Page 54 of That Weekend in Paris
She shakes her head and smiles. “No, I’ll be doing whatever the most basic riding form they have available is. Walk, trot.”
“Oh, good. Then possibly, I’ll be able to keep up with you.”
“No doubt,” she says.
“What else do they have?” I ask.
“There’s a spa with a sauna and a cold therapy room. You can get massages, facials, sports pedicures. That one I’ll be signing you up for,” she says.
“Ha. Men don’t get pedicures.”
“Well, they should. It’s just another form of self-care,” she says.
“And I’ve never had one,” I say.
“I’ll be happy to get one with you,” she suggests. “It’s actually incredibly relaxing. The techs massage your feet and buff them up so they look all neat and clean.”
I laugh. “Okay, I’m wondering if there’s some implication there.”
“No,” she says. “But why wouldn’t men want to keep their feet neat? That’s one of those stigmas that somehow got created because someone thought it was sissy to have your feet pampered.”
“I’ll agree with that. In my town, there weren’t too many men going to Lou Ann’s Nails to get their feet pampered.”
She laughs now outright. “You could start a trend. The first time you showed up at Lou Ann’s, everybody would be on their cell phone posting on Facebook how they saw you getting a pedicure, and then before you know it, half the men in your hometown will be calling for appointments.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Oh, you think that’s how it would go, huh?”
“I’m sure of it. You know sometimes, men just need to see a guy they admire doing something to think it’s okay for them to do it, too.”
“So this is my new mission in life. Saving men from their feet.”
She’s laughing so hard now she can’t speak. “I think it’s an admirable undertaking,” she finally manages.
“Forget world peace, curing hunger, things like that.”We’re both laughing now, and once I have myself under control again, I say, “It’s amazingly easy to be around you, Dillon.” I feel her looking at me, glance her way to see her eyes are still warm with laughter.
“It’s pretty easy to be around you too,” she says.
“I can’t really say that of many of the people I’ve been close to in my life,” I say.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
I shrug, passing a car and then cutting back into the right lane. “I don’t know. It seems like most of the people I’ve had relationships with tend to be difficult, controlling, I guess.”
“Do you think that’s been deliberate on your part?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe.”
“Why?” she asks.
“That would be the million-dollar question. The obvious choice would be to choose to be around people who make life lighter, easier, more fun.”
“Well, I definitely didn’t choose someone like that,” Dillon says. “Do you think we pick someone opposite from ourselves?”
“Maybe, although, unless we don’t like ourselves, I guess that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Or maybe we think we need someone different from us to complete the picture.”
“Yeah, or maybe we think somewhere down deep that we don’t really deserve to be happy, so we pick someone who will make sure we’re not.”
