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.
He just shrugs casually.
I shake my head. “No, that’s not how it works,” I say playfully, enjoying the exchange with the perfectly handsome stranger behind the warm green eyes. “You can’t just drop a little nugget like that and not give me the goods. Tell me how you got past the Forerunner Mission, because I was stuck there for hours, getting killed over and over.”
I listen intently as Video Game Guy begins detailing his tactics, talking with his hands, moving his body back and forth a bit to simulate Master Chief’s movements, the main character in Halo. He has a nice body. Wait, he has a fantastic body. He has the kind of body that women driving cars slow down for. He has the kind of physique that turns a gal into a gawker. The way his tee-shirt falls just so tells me all I need to know about the flatness that lies beneath.
Then I remind myself to pay attention and focus, because it’s rude to just stare at his belly instead of his face, especially when his face is so very lovely too. So I nod as he shares his gaming secrets.
I wasn’t always into video games. In fact, it’s not really accurate to say I’m “into” video games, per se. I’m not a gamer geek, though I did have a fondness for retro games growing up, since my parents used to take Julia and me bowling on Saturday and the Silverspinner Lanes boasted all the original arcade games like Qbert, Frogger, and, of course, both Pac-Mans. It’s just that, well, I developed a particular predilection for shooter games after Todd left. I know – probably just a completely random little coincidence. And, to be fair, the video game habit didn’t kick in the second he dropped his Vegas voicemail bombshell.
The first few months, all I did was cry at night in Ms. Pac-Man’s fur, asking myself what I could have done differently, what had gone wrong, how I’d let him slip away. Was I not adventurous enough? Interesting enough? Pretty enough? Young enough? But it wasn’t until I showed up for a Fashion Hound shoot in jeans and a wife beater tee, that I knew something needed to change. My videographer, Andy, took one look at me, and said, “We need a change, and we need a change fast. I have never seen you in monochromatic clothes before and your nails aren’t even polished. You’re a damn fashion blogger.”
Then he told me when his last boyfriend had dumped him for another guy that he turned to Halo rather than self-loathing, and that made all the difference in the world. “Look, it’s not like you and I are going to go out and shoot things for release, and that’s why these games are perfect. It’s like punching a pillow. Same idea – gets your anger out – but a hell of a lot more satisfying.”
With my cheeks dry, all the tears sucked out of me, Andy took me to the electronics store and I bought my new therapy. A gaming console. At the end of each day, after I’d shot my videos, dutifully answered every email, and sketched out ideas for the next show, that little cluster of anger I’d been harboring was banging around, begging to be let out. So I’d turn that sucker on by ten most nights, and spend the next hour pumping bullets into bad guys. I was trigger happy, delighted to dispense ammo into whatever creatures came my way, gleefully, indiscriminately letting bullets fly, talking back to the screen: “Take that, you cheating scum.”
I don’t think I was talking to the game.
“What other games do you like?” the cute guy asks, and something about the question startles me. Maybe because it’s so normal, and he seems legitimately curious. Then, there’s the simple fact that we’re having a conversation in the middle of an electronics store.
“Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly,” I say with a completely straight face since I know he wasn’t referring to board games.
But he picks up the baton easily, raising an eyebrow as he asks, “Clue?”
“Of course. And it was always Mr. Plum in the library with the candlestick.”
“Interesting. Because Miss Scarlet was pretty wicked with that rope in the ballroom, if memory serves. What about Chutes and Ladders?”
“Let’s not forget CandyLand either.”
“What was your favorite candy destination in that game?”
“The vintage game, right? Not that new King Candy imitator?”
“As if I’d even be talking about that game,” he says playfully.
I’m about to answer, when he puts his hands together as if he’s praying and says in a whisper, “Please say Ice Cream Floats. Please say Ice Cream Floats.”
I laugh, the kind of laugh I haven’t felt in a while, the kind that radiates through my whole body and turns into a huge grin. “Of course. I wanted to live at Ice Cream Floats.”
“I was all set to build a chocolate and licorice home in Ice Cream Floats. And this reminds me that I need to stock up on the classic games too. But I don’t think they sell them here.”
“I came here to stock up on a new camera.” I pat the camera box. Then I dive into my best infomercial voice. “Did you know that when a cat pees on your camera it can’t be resurrected?”
He shrugs his shoulders confidently, quirks up his lips. “Actually, I could fix your camera.”
I give him a quizzical look.
“I can fix pretty much anything.”
“Wow. That’s impressive.”
“Want me to try?”
“You really want to?”
“I do. Yeah,” he says, as if he’s digging the prospect of repairing the damaged device. “I really enjoy that kind of challenge. It’s kind of like a game to me.”
“The Fix-It game.”
“Exactly.”
“If you really want to, I’m not going to say no. I have it with me – it doesn’t smell anymore, I cleaned it – because I wanted to make sure to get the same model.” I reach into my purse and hand him the plastic bag with Chaucer’s victim in it.
“I can have it back to you in a day or two.”
“Great,” I say, and smile, as I stand here looking at his fabulous face.
“But I would need your info to get it back to you.”
Correction: As I stand here stupidly looking at his fabulous face. “Duh. Of course.”
I give him my first name and number and he programs it into his phone.
“It was fun talking to you, McKenna,” he says, then extends a hand. “I’m Chris McCormick.”
We make contact, and I’m not going to lie – there’s something about the feel of his strong hand in mine that just seems…right. Maybe it’s the firm grip, or his soft skin, or the way his eyes light up as he smiles while shaking my hand. I don’t want to let go. I want to go all black-and-white movie and have a simmering moment where his eyes smolder and, like magnets, we can’t resist. He pulls me in, dips me, and plants a devastating kiss on my lips.
