Chapter Ten
I brush last night’s solo ride from my mind when I see him. I have to. I can’t let him see that he’s already done so many things to me. That he’s unraveled me and I’ve come for him. I have to back this all up and let him be my gaming tutor.
“So do you teach a lot of newbies how to play Guitar Hero?”
“Not as much as a few yeas ago,” Chris says, then hands me a black plastic guitar. The guitar is a cross between a real guitar and the sort of miniature kid-size guitar someone might give away in a grab bag at a party for musically-inclined ten-year-olds.
“What can I say? I’m a retro-loving gal.” I point to my flirty little vintage blue dress with a cherry pattern on it.
“That’s a totally hot dress, and if you keep pointing to it, it’ll make it hard for me to concentrate on giving you lessons.”
I hide a wild grin at the compliment, as I drop the guitar strap over my head, slinging the plastic instrument across my belly. It’s not mere fashion happenstance that I chose this dress. It accentuates all my best assets, and I also love it, so I feel good when I wear it. And with his comment, I’m left to wonder if he’s entertained after-hours thoughts about me too. How far they went. If he touched himself, if he pictured me doing things to him, if I made him come too. My mind is awash in dirty thoughts that are dangerously close to making me too turned on to function. So I shove away all the delicious images of Chris undressed, naked, in his bed, lost in thoughts of me.
Chris turns on the Xbox and then hits the on-button on my guitar. We’re in the former car stereo room at the electronics store, only now it’s been converted into a sort of gaming living room. Customers can come here and test out all sorts of games on the various consoles. Or they can get lessons from the master once a week.
The game whirs on, a picture of a dark pink mountaintop, set against a black night sky, appears on the gigantic television screen hanging on the wall in front of us. Chris moves closer to me, taps a few buttons on my guitar to click past that screen, then the next, then the next. I want him to touch a few more buttons on my guitar.
He teaches me the basics, how to play the green, red and yellow notes on the easy level of the game. How to hit them at just the right time. How to hit the strum bar at the same time too. I butcher my way through Slow Ride and Hit Me with Your Best Shot, getting booed at by the virtual audience, tossed off stage. So I dig in, like a batter at the plate, eyes fixated on the screen, feet planted firmly on the ground, index, middle and ring finger poised over the notes. Chris walks behind me, adjusts the strap a bit, moving the guitar a bit lower. He places his right hand on top of mine on the notes.
Damn. There goes my concentration. His hand feels so good. The slightest bit of contact with him turns me inside out. I’m not used to this feeling. I don’t know what to do with this feeling. It doesn’t fit in my life. It fits in a song, and I don’t know how to make it fit for me.
“So this may sound cheesy, but the real key is to let go. Let go of the need to check where your hands are, or to look constantly at the neck of the guitar.”
I nod.
“So what I want you to do is close your eyes.”
“Close my eyes?”
“Yes, close your eyes. I know it’s going to be real hard for you not to be in control for one second, but trust me.”
“Oh, ha ha,” I tease.
“Yes, McKenna. I’ve already picked up that you like to be in charge.”
“You’re astute.”
“I am. Now do as I tell you. Close your eyes.”
I do as he tells me.
“So you have to just feel where your fingers are. So here’s the green note.” He places his finger down on top of my index finger, playing the green note.
Mmm…
“Here’s the red.” He presses his middle finger against mine, playing the red note now. I want to lean into him, to fall against him, and feel his chest on my back. I want him to wrap his arms around me, and hold me tighter as he teaches me to play. I want to feel his touch. I want contact. I want it so badly, I don’t know how I’ll ever play a song because I am living and breathing only one thing right now – the wish to be closer to him, my back curved into his front, his arms wrapped tight around me, our bodies beginning to entwine.
“And here’s the yellow.” He keeps his ring finger against mine, playing the yellow note. Then he holds the note. His fingers are playing my fingers, and my entire body feels like a tuning fork, vibrating hotly from his touch. “So you want to feel the notes, not look at them. Just know when green comes up, your index finger presses down. When red appears, your middle finger. When yellow shows up, your ring finger.”
