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I wasn’t sure if I was confident enough to give Jeremy a full-body massage. I’d once given my ex-boyfriend, Ben, one; and he hadn’t been complimentary or asked for one again. I wasn’t sure what I’d done wrong as we hadn’t discussed things like that. Probably part of the reason he’d run off with my sister.
‘What about a foot rub?’ I suggested. ‘Or is that too weird?’
‘Oooh yes. I’m sure he’d love that,’ Thomas said, sounding wistful, as if he might quite like one himself.
‘Well, OK. Thanks,’ I said, glad to have some sort of game plan. ‘And sorry for bothering you.’
‘No problem. Good luck, and if he gets impatient, tell him to hold his horses!’
When I re-entered Jeremy’s bedroom, I was disconcerted to see him lying under the bedcovers with his hands locked behind his head and, judging from his bare chest, obviously naked. For some reason, I’d pictured his chest to be smooth and hairless like Thomas’s, but it was covered with thick brown hair and looked a lot like a bear pelt. It wasn’t a problem. I was just taken aback. Who knew that had been hiding under his shirt?
‘Who were you talking to in the bathroom?’ he asked.
‘Oh, er, my mother.’ She was being used as an excuse a lot today. Her ears would be burning.
Jeremy looked me over, his gaze lingering on my boobs.
‘Do you need help with your zipper?’
My eyes flicked to the whip that was resting on his bedside table and panicked. ‘I ... I thought maybe I could give you a foot rub before ... anything else.’
Jeremy’s eyes shifted to the end of the bed, then swivelled back to me. ‘Okaaaay, I guess so. There’s some lotion in here somewhere.’ He leaned over and opened the bedside drawer, pulling out a box of condoms labelled ‘Magnum BareSkin’ and placing it on top. ‘For later,’ he said, winking at me, and I gulped. Why did I suddenly feel like I was one in a long line of women?
He handed me a bottle of moisturising lotion. Right! I perched on the end of the bed and pulled up the end of the duvet to expose his feet. So Jeremy’s face was bordering on perfection. His feet—not so much. They were large and bony with strange knobbly toes, and the skin on the heels was dry and cracked.
I didn’t want to be judgemental. It wasn’t like I was a supermodel, but I did put a lot of effort into grooming myself from top to toe before any kind of meeting with him (doubly intensive for this date). Yet it seemed he didn’t think it necessary to do the same.
But I’d said I would give him a foot rub, so I supposed I had to go through with it. When I thought back to all my daydreaming about what it would be like going on a date with Jeremy, I wanted to burst out laughing. Massaging his manky feet had never once featured in the scenario.
I squirted a liberal amount of lotion on one foot and half-heartedly did a few swirls on his instep.
Jeremy sighed. ‘That feels nice. My ex-wife used to massage my feet.’
‘Oh, did she?’ I felt a bit better that I was reminding him of his wife and started to think of this as more like a project. Instead of working on his book, I was now working on his feet. It was an easy transition and a good bonding experience for us. The first of many evenings we would spend together ...
‘Yes, before we got married,’ Jeremy continued, now placing his hands on his hairy chest. ‘Ours was a bit of a whirlwind romance. Perhaps that’s why things fell apart after only a year. It’s been ... hard. We tried getting back together once or twice, but it didn’t work. Along with the whole cleaning thing, apparently, I have some idiosyncrasies that annoy her.’
My eyes flicked to the whip.
‘Really?’ I said nervously. I did some stroking up his ankle and then around his knobbly toes.
‘Yes, I guess that’s why I always go out with women once or twice now—I can’t seem to commit to anyone after her.’ He laughed self-deprecatingly. ‘It’s a failing, I know, and I suppose I should go to a therapist.’ He shrugged. ‘But they’ll tell me what she told me: I’m too selfish.’
‘That’s a bit harsh,’ I said, rubbing my knuckles down the side of his foot. ‘Maybe you haven’t met the right person ... The One.’
‘Nah, I don’t believe in that rubbish,’ he scoffed. ‘The One? That’s a fairytale.’
‘Oh.’
‘Besides, now that I’m back on the market, I find I quite like sex with a lot of different women. Mind you, I’ve never brought anyone back here. I usually have sex with them in my car or go to theirs, so you’re a bit special.’
I balked at that, remembering the hand towel and how it stunk of stale perfume. Ick. But he’d called me ‘special’. That was something at least? I did some thumb sweeps on his arch, but his comment about having sex with random women in his car was too hard to ignore and really off-putting. The foot massage was a bad idea; it was making him relax and open up to me, and I wasn’t liking what I was hearing.
Plus, for some reason, my mind kept wandering to Thomas. It must’ve been because I’d just spoken to him. The horse puns were quite funny. And I did enjoy our practice sessions. He made me feel sexy, yet comfortable, and he didn’t mention using whips. Plus he was hot ...
‘Anna, are you listening?’
I’d been making vague patting motions with my hand while Jeremy was warbling away.
