Trophy Husband (11 page)

“A lot.”

“And this reminds me. When
you do snag yourself that Trophy Husband, let’s make sure the
dog’s
guardianship
is established from the get-go.”

“Speaking of, I need to do some
whittling.”

“Want me to help you?”

“You would?”

“I told you I’m here for you. So if you’re
doing this, you better make room for me,” she says, and scoots
closer to check out the pictures together as I return to my inbox,
which is bursting with more than five hundred potentials thanks to
the power of Chris’ show.

“How about this guy?”

“Ooh, I like that one,” Hayden says,
pointing to a dark-haired hottie with a seductive smile.

“Let’s move him to the potential keeper
folder,” I say and slide his email over with a flourish. I wonder
briefly if I should tell her about my kinda-sorta-maybe date with
Chris tomorrow. I don’t even know if he’s twenty-three, though I
doubt it. But as Hayden’s eyes widen and she points merrily to a
cute blonde guy, then vehemently nixes a so-so redhead, I decide
I’m better off keeping Chris to myself for now. If my one reluctant
friend is now fully backing the quest, I need to stick with the
plan and adhere to the oath I took at her house a few weeks
ago.

Besides, it’s just lunch.

Lena pads down the hall,
wearing her black and orange San Francisco Giants pajamas, and
holding
Green Eggs and
Ham
, still her favorite book. “Mom, I can’t
fall asleep. Can you read one more book to me?”

“I’ll read to you,” I offer. “These emails
are making my eyes glaze over.”

“Can I see?” Lena leans over the couch to
see the pile of emails stacked up, virtually, in my inbox. “What
are all those emails, McKenna?”

“She’s just trying to sort through some boys
for potential dates,” her mom says, since Hayden tends to be pretty
open with her kid. Ergo, so am I with Lena.

“Yeah, cause the Fedex guy was a dud,” Lena
says, repeating back what I told her a week ago when she asked.

“Total dud.”

“So do you like any of these boys?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll find a nice boy. I want
you to be happy. My mom wants you to be happy. We both want you to
find your sailboat in the moonlight.”

I tear up again. My friend and her kid know
my favorite songs. They know what my heart wants, even though my
brain rarely listens to my heart.

* * *

“You can never go wrong with fries.”

“Or with forty-seven varieties of dipping
sauces for fries,” I add as I survey the list of ketchup
substitutes that Fritz’s offers. Fritz Gourmet Fries is on one of
my favorite streets in the city. Union Street happens to boast some
of the best shopping in the city, with arty boutiques and funky
little shops where I often find purchases to show my viewers. But
honestly, the only reason I am thinking of my second favorite
pasttime – shopping – is that if I don’t I might be eaten alive by
the butterflies in my belly.

Chris is so cute. So handsome. So
delectable. And I am sure I am going to do something to mess up
this sorta date because I haven’t a clue how to date. I’ve been
with one guy since I was twenty-one, and I don’t even know if this
is a date with Chris, but I want it to be one. Because he thinks
I’m a hot chick, and I think he’s a total babe, and I’ve already
imagined the passion with which he kisses and the sparks his
fingers send through me…

I focus on the menu because if I don’t I
will surely do something incredibly inept.

I scan the list of forty-seven dipping
sauces – pesto mayo, spicy yogurt peanut, creamy wasabi tapenade,
spicy lime, roasted red pepper. They all sound delicious.

“If I told you my favorite French fry dip
was ketchup would you think less of me?” Chris leans in as he asks
the question, the menu spread out in front of him on the table, his
light brown hair falling across his forehead. He’s wearing jeans
and a green tee-shirt with a picture of a cartoon squid on it. The
squid’s cool, but I mostly like the shirt because it shows off his
arms, toned and strong. I’m wearing a flouncy skirt, a purple scoop
neck top, a matching necklace with small purple plastic squares
strung together, and my Mary Janes.

“Dude, you drove my views
up by fifty-five percent in
one
day,” I say, referring to the viewership stats
from yesterday when he first mentioned me, because if I say what I
want to say –
How could I think less of
you, you beautiful man
– he’d run. “So as
for how you like your French fries, well I say you could eat them
in a boat, you could eat them in a box, you could eat them with a
fox –” I cover my face with my hands. “I can’t believe what I just
said.”