I played arcade games for fun when I was a kid, for release when I was left curbside by my ex. But I have never used video games as foreplay. I have never known video games could be foreplay. Here with Chris in some semi-private room at an electronics store, of all places, it feels like foreplay. It feels like he could turn me around, place his hands on my cheeks, and pull me in for a kiss. The kind that makes the world fall away. That leaves you powerless to resist, helpless to do anything but be consumed with an endless kiss. Nothing else matters, and the kiss is all there is, all there was, all there will ever be.
Until it becomes more than a kiss. It becomes heat in your blood, and a roaring in your ears, and you have to clutch the guitar so you don’t turn around and show your hand to him. Show it in your eyes, and in the way you part your lips, and in the words that threaten to tumble from your lips. Words like I want you so much.
Words I pin down inside me so they can’t escape.
He leans in a little closer this time and nearly whispers in my ear. “You can open your eyes now.”
I inhale deeply and open my eyes. I feel wobbly from the way he’s touched me, from the way I’ve let my thoughts spin into a dark and dangerous place of possibility. It’s one thing for me to visit with his mouth in my fantasies; it’s entirely another to witness my thoughts spin wildly with him inches away. He grasps my shoulders so I don’t fall. Then I press start on Poison’s Talk Dirty to Me. I hit the green notes, then the red notes, then the yellow ones. Then the next set and the next. I even nail a long note, then another, then a whole sequence of so-called “star-power” notes, and I give in to the game. I channel all my desire right now into the playing, and I am jamming here, rocking out to a video game, the pseudo-music taking my mind off the fact that I want Chris to talk dirty to me.
I finish my first song. I raise my hands in the air. Victory.
Chris smiles, big and wide, the teacher proud of his student. “Fast learner are you,” he says in Yoda’s voice.
“You’re a Star Wars geek too!”
He shrugs sheepishly. “You want to play some more?”
I nod vigorously and then spend the next hour knocking out several more songs and even making it through my very first guitar battle, where I own the guitarist from Rage Against the Machine after two tries. By the time we turn off the game, I am feeling pretty energized. So I buy my own used copy of the game and walk out of the store with Chris.
“Want to grab a bite to eat? I know a taco shop around here.”
“Abso-f*cking-lutely.”
So I take him to a hole-in-the-wall taqueria, a true Mexican place, with orange Formica booths and countertops and a menu that’s half-English, half-Spanish. We order chicken quesadillas to share and two Diet Cokes.
“I don’t want you caffeinating alone,” Chris says to me, as he carries the soda cans and two glasses back to the table.
“How gallant of you.” He pushes a can toward me. I squeal inside with delight. He didn’t open it for me. He didn’t rob me of the soda-can-crack-open. He is gallant. I open my soda and pour it into a glass. He does the same with his.
“Gallant McCormick, that’s what they called me in school.”
“So where’d you grow up? Let me guess. San Diego? Since you have the whole California surfer look going on.”
He shakes his head. “Brooklyn of all places, but I hate cold, so I got the hell out of town for college.”
“Where was that?”
“Stanford.”
“Stanford?”
Ha laughs. “What? Just because I’m not wearing a pocket protector or a business suit?”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I just was surprised. I guess because you’re so laid back. You’re the video game guy, you’re a hipster. You don’t seem like a Stanford stiff.”
“I studied software design.”
“Wow. You know some serious shit.”
“That I do.”
“So what’d you do after college?”
“Got a job designing software for video games,” he says. The waitress brings us the quesadillas. Chris says thanks and she leaves. “I did that for a couple years and then decided I wanted to do my own thing. So I started consulting, doing business strategy and whatnot for companies in the gaming space. Got asked to speak at conferences, then started video blogging, then the video blog turned into a TV show. And here we are now, me and my gaming empire.”
“And here we are now, indeed.”
“And you, McKenna Bell?”
