Page 50 of That Weekend in Paris
“Oh my gosh, look at this,” I say, turning the screen to face him. “It’s a château in the Bordeaux region. You can stay there, plus they have horseback riding excursions. For all levels of riders.”
I scroll through the photos, and he nods once and says, “Let’s go there.”
“Really?” I say. “It can’t be that easy.”
“It looks like a great place, and why not? We’ll rent a car and drive. How far is it?”
“It looks like maybe six hours,” I say. “That might be a little far.”
“Nope,” he says.
I lean back and study him for a moment. “You know, you’re amazingly easy.”
“I hope you mean that in the nicest way possible,” he says.
“Josh and I could never agree on places to go or restaurants to try. I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head and shrugging a little bit. “It was like it was always a battle for some reason.”
“Control?” Klein says.
“I guess. I don’t know. It always seemed like it should be way easier than it was.”
“It should be,” Klein says.
“Are you just this easygoing?” I ask.
“Not when it comes to certain things,” he says. “Like when it comes to picking songs to release, I’m not very easy to deal with. I’m a perfectionist, I guess, and I don’t want to send anything out to my audience that they wouldn’t think was my absolute best effort in a song.”
“Well, no one could fault you for that. That’s actually a good thing. How about in relationships?”
“I don’t know that I’m the one to ask about that,” he says. “But no, I’m definitely not the easiest person to be around sometimes.”
“I haven’t seen that,” I say.
“Well, you haven’t been in a car with me for six hours, either,” he says.
I laugh. “True. Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” he says, and smiles.
Dillon
“Catherine had never wanted comfort more, and [Henry] looked as if he was aware of it.”
?Jane Austen,Northanger Abbey
WE SPEND THE rest of the afternoon planning for our departure in the morning. I take care of reserving the car. Klein handles contacting the château, and, thankfully, they do have two rooms available. I do notice that he’s asked for two, and, of course, he would. He’s a gentleman.
But some part of me admittedly wants this uninterrupted time I’ve had with him since we’ve been sharing a room to continue. I have no right to expect it. And our sharing a room had been necessary. Now that reality is setting back in, it is time to admit that basically, we are two friends who’ve ended up in an unexpected situation together. And now that we’ve agreed to write some songs, we’re going to take a bit of time to do that. Nothing more, Dillon, I tell myself.
By the time we finish making all the arrangements, it’s after eight o’clock, and we’re both not very hungry because we’d had a late lunch. We decide to order a pizza and share it. We’re sitting on the bed with the pizza between us, each of us taking a slice, when Klein says, “I’m really psyched about this. I can’t remember the last time I did anything spontaneous. Mostly by necessity, but most of my life seems to be planned down to every minute of every hour.”
I sense that he’s serious, so I decide not to make light of this. “I guess that’s one of the pitfalls of being famous,” I say. “You have so many people wanting something from you, and there’s only so much of you to go around.”
“True, but, you know,” he says, “I feel like I owe people who helped me along the way. And I do want to pay back as much of that as I can, but—”
“People get used to asking, don’t they?”
“It’s not that I don’t understand. I remember what it feels like to be hungry for success, to be looking for any notch in the ladder that might help me climb a little faster. Admittedly, the more successful I’ve become, the harder it is for people to reach me. But, I don’t know, I guess when someone does ask for help, I feel obligated because of my own good fortune to do what I can. To those whom much is given, much is expected?”
