Interesting Day

She looked around the room. Looked at her flat screen TV. Looked at her rug. Looked at her ceiling. Looked down her bare legs that were stretched out across the couch, her back rested on the armrest, her laptop sitting on her thighs, her bare feet resting at the other end of the couch with her toes pointed up at the ceiling.

Erin loved to read – she read over 25 books a year. She wanted to write so badly but her life was so uninteresting that she had nothing to write about. She couldn’t pull much from her imagination when she had nothing exciting going on in her life to inspire anything. She looked down at her bare feet and thought about how even they had more of an interesting day than she did.

She was able to schedule a pedicure for them at eight that morning so she could get it done before she had to be at work. The salon normally wasn’t open that early but when she had explained her situation to the woman, she had been accommodating. 

It had felt so good when the Asian woman was washing her feet and doing everything that she needed to them. Erin felt like a queen just sitting there in the chair, feeling like she was in a throne, as this woman sat there on her knees tending to feet with such concentration like they were all that mattered to her.

At the end, the woman had started massaging Erin’s feet for her. Erin thought that would be more the job of a masseuse and was surprised that was included in her pedicure but she wasn’t going to argue it either. It felt amazing and she could have sat there all day.  At one point the woman tickled Erin’s feet. Not expecting it, Erin’s foot jerked and she laughed so loud she felt embarrassed. Her feet were so ticklish.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the woman said with a smile like she had tickled her by accident. Erin would never know if it was actually an accident or not.

When it was done, Erin looked down at her feet and admired how sexy they looked. So soft and smooth with the shiny red toenail polish on them. She proudly put on her open-toed shoes and paid up, leaving a nice little tip that the woman seemed to appreciate. She walked outside to the parking lot of the strip mall to her car. A guy was walking towards the bagel shop next door. He was pretending to look at the ground as he walked but Erin knew that no one just looked at the ground for that long. Nice try, buddy, she thought as she knew he was staring at her feet. She couldn’t blame him, of course, and she was flattered.

That day at the office Erin had her shoes off most of the time when she was at her desk. She’d rub the top of one foot with the bottom of the other to feel how smooth they felt. Whenever she felt stressed out she’d look down at her toes and wiggle them – it made her feel relaxed every time.

When she got home that night she was sitting on her couch the same way with her back against the armrest, although her legs were bent and she was only on two cushions while her boyfriend sat on the third one. If there was one person that was less interesting than she was it was her boyfriend. He just sat there staring blankly at the TV. Some documentary about dangerous fish was on but he would have been sitting there with that blank stare regardless of what was on. The TV sucked him in like that. Erin was playing on her phone and the two weren’t talking at all. This was their life. She was tired of hanging out with him like this. She lifted up her left leg and put the bottom of her bare foot right on his face. She watched the look of annoyance he got on his face the moment she did it. He was no fun.

“Cut it out!” he said. 

There was no playfulness in his voice, just irritation. He’d rather just glare at a TV than play around with his girlfriend. She didn’t say anything and she didn’t move her foot. He took both of his hands, grabbed her ankle, and tried to move it. Sorry sweetie, she thought with amusement. You may be a guy and you might be stronger than me but your arms aren’t stronger than my leg. He couldn’t move it and she saw his frustration increase.

“Erin, seriously,” he said.

She wasn’t going to stop. If that guy at the strip mall could appreciate her feet then her own boyfriend should as well. But she knew him well enough to know by the look on his face that all he was thinking about was his ego and that he was humiliated that he had a foot on his face and couldn’t do anything about it. Every time he tried to move his head she’d just move her foot and keep it on him. This was the most fun she’d had with him in quite some time whether he was enjoying it or not. 

“If you don’t stop, I’m gonna leave,” he said.

He said it with a tone like that might actually scare her but she didn’t care at all. She was better looking than him and could entertain herself so if he was that lame that he was going to leave over that it was his problem. She still didn’t say anything and she could tell it was driving him crazy. She got a big smile on her face and she could tell that feeling like she was mocking him put him over the edge. 

“Alright, I’m out of here!” he said.

As he got up, she kept her foot on his face as long as she could. She didn’t say a word to him as he stormed out and slammed the door on his way out. That was when she picked up her laptop, stretched out her legs, and decided to write. It was kind of sad that her feet had had a more interesting day than she did but as she thought about that, she now knew exactly what she was going to write about.