I tell him my story, growing up in Sherman Oaks, college at UCLA, a few years at Violet Summers, the fashion brand, then launching The Fashion Hound with Todd’s help, then the sale. “So there you go. You know my story. What’s yours?”
“I just told you my story,” he reminds me playfully. Then I feel him tapping my foot once, twice under the table. Is he playing footsie? Is this how flirting works?
My face turns red. I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know anymore what I meant when I said what’s your story. How is it I can be so good at suggesting how to assemble outfits, but so bad at knowing how to interact with a handsome man?
“You mean am I involved with anyone?” he asks.
Fire engine red now. I am totally, one hundred percent fire engine red. Was I that obvious?
“Sure,” I manage to say, but the word comes out all choppy, as if it has ten syllables.
He shakes his head. “No.”
I fight the urge to grin broadly like the Cheshire Cat.
“But you, you’ve got men all over,” Chris adds.
Yes, but you’re the one I really want to date. If only you were twenty-three….Why did I have to take that oath with my girlfriends? You can’t break a girlfriend oath. That’s like fifty years of bad luck if you do. Not to mention it’s against the code. I can’t go against the girl code, no matter how much I want to forget Trophy Husbands right now, and focus only on how the heck I can date this one guy.
“I narrowed the candidates down to about twenty of your guys and then my brain just stopped. I couldn’t figure out how to weed them down to some sort of reasonable number.”
But none of those twenty are as devastatingly handsome as you.
He shakes his head, amused at my predicament, then lays his hands on the table. “Have your viewers vote on the top five.”
My eyes widen. “Chris! That is a great idea. That’s really perfect. It involves viewers more. Makes them feel more vested in the show. Gives them a voice.”
“Exactly. They feel a part of it. They are a part of it. They will have had a role, a hand, in picking your next mate. You can even have them decide who gets a second date and so on. You can shoot video of the dates and post clips and let them choose.”
“I love it! It becomes even more of an interactive show.” I point at him a few times, shaking my head appreciatively. “You rock,” I say, wishing he could be one of the twenty, one of the five. And then I could date him. And dating him wouldn’t be political, it wouldn’t be to get even, it wouldn’t be to make a point. It would be for the simplest of reasons. Because I want to.
He smiles back at me, his sea-green eyes sparkling. I think again of Hawaii, of a beach, of a secluded island cove when I look into them. For a second, I feel like I am being hypnotized. Maybe I actually am. Because I can’t seem to take my eyes off of him. I can’t seem to break the gaze, nor can he, and now he’s looking at me in this more intense way, not just the flirty way, but in a way that takes my breath away. A way that says I wasn’t wrong, I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t delusional for thinking there were unsaid things at lunch. He looks at me as if he wants to know me, wants to see inside me, wants me to open up to him. And that’s when it occurs to me. That’s when everything comes together in one crystal-clear blaze of brilliance.
Business. I am good at business. So I keep it on the business level.
I lower my voice. “Chris, I have a fabulous business idea. I think you should be one of the initial twenty.”
He laughs, kind of surprised. “You’re not serious. Are you?”
I nod several times. “This is a business proposition pure and simple. You’re a businessman and I’m a businesswoman, right?”
“Right.”
“And you are trying to reach girl gamers for your show. You said that two days ago. Well, let’s do more than a promo. Let’s make you a candidate. You said your Wikipedia page has you at twenty-three anyway. So you could be twenty-three, you can pass for it, and obviously viewers will vote for you. They’ll pick you as one of the five to date. And then you’ll be on my show in a bigger way than just a promo. You’ll be a contender. You know as well as I do that brand integration is the way to go.”
“I love it when you talk dirty, McKenna.”
“You know it’s true,” I say emphatically. “You become part of the Trophy Husband project, then my viewers will get to know you, they’ll check out your show, they’ll check out you and bam. You are well on your path as you reach out to female gamers.”
