“How did you fix it?”
“I can’t give away all my secrets now, can I?”
I smile. “I suppose not.”
“But maybe you’d be willing to tell me your last name now that I’ve fixed your camera.”
Another smile. Another nervous laugh. “McKenna. McKenna Bell.”
“Well, thank you for letting me fix your camera, McKenna Bell.”
“Maybe if I’m lucky, the cat will pee on my router next.”
He smiles, then runs a hand through his wet hair. There’s something so effortless about the way he moves, so natural, that I don’t even think he’s aware of the effect he has on women.
Of the effect he has on me. I want to run my hands down his chiseled chest, exploring the lines between his muscles, the way his stomach is outlined so firmly. I want to know what those arms feel like wrapped around me, pulling me in close. I want his hands on my h*ps as he teases me and taunts me with sweet kisses on my cheeks, my eyelids, my forehead. Then his tongue flicks across my earlobe, and I gasp with pleasure. He pulls back, a satisfied little grin on his face before he returns to my neck, burning up my skin in an instant with those lips that were made to mark my body.
Then I stop the fantasy from going any further. If I don’t, I’ll just start panting right here on the sidewalk, and he’ll know I was this close to undressing myself for him.
“I should go, Chris. But thanks again. This is awesome.”
There. I’ve got plenty of self-control, and he surely can’t read my mind and know I was about to become liquid heat for him.
“Yeah, watch out for cats,” he says, and that’s all. That’s it. No flirty comeback that says his imagination is running wild too.
Then it hits me. A guy like this – successful, hot, and totally talented – must have a girlfriend. He must have many girlfriends. He has that California ease about him, a laid-back charm that reels girls in.
As I walk away, he calls out casually, “Or maybe the cat will pee on your iPod.” I look back, meeting his gaze even from several feet away as he adds, “If I’m lucky.”
I drive to Golden Gate Park with those three words playing on repeat. If I’m lucky. If I’m lucky. If I’m lucky.
Then I tell myself he’s just a flirt. Because there’s no other reasonable explanation.
Chapter Five
All I can say is Andy was wrong.
Because there is nothing pathetic about Meter Man.
Nothing at all. At least from a distance. He is walking toward me right now and I like the way he walks, I like the way he moves.
I’m camped out on a bench in front of Shakespeare Garden, surrounded by the ponds and hills and bike paths of Golden Gate Park. Though Shakespeare Garden has a big name, it’s a little spot, maybe the size of a large backyard or a private courtyard. Twin columns frame wrought-iron double gates, a brick walkway cuts across the garden, and a sundial stands in the middle.
I like this spot for many reasons, but especially because Todd and I never went to Shakespeare Garden in all our time together. It’s untouched by the enemy.
I met Todd because we took the same bus to work every morning, him to his PR shop and me to the fashion brand, Violet Summers, I worked at before I started my blog. Almost every morning I watched Todd get on the bus, slightly disheveled, wearing a blue, white, or blue-and-white striped button-down Oxford cloth shirt and khaki pants. He always sat in the same spot, two seats from the front of the bus. I started inching closer, a seat a day. Two weeks later, I was in the seat behind him.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yeah, and that’s quite a feat in this town.” He turned around, his elbow resting on the back of the seat. “You know what Mark Twain said about San Francisco?”
His eyes lit up, he was excited, like he was about to share the coolest, most unusual quote in all of literature with me. But like everyone else who’s ever set foot in San Francisco, I knew it by heart, so I said loudly, “The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco.”
He smiled back, his light blue eyes twinkling mischievously. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds and his sneaky silence unnerved me. Then he said, “Not that one. This one.” Then he quoted the Mark Twain saying that no one ever quotes about San Francisco, but one that is more beautiful, more original, more sexy. “It is the land where the fabled Aladdin's Lamp lies buried – and she, San Francisco, is the new Aladdin who shall seize it from its obscurity and summon the genie and command him to crown her with power and greatness and bring to her feet the hoarded treasures of the earth."
I felt warm all over, lured into his gaze, his charm. He wasn’t like every other straight guy in San Francisco who rattled off the Mark Twain summer-winter line as if he were the cleverest male in all the universe. Todd was clever, he was charming, he was smart. He knew something other people didn’t know.
Sweetly, he added, “I like that one better.”
We chatted until my stop. As I stood up I reeled off the one San Francisco quote I knew. “You know what Oscar Wilde said? Anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco.”
“Don’t disappear. Have dinner with me this weekend.”
“I won’t. And I will.” Then I hopped off the bus and counted down the hours until the weekend.
I cringe now at the memory, but that was all it took back then. I have always fallen first for cleverness, for smarts, for wit. Looks have been secondary.
That’s about to change, I tell myself, because looks are clearly where Dave Dybdahl excels. He is ridiculously handsome. He’s wearing jeans, work boots and a white ribbed tee-shirt. Twin straps from a purple Jansport backpack line his shoulders. Even from a distance, even from twenty feet away, I can tell – heck, anyone within eye-goggling distance can tell – he is fantastically cut. His shirt isn’t snugly, but it’s near enough to his body so I can make out the firmness of his pecs underneath the fabric, the absence of any fat on his belly, the slight bulge of his biceps peeking out right where the shirt sleeves end.
His body isn’t the only thing chiseled. As he nears me, I take in his well-designed face again, like a model, an escort, with Johnny Depp-esque cheekbones, deep blue eyes and a subtle wave in his brown hair. I take my headphones out of my ears and gently lay my iPod on the bench. I smile, a little nervously, and stand up. I am not sure what the proper protocol is – shake hands or hug? I rack my brains trying to remember how a first date usually starts. It’s been eons, entire evolutionary stages it seems, since I last went on a date. I could say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, mess up the secret handshake that experienced daters know, a sure cue I’m a newbie. I’m probably on some Do Not Date list, like that Do Not Call List.