Trophy Husband Read Free Page B

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