“You’re in shape,” he told her as they walked over to the weight room.

“I know.” She smiled. “I’m a wild woman with the free weights. This is where you really get to show off, what with having more upper-body strength. But pound for pound, I’m actually lifting nearly as much as you. Want me to make a graph?”

He grinned. “No, thanks. I can see your excuses without visual aids.”

“Reality is never an excuse,” she told him as she collected several weights, then walked over to a bench. She wiped her hands on the towel she’d brought.

“I can’t be too sweaty,” she said. “If my hands are slick, it gets dangerous. About a year ago, I nearly dropped a weight on my face. Not a good thing.”

“You should be more careful,” he said.

“You think? I paid a lot of money for my new nose. You never said anything. Do you like it?”

He’d known about the surgery. She’d had it when she was twenty. He supposed the smaller nose made her a little prettier, but it wasn’t that big a change.

“It’s fine,” he said.

She laughed. “Be careful. You’ll turn my head with all that praise. My nose was huge and now it’s just regular.”

“You worry too much about being like everybody else. Average is not a goal.”

She looked at him. “I haven’t had enough coffee for you to be philosophizing. Besides, you don’t know anything about normal. You were born rich and you’re still rich.”

“You’re no different.”

“True, but we’re not talking about me. As a guy, you have different standards to live up or down to. If you have money, then you can be a total loser and you’ll still get the girl. But for me it was different. Hence the surgeries.”

“You had more than one?” he asked, frowning slightly. He knew only about her nose.