Trophy Husband Read online

  I’ve never seen her in person before. I have only seen one photo I found of her on Facebook the day after his voicemail, as I sobbed and clicked, surrounded by unopened wedding gifts sent to our apartment. Now I feel stupid for not studying her photos more, for not hunting out more pictures of her online. I stopped after that one – a faraway shot of her at a gymnastics meet since, of course, she’s a gymnast – because it hurt far too much. But now with her here in front of me, I catalogue her features. Her cheeks are rosy, her skin is soft and smooth, her hair is auburn red and shampoo model bouncy with perfect waves, and her boobs remind me of Salma Hayek’s.

  They’re so freaking huge.

  Fine, I’m only six years older, but I have straight brown hair that I color blond, and weird eyes that are sometimes blue, sometimes green, sometimes gray, and my breasts are decent, but not dead ringers for cantaloupes. I’m only twenty-seven and I know it sucks to be left at any age. But the fact that he left me for a co-ed – giving himself a trophy wife for all intents and purposes – didn’t help my self-esteem. I’d been with him for five years; she’d been with him for one night, and she got him all the way to the altar. I got stuck with two mixers I never use, and party-of-one as my middle name.

  “Hi McKenna,” Todd says in his best business-like voice.

  “Oh….” It’s like a long, slow release of air from Amber, as her mouth drops open, and she shifts her gaze from him to me, registering who she’s been chatting with.

  She recovers faster than me though, because I’m still speechless and stuck in this chair, sitting next to Amber. She is the name of all my heartbreak. The name that drummed through my brain for the better part of the last twelve months, like an insistent hum in the pipes you can’t turn off. Amber, Amber, Amber. The woman he wanted. The woman he chose. I will never hear that name without thinking of all that she has that I don’t. The man I once wanted to marry.

  “You know, why don’t we just get a new table?” she says to Todd.

  He scans the restaurant. This is the last empty table. “There’s no place else to sit,” he says, and it’s clear he has no intention of leaving.

  What’s also clear is that he’s the only of us – him and me – who doesn’t care that he ran into his ex-fiancé. That realization smacks me hard, but it reminds me that I need to pull myself together and channel whatever reserves of steely coolness I have in me.

  “It’s fine. I’m almost done anyway,” I manage to say even though my food hasn’t arrived.

  “So how’s everything going with you?” He reaches for a menu and scans it. He doesn’t even look at me while he’s talking. It’s not because he’s rude. It’s because I am nothing to him. There’s a stinging feeling in the back of my eyes. I tighten my jaw. I won’t let them see me cry.

  “Great. The blog is great. The dog is great. Life is great,” I say, pretending I am a robot, an unfeeling robot who can spit out platitudes. I have to. I have to protect my heart because it feels like it’s being filleted. “I see you like this place now?”

  “I love it. Favorite diner in the whole city.”

  My throat catches, and I grit my teeth. “That’s great. And such great news about the hard-boiled eggs too.”

  He gives me a curious look.

  “Nothing. It’s nothing.” I affix a plastic smile when the waitress brings me my food. She turns to Todd and Amber. They order as I slide my laptop into my bag and consider ditching the place right now. Who needs food when there are ex-fiancés and their new wives to remind you of all that was stolen from you?

  “And I’ll have a coffee too. No more soda in the morning for me,” he adds before the waitress leaves.

  The burning behind my eyes intensifies. It’s just coffee, I tell myself. But he used to hate coffee. He detested it, and now he’s drinking it instead of Diet Coke.

  He turns his attention back to Amber. “But no coffee for you still,” he says to her in a babyish voice. She smiles at Todd as he lays a hand gently on one of hers. I try my hardest to mask the all-too familiar feeling of my insides being shred by him. God, I loved this man. I was a fool, but I loved him like crazy, I fell for him the day I met him randomly at a bus stop several years ago. He was mine, and he was wonderful, and he was the only one I wanted.

  “Well, it was great seeing you,” I say, and start to push my chair away.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Yeah. I totally forgot that I ate a bagel already today. Stupid me.” I smack my forehead, as if I’m shocked at my own forgetfulness.

  “I do that sometimes too,” Amber says. “Forget stuff. I think it’s because I have baby brain right now.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh,” she says, and there it is again. That long expression of surprise.

  Todd nods several times. “We had a baby. Two weeks ago.”

  My heart races into a very painful overdrive of disbelief as it pounds against my chest. This can’t be happening. Todd clasps his hand over Amber’s and she beams at him, and that smile, for her, just for her, threatens my precarious sense of I’m-totally-fine-with-being-ditched-the-day-before-our-wedding.

  “We have a little sweet little baby girl. Her name is Charlotte.”

  The diner starts spinning and I grab the edge of the table. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping, praying that’ll do the trick and hold in the tears that are threatening to splash all over my face. He changed everything for her, all the way from children to breakfast choices. And he took everything from me, including our name for a baby he wound up having a year after leaving me a voicemail that said he didn’t want to marry me because he couldn’t picture having kids with me.

  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 b
lue 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.

  Chapter Two

  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 li
ve 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.