“Okay,” he says slowly. “I like the way you’re thinking. I like everything you’re saying. And yes, I do need to get the word out about my new show. But there’s one teensy, tiny little problem.” He holds up his thumb and index finger to show a small amount of space.
“What’s that?”
He holds up his hands, as if to protect himself. “Now, this isn’t personal. This isn’t about you. But, I don’t want to be a Trophy Husband.”
I give him a look. A look that says you can’t be serious. A look that rebuilds my barriers and protects me from letting him see too far into me, into the truth of this business deal. That it’s not merely for business. But that the game might be the only way I can move closer to him without revealing all that I feel for him. In my body and in my heart. “Chris, this is a business deal. You and I are business partners. I am not asking you to move in, I am not asking you to be my man, I am not even asking you to be my boyfriend,” I say, deliberately not adding husband to the list. I make a mental note of the fact that I can’t even breathe the word husband, let alone bear to utter it.
“But I kind of thought that was what this contest was all about.”
“Yes and no. It’s about proving a point,” I say, returning to my platform, like a politician. My talking points. Because the more he questions me, the more I lose sight of my goals. The more I lose sight of the game. Because there’s no game with him whatsoever. Everything I feel for him is so scarily real, but I can’t let him know that though.
“So you’re not actually going to go through with this? The marriage thing?”
“All I want to do is prove that a woman can play a man’s game. So play with me. It makes things interesting to have you on the show.” I pause, then continue. “This is the Web. People want to laugh, they want to be entertained. They want to see people do wild things they can’t do on regular TV. They want us to be daring. They want us to do the things they can’t do.”
Chris shifts back and forth a bit, considering.
I go for the kill. “And you like to play games. C’mon, you’re a gamer, Chris. This is the ultimate game. Come on my show and play my game and let’s see if you can win.”
“Oh, those are fighting words that cut straight to my competitive heart.”
“Good. I knew I could hook you that way.”
“So you want me to be your pretend boy toy for the sake of making a point?”
“Dude, I totally want to make a point with you.”
“Now it does sound like you’re talking dirty to me.”
I quirk up my lips and I’m not sure what comes over me, but maybe it’s the fact that I’ve already had his hands on me, his mouth on me, that in my fantasies he knows what I taste like. So I say, “Maybe I am.”
Chris rises and switches sides, sliding into the booth next to me. My heart leaps into my throat. My belly does a flip flop, and I am warm all over. Wait, make that white-hot when he fingers a strand of my long hair, playing with it. Does he have any idea what he does to me? Can he tell that I want to be tangled up in his arms? That I want to him to move me under him, to slide inside me, to lay his hot body on mine as he takes me? “You know, if I’m going to be a candidate, I think it’s only fitting, don’t you think, for me to kiss you?”
“You mean to sort of test the waters?”
“Make sure we’re a good fit.”
“So this would be like a business partner kiss?”
“Since we’re in business together, yes.”
“Then this would be a business kiss.”
“All business.”
“Okay, Chris. You may business kiss me now.”
His hand finds its way to the back of my neck and the feeling of his firm hand on me makes me shudder. I close my eyes reflexively, letting myself feel that little zing that rushes from my belly down to my toes and back up again, as he leans into me, his soft lips brushing mine, his hand still gently resting on my neck, his fingers playing with my hair. It’s not a long kiss, just a few seconds, but enough time for me to notice his lips are soft and full, his breath tastes fresh, and that even a even a starter kiss from him feels a bit like magic and music and falling all in one. He pulls away slowly, his lips taking their time leaving mine.
It’s better than all my fantasies. It’s ten million times better. Because it’s real, and it’s tangible, and it’s happening, and he’s touched me, and I want so much more. I want him. All of him.
I am an open book now – my lips parted slightly, hoping for more, my shoulders rising and falling. My eyes telling the truth, I am sure. He has to know. He has to know this is more with him. That this can be everything.
As he breaks the kiss, the look on his face says he liked it, and he wants so much more. I recognize the look, because I’m sure I’m his mirror image right now.
Plus, now I can date Chris.