tactics, talking with his hands, moving his body back
and forth a bit to simulate Master Chief’s movements, the main
character in Halo. He has a nice body. Wait, he has a fantastic
body. He has the kind of body that women driving cars slow down
for. He has the kind of physique that turns a gal into a gawker.
The way his tee-shirt falls just so tells me all I need to know
about the flatness that lies beneath.

Then I remind myself to pay attention and
focus, because it’s rude to just stare at his belly instead of his
face, especially when his face is so very lovely too. So I nod as
he shares his gaming secrets.