little school girl.
"You don't worry about where we are going. We are going to have fun today! We might make a day and a night out of it! Oh my God, Olivia! I'm so excited! But FIRST." She crinkled her nose at me and sniffed the air. “You go get that funky butt and greasy hair in the shower! We leave in an hour!" She winked at me and walked out of the room, closing the door as she left.
Ok. I can do this. I mean she said Mani’s and pedi’s, right? I'm sure we will probably have some lunch. Sounds like dinner too, but oh well. If it makes her happy, I guess I can do this and she's right. I don't think Derek and the kids would want me to spend today doing what I have been doing. I'm doing this for them and for Claudia. I mean come on, what's the worst that could happen?
********************
We are sitting at a nail salon and I hear Claudia naming off different colors of nail polish out loud, like she's the only person in the building.
"Hey O, what do you think about gun metal grey?" All heads in the room turn toward Claudia, probably wondering who that loud mouth with the super model body was. I tried to pretend I didn't know her.
"Olivia?" She turned around and looked right at me. "Did you hear me? What do you think about the color gun metal grey?" Nope. No pretending to not know her now. I lowered my head, wondering what I was going to do with her.
"Well, do you want to go to a rave or something? Hook up with some college boys?" I covered my hand over my mouth. I can't believe I just said that!
"Haha funny!" She rolled her eyes at me. "I didn't like college boys when I was IN college, nor do I want to be around any now! No, I'm not going to a rave, just thinking about putting a different color on besides boring old clear or red or pink. Do you have a problem with that?"
I gulped. That's one of the colors I was having put on my nails. Well, I guess clear isn't exactly a color, but it makes your nails look all nice and shiny. She walked up next to me and sat down in the chair next to me with the gun metal grey nail polish, waiting for her turn to have her nails painted and she looked at my hands and threw her hands up in the air.
"Are you kidding me? Clear? Oh no, no, no, no, no." She hands the polish to the lady that is painting my nails.
"Here. She wants this color put on." The lady looked at Claudia like she was crazy, which I was beginning to think she actually was and she looked at me wanting to know what I wanted to do.
"I do not want that color, Claudia! I am NOT a teenager for goodness sakes!" I nodded to the lady to continue with the clear coat.
"Come on, O! Live a little! Aren't we trying to just have some fun today?" She batted her eyes at me and grinned really big, which had me grinning. "I'll tell ya what. Put the grey on, and I'll buy you some "clear" polish and some remover that you can use to take it off and put on tonight if you want."
She actually does the air quotes and is looking at me like it was ridiculous that I wanted clear polish on my nails. I've never worn anything but clear, except for the one time that I wore red to try to surprise Derek, thinking he would like it and he said it made me look trashy, so I took it off and never tried a different color again. I think this is another battle that I'm not going to win. Again! I looked at the lady and nodded reluctantly and told her to go ahead and put it on. She actually grinned at me and seemed kind of happy. I wasn't sure what was up with that. She asked Claudia what color she wanted.
"I want the gun metal grey, of course." She smiled at the lady like she had just won the Miss Congeniality contest and the lady just chuckled.
Claudia's phone went off and she looked down at it and groaned and rolled her eyes.
"Ugh. Well, it looks like I have a meeting today with a client, after all!! It won't take long, though. He wants to meet around 7 for drinks to discuss his case. It should only take around 30 minutes or so."
I could tell
Arthur Agatston, Joseph Signorile