Page 47 of Pete and His Precious

“Yeah. I think that they try to show ads that people would be interested in, but I’m not really sure how that works since I don’t run ads myself.”

“It makes sense that interest would drive them.”

I don’t understand it completely. And I’m not sure how I can figure it out. This doesn’t seem to be common information, although an Internet search usually can turn up information on pretty much anything.

We’ve reached the takeout joint, and I open the door. She smiles at me and murmurs a thank you.

For some reason, that makes me wonder if she’ll always thank me when I open the door for her. I’ve seen some couples that are so comfortable with each other, or maybe a better way to explain it is they’ve been with each other so long that they start to take each other for granted, the man opens the door and the woman just acts like it’s her right to walk in. And I suppose conversely, the woman cooks a meal, and the man acts like it’s his right to eat it, and neither one of them thank the other for what they do or appreciate them.

Maybe saying thank you is just too much of a pain after you’ve been married for a long time, but in my view, it’s the littlethings that keep a marriage from becoming something where the couple takes each other for granted.

I pay for the food, and she picks it up, but I give her a look and hold out my hand.

“What? You don’t think I’m capable of carrying it?”

“I feel like it’s my job,” I say, and I sound a little hesitant. I feel like the man is supposed to be the protector and the provider, and if he can do it, then he should take care of the woman who’s with him.

There might come a day when I can’t pick up the takeout bag, and I might not be able to carry it the whole way home, and then maybe I will need help and we would have to do it together, but until then, it’s not that I don’t think that she can, is that I feel that I should. How do I explain?

But I don’t have to. She smiles and hands it to me, and I open the door and we walk out.

“Thanks for not fighting me about that,” I say, thinking that maybe I should just leave well enough alone. Some women seem to be a little touchy about it.

“I guess I’ve been brought up to think that women are just as good as men.”

“I think they are.”

She glances at me, but there’s no surprise in her eyes.

“I think they are too. What I was saying was...in order for us to show that we’re just as good as men, we can’t allow men to do the little things that are common courtesy. But I know you offered, not because I can’t do it, but because it’s a show of courtesy and respect to have someone else do it for you.”

“Yeah. That’s a better way of explaining what I was thinking.”

“I think we’re losing that in our country. That women have been so loud and so vocal and so brash about making sure that we get our place in life, that we kind of browbeat men over the head, and have cornered them, where they’re afraid todo anything for fear of offending us, and it’s to our detriment, because we’ve pretty much taught men that they can’t act like men, or we’ll get upset.”

“Men and women are different. Men act differently, and I think the women have taken it to the extreme where they want men to act like women instead of men acting like men and thinking like men. Doing things like men, and treating them like they're special and different, rather than being all one unisex.”

“Yes. That’s what I was thinking.”

I’m kind of pleased that we agree on this. I don’t hate women, and I don’t resent them for what they’ve done. But I do think that sometimes you get on a bandwagon, and you beat your drum so hard that you end up forgetting what you were trying to do in the first place. I also think that once you start playing victim, it’s hard to realize that you’re not the victim anymore. Those are just my opinions though.

I enjoy walking beside her and I think about taking her hand. I want to. It’s right there. I’ve got the bag on my right side, and she’s walking on my left. It would be easy, but... I just thought about how I didn’t want to move too fast, but I did want to...maybe establish the idea that I’m interested in her?

Except, she’s pretty much told me that she’s focused on getting her career off the ground, and I am going to be on call almost constantly for the next month. I won’t have a single day off. Other than the middle of the day while Baxley’s at school.

Is this really a good time to be working on a relationship?

Chapter 15

Pete

“You wanted drawing lessons. Are you still interested?” Zoe asks, as I open the door to our apartment building, and we walk in.

“I am,” I say. “I have to do face painting at the festival. Mrs. Higginbotham called and asked me, and I really wanted to pawn it off, but I need to do my fair share, you know? Like it takes a lot of people to make a small town festival a success, and I don’t think that it should be everyone else doing the work while I do nothing, then I’m not really helping my small town be what I love about it. Does that make sense?”

She’s beaming, and it looks to me like she’s got information that she thinks I’m going to be interested in.

“Did I say something wrong?” I say, smiling, and we both take the stairs again, without talking about it.

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