The kind of kiss that can ruin a girl for any other kisses for the rest of her life.
Chris McCormick is gorgeous, in a pure California sort of way, like sunshine and blue skies, like the ocean and its tides, but he’s too confident, too steady to be young enough for my project. I bet he’s, gasp, close to my age. I need to stay focused on my mission
“And if you want any more Halo tips, you can find a ton on Craigslist,” he says.
“Craigslist!” I practically jump up and down in excitement, reminded of my overarching mission to find a Trophy Husband. “That’s it. Craigslist! Thank you so much. I gotta go.”
I head to the front of the store, plunk down cash for my camera, take a quick peek back at the Halo expert as I do, because it’s a crying shame with that face, those eyes, that hair. Then I scurry back home.
Once at home, I open my laptop, and hop on over to Craigslist. Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner? You can find anything there – new job, new couch, new BOYFRIEND. And I have Hayden’s evil cat Chaucer to thank. If that dastardly feline hadn’t peed on my camera then I wouldn’t have wound up in the electronics store and I wouldn’t have run into Chris McCormick, the Video Game Guy, with emerald eyes and a stunning smile, and I wouldn’t have gotten the great idea to check out Craigslist, thanks to him. This is brilliant. This is epic. Finding a man-boy will be a piece of cake on Craigslist.
So I type the URL in and click on “Bay Area,” while my blonde half-horse, half-dog, trundles on over and parks herself at my feet with a heavy sigh. She’s probably counting down the hours until it’s time for a swim in the San Francisco Bay, her internal doggy clock permanently calibrated to the rhythms of our day. I scratch her ears, then pet her head.
I start the Craiglist search with the Personals section and type “trophy husband” into the search bar. Hmm. Only one post with “trophy husband” in the whole Bay Area?
“I am 50 years old and am a successful stock trader. I am looking for a younger guy to share my good fortune with. Send a picture for mine. Be between 18 and 30 years old. I often travel to Europe, Asia, and Moscow on business and would love to bring you along. Must not have hang ups about being showered with gifts and being a trophy husband. I am a bottom as well.”
This is it? The lone ad for “Trophy Husband?”
I soldier on and try “boy toy” this time, and it returns several options. I tap open the first entry because it boasts a promising subject line: “Young guy looking for assertive older womam.”
So the young guy didn’t exactly spell woman correctly. But let’s hear him out.
“Extreme satisfacktion for the rite woman. Hansome male seek to belong to the woman who need to have nothing but the finest at her cummand. If your fantasy is to be in the company of a beeuutiful, intelligent and discrete, sexy man than you is getting warmer.”
Our public education system is much worse than I thought. After all, is it really that much to ask for one’s potential next mate to be able to make a noun and verb agree? The answer, evidently, is yes. I try the next entry.
“Let me be your boy toy. I will obey your every order and serve your every wish.”
At least his grammar is correct. And his writing has a nice rhythm to it, so I click through to his photo.
Ouch.
I am just going to pretend I didn’t see that.
I squeeze my eyes shut. I remind myself that I am not a prude. I am not a priss. I am not weirded out by sex, or sexy people, or public displays of affection. But I am pretty sure – and I wouldn’t have known this before because I have never seen one – that I am not into penis piercings.
So I move on to the next entry, trying my best to un-see what I just saw.
“I have a job, my own place in the city and am clean and well-kept,” the next one writes.
What, like a lawn?
I hit the home button on the browser, returning to the safe haven of Google, then lay my cheek on the edge of my desk, wondering yet again if I am out of my mind. Because clearly I am not cut out for a Craigslist match. As much as I’d love to end my streak, I also wouldn’t mind a bit more than a fling. I’m almost embarrassed to admit this because I’m supposed to be an independent woman – hear me roar – but I would really like to have a boyfriend.
The word sounds so high school, but I don’t care. I don’t want to be alone any longer. I want to be in love and carefree and have someone to talk to, laugh with, make fun of other crazy people in San Francisco with. Someone who would never even think of leaving me with two mixers and a vintage white dress.
I can picture it perfectly – a night out on the town, then we’d come home, turn on some torch music, he’d take me in his arms for a slow dance. Touch my hair in a way that sends sparks through me. Then a hand on the back of my neck, bringing me closer, lips meshing with mine. He’d slide his hand down to the small of my back, while laying a smoldering path of kisses down to the hollow of my throat.
We’d slow dance and sway, the kind of dance that’s not for anyone else to see. The kind that’s a delicious tease of foreplay, where every subtle move, every brush of the fingers, and dusting of the lips on shoulders, is the promise of what’s to come. That dress straps will be pushed down, that zippers will come undone. Clothes will fall in the floor in a heap, tugged off quickly, as the dance moves to the couch and shifts into something horizontal. Slow and tender and tantalizing, each move, each touch turning me higher, sending me further into a dizzying state of longing.
My breath catches at the thought. Not only the prospect of kisses that ignite goosebumps all over me, but the possibility of someone who wants only me. Who only has eyes for me. Who wants to look at me, longing and lust in his perfect green eyes, and then throw me down on my couch, strip me naked, and bury his face between my legs.
Okay, so evidently, I both want a boyfriend and the kind of oral plundering that makes you quiver, and roll your eyes in the back of your head, and grab the guy’s soft, shaggy hair, and shout his name over and over into oblivion.
Then curl up in his arms, safe and warm, and know he’ll be there the next day and the next and even then some
Is that so much to ask for?
Love, and a talented mouth?
I close out of Craigslist. I’m not going to find what I really want there anyway.