Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 53238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 266(@200wpm)___ 213(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 266(@200wpm)___ 213(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
The pedicure technician picks up one of my feet and gestures with her chin. I just look at her, unsure what she wants. She does it again.
“I don’t know--”
She puts her hand on a stirrup-looking thing and frowns at me.
“You’re supposed to put your foot in there,” Olivia says, saving me.
She said her mom took her to get a pedicure a couple of times for special occasions, so at least one of us knows what the hell is going on here.
I put my foot up in the thing and then the technician pats the other one, so I follow it with my other foot. She looks at the bottoms of my feet and says something in Vietnamese to the technician doing Olivia’s pedicure.
The other woman looks at my feet, shakes her head and says something back. I can tell from their tone that they aren’t complimenting me. But whatever. This is for Olivia. I pick up my phone and open my email, trying to ignore the way my balls are vibrating.
I’m sorting out messages that need to be read from ones I can delete when a weird tingle on the bottom of my foot makes me reflexively jerk it upward.
The technician frowns and says something I don’t understand, then pushes my foot back into the stirrup thing.
She runs a flat metal grater over the bottom of my foot and I groan, my foot jerking in reaction again.
Now she’s glaring at me. I glare back.
“You have to hold still, Uncle Carter,” Olivia says.
“I can’t help it.”
The customer in the chair on the other side of me is looking at me, and Olivia gives me a please don’t embarrass me look.
I drop the scowl and say, “Sorry. I’ll hold still.”
The technician shit-talks me in Vietnamese again, her coworker laughing this time. This is fucking ridiculous. I want to get up and leave.
But it’s for Olivia’s birthday. So when the technician grates my foot, lighter this time, I force my foot to remain in place. She keeps going, and when she hits a certain spot, it’s all I can do not to kick her in the face as I jerk away because it tickles.
“Sorry. It tickles,” I explain.
I think both of us are relieved when she puts the grater down. She moves on to clipping my toenails and digging into my nail beds. But pain, I can handle.
When she clips out a big piece of toenail from the side of one of my big toes, she holds the nail up in front of me in the clippers, accusing me of something I don’t understand. I just shrug.
“We need to come here more often,” Olivia says. “Your feet need a lot of work.”
I’d rather chomp on rusty scraps of metal, but instead, I smile like it’s the best idea I’ve ever heard.
The technician massages my feet, her hands working the kind of magic I’m used to on the rest of my body from our team’s athletic trainer. This part’s definitely not so bad.
Olivia’s getting her toenails painted bright pink as my technician massages lotion into my feet. I’m so damn happy when I get to put my shoes back on and pay the bill.
“What did you think?” Olivia asks me as we’re walking back to the car.
“Not bad at all. Minus the grater and the jackhammer massage chair, I mean.”
“You should have asked her to turn the chair off.”
“Yeah.”
I check my phone, hoping Leo sent me the text I’ve been expecting. It’s there, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Olivia’s surprise gift is taken care of.
“What do you want to do next?” I ask her once we’re back in the car.
She shrugs. “That was fun. We can just go back home.”
“No way. How about some shopping? And some Starbucks?”
Rachel told me Olivia wanted a Starbucks gift card for her last birthday, so I assume she still likes it. Based on the way she lights up when I mention it, I’m right.
When we get to Starbucks, I get a black coffee and Olivia orders a pink drink.
“This was my mom’s favorite here,” she says as we sit down at a small table.
Her gaze turns wistful and falls to the cup.
“Rach always liked strawberry shakes when we were kids,” I say. “With lots of whipped cream. Our mom used to get mad at us because we’d spray whipped cream right into each other’s mouths.”
“Really?” Olivia smiles broadly, drinking up the new information about her mom.
“Believe it or not, your mom was usually the mastermind when we’d get in trouble. It was her idea to make our mom’s bedroom into a trampoline park for the neighbor kids the first summer our mom let us stay home alone while she was at work. We charged two dollars per kid to come jump on Mom’s bed and we sold snacks from our kitchen.”