“Then do it,” Erin says and bangs a fist on the table. This is a way to move on that’s fun. You are single and you are hot and you deserve to have a grand old time on the dating circuit.”
I scoff. “I am not hot.”
“Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?” Hayden asks. “You’re a babe, McKenna. You’re tall and you’re thin and you have good boobs.”
Erin jumps in. “And you have that blond hair and your crazy, wild greenish-blue eyes.”
“My hair isn’t even natural! Guys, stop it, please!” I insist, covering my face with my hands, embarrassed by their compliments.
I hear heels clacking across the floor. Then I feel a hand on my shoulder.
“You are McKenna Bell.” It’s Julia. She’s one year younger and has always been my biggest champion. “You are going to do this. Not only is this exactly how you’re going to get over that d-bag, but this is bigger than you. This is bigger than all of us. You are Title IXing when it comes to the sport of dating. Remember in high school? You were the one who lobbied the school district for girls to play baseball, not just softball. And you didn’t even play softball. You’ve never even played sports. You’re the ultimate girlie-girl. But you did it because you have always been the biggest champion of Title IX.”
In twelfth grade I petitioned the high school to let girls play baseball. I wanted to show that girls could handle the hardball, they could take the heat. It took nine months of campaigning, researching, petitioning and being the squeaky wheel. The school decided girls could play baseball in June of my senior year. Sure, I never caught a screaming fast baseball in a well-worn catcher’s mitt, and probably never could. But that didn’t matter. The girls who came after me did, and girls at Sherman Oaks High School still play baseball today. I know because I’m one of the biggest donors to the girls baseball program at my alma mater. They’ve won three championships in the last ten years. They rock.
“This is no different,” Julia continues. “This Trophy Husband quest. It’s about leveling the playing field when it comes to the sport of dating younger and hotter. This is your turn at the plate, and you’re damn well going to take it.”
“I am?”
“You are.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am so sure I’m beyond sure.”
I take a deep breath and nod. I can do this. I’ll treat it like a sport, a game, a project because those are things I can handle. Dating for a cause is far more manageable than dating for me. There’s no safety net there. Here, I have a built-in shield. Maybe dating for sport is precisely how I should get back in the game.
The game of love.
“So no more guys your age. No more older guys,” Julia says.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Todd was too old for you anyway. He was, what, five years older?”
“Six,” I mutter. Todd’s thirty-three.
“And guys older than you are now officially verboten. Got that?”
I nod dutifully at my sister.
“Raise your right hand,” Julia instructs.
I do as told.
“Repeat after me. I solemnly swear, under penalty of breaking the girlfriend code that I will not date a man older than me.”
I repeat her words.
“Because you are the poster child for this movement, and you are getting back on the goddamn dating wagon and finding yourself a much younger, much hotter, much more fun man. Like Dave Dybdahl. Because Dave Dybdahl wants you, Dave Dybdahl asked you out, Dave Dybdahl wants you to call him right now.”
Julia whips out her cell phone from her back pocket and plunks it onto the table. “I have speaker phone and I’m not afraid to use it. So get out your little camera because I know this is going to be a blog entry tomorrow on how to dress for a date with a hot young thing.”
Hayden flashes me a contrite look when Julia mentions the camera, but I give her a reassuring wave, as I stand up and run next door to grab my computer and shoot on the iCam. Then in true junior high sleepover style – we might as well be in our jammies giggling and munching on popcorn all night long – I call Dave Dybdahl and ask him out, the computer cam capturing only my end of the call since he’s still the innocent.
And the innocent says yes.
Chapter Three
“Have you played the newest Halo?”
Before I can even turn around to see where the voice comes from, I laugh.
“Have I played the newest Halo?” I repeat as I consider the video game shelves at the electronics store on Lombard Street where I’ve been contemplating buying Modern Warfare, which is next to Halo. “Am I breathing? Am I a sentient human being? I played it and saved the world from destruction in twenty-five hours, thank you very much.”
Then I turn to my questioner and Holy Mary Mother of Hotness.
I drop the Modern Warfare box along with the camera box, and my jaw might have fallen to the floor too. I contemplate reaching down to the floor to pick it up so I don’t die from the embarrassment of checking him out. Because my questioner is tall, trim, with light brown hair, kind of surfer boy length, and these crazy green eyes, the sort of green that’s like the color of the sea, if the sea were green, only really it’s blue. But you get the idea. His eyes are like Hawaii. He’s wearing cargo shorts, flip flops, and a black Nor-Cal tee-shirt that shows off the right amount of tanned, toned arms. He’s so cool and casual, and it’s completely my favorite look for a guy.
He hands me the boxes I just dropped. “Here you go,” he says, and I wish his fingers had just brushed mine. I’d take any sort of contact from him, even the barest trace of an accidental one.
“Thank you.”
He smiles back at me immediately and then makes a little bow. “Twenty-five hours. Wow.”
I’m a tad competitive so I can’t not ask how he did. Plus, I’m totally digging his nearness to me right now. He’s too hot to let walk away. Translation: he’s blazingly beautiful and I want to keep looking at him. “Okay, I’ll take the bait. What about you? How many hours?”
He waves a hand in the air.
“Oh c’mon,” I persist. “I told you.”
“Fine,” he says, then lowers his voice to a whisper. “Seven hours.”
My eyes go wide. “Get out of here,” I say, and give him a quick push on the shoulder, like a teenage girl would do. Oh, those are nice sturdy shoulders. Too bad I’m not smooth enough to let my hand linger on his shoulders, or drop down to his chest. Right, yeah, because that would work — feeling him up in the middle of the electronics store. But still, it’s a nice image to tuck away in the mental files.