Trophy Husband (3 page)

I open my eyes. Take a deep breath. Try to
keep it together. “That was our name.”

“It’s a beautiful name too,” Amber says.
“She’s such a beautiful baby, and so smart too. She’s with my
parents right now over in Marin. But I miss her and I’ve only been
away from her for an hour.”

“We’re madly in love with being parents,” he
adds.

That does it. He might have cut out my heart
with an Exacto blade, but I won’t let him know it’s bleeding again.
I have to get away from them.

“You should really get back to her then,” I
somehow manage to choke out as I stand up and grab my bag, doing
everything not to trip and fall as I leave my food on the table,
and rush to the restroom, where I slam the stall door and let the
tears rain down. My shoulders shake, my chests heaves, and I am
sure I look like a wretched mess. After several minutes, I check
the time. But I know they’re still out there, so I stay inside this
stall as other patrons come and go. I camp out in the safety behind
this door, registering each minute.

Until an hour passes.

Then I unlock the stall, splash water on my
face, and touch up my mascara and blush.

I don’t feel human, but I can at least pass
for one again. I open the door a crack, spotting the table where he
delivered his latest crushing blow. I thought I was over him. I
thought I couldn’t be more over him. But seeing him with her
reopened everything I thought I’d gotten over by playing Call of
Duty and shooting bad guys every night for the last several
months.

I head for the counter, pay the hostess for
the food I didn’t eat, and then I leave The Best Doughnut Shop in
The City. Another wave of sadness smashes into me when I realize
I’ll never be able to come to my favorite diner again. He’s ruined
this place for me.

I’m so ready to go home and curl up with Ms.
Pac-Man for a bit, so I hurry over to my car, where I see a white
piece of paper tucked under the wiper, flapping in the wind. Now I
have a parking ticket? Now my karma bites me in the back? No, this
should be the day when I find a winning lottery ticket on my car,
not a parking ticket.

I turn around to peer up at the sign. The
white and red sign very clearly says Sunday mornings are free. I
glance at the curb. It’s not red. There’s no hydrant nearby. I scan
the block. Down near the corner of Hayes Street, I see the meter
boy, wearing his uniform of blue shorts and a blue short-sleeved
button-down shirt. I grab the parking ticket and march down the
street to confront him.

He’s slipping another ticket under the
windshield of a lime-green Prius. “What’s up with the ticket?”

He turns around to face me and I feel like
I’ve been blinded. He is shatteringly good-looking. His face is
chiseled, his light blue eyes sparkle, his brown hair looks
amazingly soft. I can’t help but give him a quick perusal up and
down. It’s clear he is completely sculpted underneath his parking
attendant uniform. Every single freaking inch of him. He smiles at
me, straight white teeth gleaming back. He’s so beautiful, my eyes
hurt. It’s like looking at the sun.

My ticket rage melts instantly. My resolve
turns into a puddle.

“Oh, hi. I saw you earlier when you
parked.”

“You did?”

He’s smiling at me, giving me some sort of
knowing grin that unnerves me. He’s probably all of twenty-one,
just like Amber. He does not possess the tire that the men I see –
at the coffee shops or dog parks – wear around their midsections.
No, this fellow owns a pair of noticeably cut biceps and an
undeniably trim waist. Why have I not spent more time hanging
around the meters in this city with its bevy of beautiful, young,
sexy parking attendants?

“Hey, I’ve got some other cars to deal with.
But call me later.” Then he winks at me. He crosses the street.

“I didn’t park illegally,” I shout at
him.

He smiles again, that radiant smile still
strong from across the street. “I know.”

I stand there for a moment,
befuddled on the corner of the street.
Call me,
he said. How would I call
him? I look at the ticket in my hand and flip it over.

There is no check mark on it, no official
signature, no indication of a parking crime. Instead, there’s a a
simple note: “You’re gorgeous. Give me a call sometime.” Then
there’s a number.

I shake my head. I’m
floored by the turn of events. By the shift in my day from utter
crap to a pick-up line.
Okay, McKenna –
which is more implausible? That your ex-fiancé had a baby with her?
Or that an achingly handsome young meter man wants you to call him
for a date?

