Trophy Husband (23 page)

“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.

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 will 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.