Chris laughs. “You’re
reciting
Green Eggs and
Ham
!”

“I know.” I look up, a little embarrassed.
“Well, Chris. The cat’s out of the bag. I’m kind of a dork.”

“Nah, that’s just a good book.”

I shake my head. “I can’t believe I said
that, like it was a punchline or something. I think it was because
I was reading it to my friend’s kid last night. She’s eight and she
still loves it.” Chris looks at me, listening, but I feel kind of
silly again. Why does he bring out the awkward in me? Oh right.
Because I want to run my hands through his hair, and I want to find
a million reasons to touch him, his hands, his arm, his legs.
Because, yeah, that’s awkward.

Chris’ green eyes sparkle. “But would you
eat them in a house? Would you eat them with a mouse?”

“Not in a box, not with a fox, not in a
house, not with a mouse,” I fire back, and I could kiss him for the
way he now makes me feel un-awkward.

“I would not eat them here or there. I would
not eat them anywhere.”

“Okay, Mr. McCormick. Pretty damn
impressive.”

A waiter pops by our table, fresh-faced and
smiling, with a face so smooth he looks he hasn’t even started
shaving yet. “And what can I get you fine folks today?” he asks,
rather jollily.

“I’m gonna go a little wild and order some
French fries,” I begin.

“Yeah, go nuts!” the waiter replies
cheerily. “What kind of sauce would you like with that?”

“I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you surprise
me? Just pick your three best, any three, and bring them back to
me.”

The waiter’s eyes light up. He’s thrilled to
have been entrusted with such an important task. “It will be my
pleasure.”

“And I’ll have the Mediterranean salad with
that,” I add.

“And for you?” The chipper boy asks my lunch
companion. Chris orders a chicken sandwich, French fries, and extra
ketchup. The waiter returns to the kitchen. I launch right back
into conversation.

“So now I feel I must regain some street
cred in your eyes, so I’ll tell you that the last time I watched
her kid, I read her the lyrics to one of my favorite songs to teach
her new words.”

“And what would those be?”

“Well, now she knows all
about an airline ticket to romantic places and a tinkling piano in
the next apartment since I read the lyrics to
These Foolish Things
to her,” I say,
then I want to clamp my hand on my mouth. Why don’t I just tell him
to whisk me away and bury me in kisses that make me forget where am
I as the world disappears and time slows to one delicious moment
with him? Because I don’t think I gained any points by serving up
that romantic mushfest to him.

“You should know that, one,
you didn’t lost any street cred by reciting
Green Eggs and Ham
, two, you
definitely gained even more coolness for sharing one of my top five
favorite songs of all time, a song I would only ever admit I liked
to a girl,” he says, and I hide a grin because I didn’t just mess
up. “And three, I know the words to
Green
Eggs and Ham
because it was my little
sister Jill’s favorite book, and I taught her to read way back
when.”

“What a good older brother.”

“Thank you. I’m one of two brothers.
Youngest boy, and Jill’s the only girl.”

“And is Jill out here in the Bay Area?”

He smiles and shakes his
head. “Nope. She’s in New York. Actress. She landed a part in this
new Broadway musical called
Crash the
Moon
. It opens soon and I’m going to go see
her. I’m really proud of her.”

“I’ve heard about that musical. It sounds
amazing.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty stoked about it. We text
and email a lot, and she’s been telling me about it. But I think
the director is also making her kind of crazy.”

“I have to imagine directors of musicals
probably have a way of doing that.”

He smiles back and this time I notice his
teeth. They are nice, straight and white.

“So I wanted to thank you again for
mentioning my show on your show. That’s what this crazy video world
is built on, right? Cross promotion.”

“Speaking of, that’s something I wanted to
talk to you about,” Chris says.

My heart sinks. I had thought this was a
date. But it turns out he may have a business agenda. Then I tell
myself it’s better this way. I wouldn’t know how to date someone
like him for real.