I walk slowly back to my
car, still in a daze. I reach my Mini Cooper and lean against my
car for just a minute, not caring if the backside of my sky blue
skirt picks up dirt – a skirt I snagged when my girlfriends Hayden
and Erin stole me away for a wine country spa weekend to forget all
my woes, and it didn’t work, but I did score some cute clothes at a
vintage shop I found next to a bowling alley on the drive home. I
flip the ticket over again, looking at Meter Man’s number. Then I
glance one more time down the street and see him on the other side
now, writing out parking tickets. He must feel my faraway eyes on
him, because he looks up and waves at me. He mimics the universal
sign for
phone
,
holding up his hand against his ear, thumb and pinky out. I can’t
help myself. I laugh at the incredulity of this all. I read the
note yet another time.
“You’re gorgeous.
Call me.”

There’s a part of me that wants to lock
myself inside and have a pity party. To call my girlfriends and let
them help me drown my sorrows as they have done every single time
I’ve needed them to in the last year. But if Todd can change
everything about himself, maybe I can too. So I go against my
natural instinct to retreat. Instead, I pull my phone from my purse
and dial the meter man’s number. I watch him off in the distance as
he extracts his phone from his pocket.

“I’m glad you didn’t make me wait.”

Be still my beating heart. He’s hot, he’s
nice and he’s flirty.

“I’m glad I didn’t wait either. So, what’s
your name?”

“Dave Dybdahl.”

I try not to laugh at the
odd alliteration of his double-D – wait, make that
triple-D
– sounding
name.

“Dave, why’d you leave this note for real?
You’re not trying to pull a joke on me and I’m really going to have
some massive parking fine?”

He laughs, then assumes a very serious
voice. “I never joke about parking meter matters,” he says and I’m
liking that he’s got a little sense of humor working underneath
that fine exterior. “I saw you get out of your car before you went
into the diner and I thought you were pretty. Want to go out
sometime?”

I laugh again. A date. I don’t have dates. I
have shooting sessions with video games. I have crying fests with
my girlfriends. I share a king-size bed with a lab-hound-husky.

And I have a hope that it all may change.
That this life of the last year is not my life to come. That this
day is the nail in the coffin on my heartbreak. That the songs I
listen to could someday be sung for me. The ones about mad, crazy,
never-gonna-let-you-go love. Maybe with Dave Dybdahl. Maybe with
someone else.

“Why not? I’ll call you later to make a
plan.”

“I can’t wait.”

I hang up the phone and stare at it again,
still not sure if that conversation really just happened. I push
the phone back into my bag and it suddenly occurs to me that Todd
doesn’t have to be the only one who gets to win here. I am single,
I have a good job, an awesome job in fact, and I’m not bad
looking.

Todd took my heart. He took my name. He took
himself. He gave it all to Amber, his Trophy Wife. But that moment
in the Best Doughnut Shop in the City doesn’t have to be the last
word, does it? He doesn’t deserve any more tears. He doesn’t
deserve any more of my pain. There is no more room for sadness or
hurt.

I have to move on and I finally know
how.

Because my brain has hatched the perfect
plan, right here, right now, thanks to this handsome young meter
man. I can turn the tables. I can even the score and take up the
mantle for all the jilted ladies, young and old. This is no longer
about me. There is something bigger at stake here. I have been
presented with a rare opportunity. This isn’t just happenstance.
This isn’t just coincidence.

This is real parking karma at work.

Because if the unbelievably hot Dave Dybdahl
thinks I’m cute, then maybe, just maybe, I could land a hot young
thing, a delicious piece of arm candy, a boy toy. Maybe Dave
Dybdahl, maybe someone else. Because Dave will be just the
beginning of my new project.

I am going to score myself a Trophy
Husband.

My next order of business is to convene a
meeting with the brain trust.

So I scurry back to the Marina district
where I live now. I got the hell out of our tiny little apartment
in the Mission as soon as I could. One week after Todd had eloped
with the Pretzel Gymnast, I’d packed up the whole place, thanks to
help from my sister Julia and my good friend, Erin. She gets double
helper points since she carried those frigging mixers, which are
heavy bastards, all the way to Good Will by herself. Then I moved
in with Julia for a few weeks as I looked for my own place, one
that wasn’t choked with memories of what I had thought was my big,
epic, once-in-a-lifetime romance.

I found a new home fairly
quickly, thanks in part to the sale of my video show,
The Fashion Hound
, to the
media company Fashion Nation. I’m a matchmaker of outfits, hosting
my own short daily show about where to find the coolest, funkiest,
most unique looks, and how to pair them and
not
pair them together.
The Fashion Hound
took
off online, and after several months Fashion Nation bought it and
brought it into the fold. I still write and host the
show.

The irony was the offer came in two weeks
before the wedding. Todd and I even celebrated it together with a
night out at a new restaurant in SoMa, and then dancing at a club,
where we made out to the sounds of techno pop, and toasted to a
big, fat payday for doing what I loved – video blogging about
clothes.

Life couldn’t have been better.

I had the guy, the gig, the dog, and the
dough.

I still have the gig, the
dog, and the dough, so I suppose three out of four ain’t bad, and
really, all things considered,
Don’t Cry
For Me Argentina
.

Even though, you know, my heart was pretty
much severed.

But I love my job, and that’s why I keep
doing it every day, and besides the bigger house, I don’t live off
the money from the sale. I live off what I earn every day, though
obviously I’m grateful for the financial padding. I know I’m lucky
in business. I know I have a lot of things – my health, a house,
and security. Not to mention, the world’s most awesome dog. I
wouldn’t mind, though, being lucky in love. Alone at night, in my
quiet home, in my king size bed, I miss company.

I miss music and laughter, and nights
wrapped up with another person when that person feels like the
world to you, and you to him. So maybe a hot young thing can be
more than just a way to settle the score. Maybe a Trophy Husband
would never leave me, never hurt me, never make me give up my
favorite restaurant in the whole wide world. Maybe a Trophy Husband
is precisely the kind of boy who could love a girl forever and ever
and then some.

The kind of love that makes the crooners
want to sing in sultry voices.

“But that’s just between you and me, Ms.
Pac-Man,” I tell my dog as I curl up on the couch next to her and
send an email to Julia, Hayden and Erin, letting them know their
presence is required at my house this evening for an emergency
meeting.

* * *

That night we switch the location to
Hayden’s house. She lives next door, which means we share a wall,
an entryway, and a front stoop. Her husband, Greg, is out of town.
They’re both lawyers – he’s a business attorney and she does patent
law – and she’s holed up in her home office, finishing a legal
brief that’s due for a client tomorrow, so I help her daughter Lena
get ready for bed.

I adore her daughter for many reasons,
including the fact that she loves clothes and fashion and is pretty
much the best shopping partner ever. Sometimes, when Hayden and
Greg need a break, I happily take Lena out for a girl’s afternoon
and we try on everything on Union Street. And I mean everything.
The girl has power shopping genes twined deep in her DNA, and I
love that kind of relentless-ness when it comes to clothing
racks.

Lena waits for me at the end of the hall,
pointing excitedly in her room. Lena’s wavy brown hair is unkempt
as usual, in desperate need of a brushing. But at eight years old,
she’s already learning some of the secret tricks of women. She has
pushed it back with a red headband that’s got big white polka dots
on it. Very Marianne.

“By the way, I totally approve of the look,”
I say. “But your mom said we have to get you to bed. The girls are
coming over soon.”

“McKenna!” she shrieks, barely able to
contain her excitement. “Look, look, look.” She grabs my hand and
pulls me into her room and begins stroking their Siamese cat
Chaucer, who’s curled around a stuffed teddy bear. Lena tucks her
feet gracefully under her legs and keeps petting. She leans her
face in to the cat, rubbing her cheek gently against his downy fur.
“McKenna, do you think you can convince my mom to let him stay in
the house tonight, just one night? You like animals, don’t
you?”