The waiter appears with our salads,
sandwiches, fries and sauces. He deposits the plates on the table,
hurries off, then returns with water. He clasps his hands together,
almost like he’s praying. “Now, can I get you anything else?
Anything else at all?”

I shake my head and Chris says no. The
waiter leaves.

“Is he like the happiest person you have
ever met?” Chris asks.

“Yeah, I’ll have what he’s having.”

“So, I have to tell you. I looked you up
after I gave you back your camera,” Chris says, and I find myself
hopeful again because he looked me up. He dips a French fry into
the ketchup. “When you finally gave me your last name and well –”
He stops himself, shifts gears a bit, then resumes. “And then when
I did and saw you were this big Web personality...”

I laugh once. “Hardly.”

“Anyway, I added you to my
RSS feed and started watching your show every day, even though, I
have to say, I’m not into fashion. But I watched it because…” his
voice trails off again, and I want to fill in the gaps. I want to
script what’s unsaid.
Because you thought
I was cute too?
But I can’t let myself
hope. Hope leads to disappointment. “And then when you talked about
the dates you went on and how they flopped, that’s when it hit me.
I could send you some of my viewers. Because they’re young and
hopefully somewhat cool.”

“And I’ve gotten pictures from about five
hundred of them!”

“And I’m sure some of them are dorks like
most guys are, but you never know, right?”

“There were some good ones in the crop it
seemed.”

He pretends to blow on his fingernails, the
sign for being too hot to handle. “Damn, maybe I am good at this
matchmaking thing.” Then he becomes serious and asks, “So I have to
ask, is this for real?”

“For real?”

“Yeah, for real. I mean, it’s funny. Don’t
get me wrong. I think it’s a hilarious storyline. But it’s a
storyline, right? It’s a game and all, but are you actually going
to go through with this?”

“What do you mean, go through with it?” I
ask, dodging the very thorny question of will I say “I do.” Because
for me, frankly, this isn’t about the “I do” portion. It’s about
the trophy aspect. It’s about the catch. And, I suppose, what
landing such a prize might say about me. That I can move on. That I
am over Todd. That he’s not the only one who wins.

Chris takes a bite of his chicken sandwich,
chews, then says again, “Yeah. Are you really looking for a Trophy
Husband?”

I furrow my brow and pretend to be all
thoughtful. “Hmmm…I’ve always thought a pool boy would be nice.
Even a cabana boy.”

He laughs. “So it’s kind of a joke.”

“No. My ex-fiancé left me at the altar last
year for a college student he met and married in Vegas the night
before our wedding. He’s thirty-four and she’s twenty-one now, and
I think it’s royally unfair that men can do that and women
can’t.”

He puts the sandwich down and looks at me
intensely. Seriously. “Your ex-fiancé is a complete asshole for a
million reasons, but most of all because he’d have to be crazy to
leave you.”

“Thank you. Thank you for saying that.”

“It’s his loss, McKenna,” Chris says in this
kind of fierce tone that makes my stomach execute a few
loop-de-loops. Is he flirting with me? How do I even flirt
back?

I do what I do best and turn the questions
back on him. “What about you? Maybe you should be a Trophy
Husband.”

He laughs.

I look at him pointedly, my eyes open wide.
“Well, why not?”

“Well, um…” he stammers. He seems slightly
uncomfortable. My cue to keep going.

I egg him on. “After all, you encouraged
your viewers to throw their names in the hat. Maybe you should too.
Maybe you could be a Trophy Husband, Chris.”

He starts blushing, his cheeks turning a
faint shade of red.

“You’re blushing!”

“Yeah, well…”

“It’s kind of cute actually.”

“Thanks, that’s what I was hoping for. Cute
blushing.”

“You don’t like the sound
of
cute blushing
?”

“It’s not very manly, now is it?”

I soften a bit. “Why are you blushing?”

“I just don’t think I’m Trophy Husband
material,” he says, kind of sweetly, a little innocently.

“Well, why not? Are you already a
husband?”

“No, that’s not it.”

“So what then? You could be a prize catch,
Chris,” I say, and he smiles.