I dropped a towel onto the pile before I folded it. “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
She snickered. “Because I can’t have you getting back together with him. He’s bad news.”
She shrugged. I gaped at her, grabbed the towel, and threw it at her.
“I’m not going to call him, by the way.” I may have been a little defensive. But, I didn’t think I would, even if I was curious. We had literally nothing else to talk about.
Okay, so maybe Mali was right.
“Mhmm.” She nodded yes with her lips jutted out sarcastically. The deep wrinkles on her bronzed skin made her look extra-serious. I knew she was mostly teasing and she was also right about him. She’d never liked Brien, and even cut off the electricity in the lobby when he came to see me the first time after our breakup. In her defense, I was crying, and he was accusing me of something that I couldn’t even remember anymore. That must’ve meant I was innocent, right?
Truth was, I wasn’t as sad as everyone thought I should be after we broke up. And another truth was, I’d used him to fill something missing inside of me. That’s what most relationships actually boiled down to.
Mali interrupted my sour memories of Brien. “We have a walk-in,” she said.
Her back was hunched so she could see the little security television screen. I couldn’t make out whether it was a man or a woman, but I knew Elodie had just started on her two-thirty appointment, and we were the only two working until four. Two more therapists, Kandace and Joanie, would be working the evening shift, which meant I wouldn’t have fresh towels in the morning, because the two of them did the bare minimum when it came to closing. Again, the damn towels.
“I’ll take the walk-in.” I jumped up. “I don’t have any more appointments today and I really don’t want to fold any more towels.”
I pushed through the curtain in the lobby to find Kael walking around the small space, almost pacing. There were only a few chairs, and along with the front desk, furniture dominated the entire lobby space. I watched him walk back and forth before I moved past the curtain. He was wearing gray sweats and a gray T-shirt. Seeing him in normal clothes meant that he’d gotten his stuff from whoever had the key to his truck.
“Hey,” I greeted Kael. The Thai food Mali brought us for lunch was now jumbled with nerves in my belly.
“Hi.”
We stood there, enveloped by the thick smell of incense and the dim lights of the lobby. The old PC tower on the floor hummed between us.
“Is everything okay?” As I asked, it dawned on me that he might be there for a reason.
“Yeah, yeah. I came to get a massage, actually. I didn’t know if you had time or not.” He held up his hands.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Do you have time?” His voice was soft, an unsure question.
I nodded and brought my hand up to my mouth. I didn’t know why I was smiling, but I was, and I couldn’t stop.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I pulled back the curtain to my room and he entered first. He smelled like soap, and he looked so much younger without his uniform. I still couldn’t guess his age.
“I take it you got your stuff?” I pointed nervously to his outfit.
He nodded.
I clicked my tongue, not sure if he wanted me to press more, and since I was at work, the lines were slightly blurred. He was my client here, not my friend. Even at home, he’s not exactly my friend, either. This whole thing was so confusing.
“Well, I’ll give you two minutes or so to undress and I’ll be back,” I told him.
Kael stood by the table with his arms crossed. His sweats hung on his hips and his skin glowed in the candlelight. I couldn’t remember the last time I liked looking at someone as much as I did Kael. It fascinated me. He fascinated me. I didn’t know what it was about him, but he got more attractive every time I looked at him.
I moved out into the dimly lit hallway and took a deep breath. I told myself that it wouldn’t be weird. I did this all day, every day. He was just a regular client—a stranger, really. I barely knew him, and on top of that, I had already given him a massage. I pulled my phone from my pocket to see if Austin had called me back yet. Nothing. I couldn’t believe how much of a shithead my brother was being. I knew he was here and capable of texting me back. I texted my dad. Anything to distract myself.
I could hear Mali talking to her husband down the hall. Something about extending a hot-stone promotion we had going this month. She was always trying to come up with new promotions and semi-free marketing for their small business. It was impressive to watch her keep this place full of a steady clientele, even though there was a lot of local competition, with massage spas outside of each gate. Most massages were about forty bucks, some more, some less. Some sort of shady, some not. I tried my damnedest to bring her into modern times, but she still fought me along the way. I opened my phone again to check for a text from my brother. I couldn’t wait to cuss his ass out for not replying to me.
A text from my dad popped up on my screen.
Austin is okay. He’s asleep right now.
Not only is my brother ghosting me, my dad is the one to tell me that he’s fine. Fuck both of them. I shoved my phone into the pocket of my uniform. It had already been a few minutes.
“Can I come in?” I touched the heavy curtain.
“Yeah.”
He was facedown on the massage table, his head in the cradle, the white sheet resting right at his waistline. He was shirtless. Of course he was, he was here for a treatment.
“Do you remember what you liked and didn’t like last time?” I asked, out of habit, the way I started every appointment.
“Everything was fine.”
I ran my hand down his bare back. Rising goose bumps appeared in the wake of my fingertips. I shivered. I needed to turn the music up and forget that the client on the table was Kael, or I wouldn’t make it through the hour.
“Okay . . . so I’ll apply the same pressure and see where we go from there?”
He nodded.
I ran my fingertips up his back again, just like I did with every other client. My fingers were shaking, and I was almost afraid to touch him because it didn’t feel right to want to touch a client. Maybe this was a mistake. Should I see if Elodie would switch with me? I knew that realistically that wouldn’t work, and I also sort of hated the idea of her touching him. What the hell was going on with me? I was fine before he came here. We’d spent the whole morning together and I was totally fine.
I grabbed a towel and tried my best to go through the motions. The warm towel glided easily across the bottoms of his feet. He was wearing his sweats on the table again, the gray fabric peeking out of the bottom of the white sheet. I almost pushed them up a little so I could rub his ankles more thoroughly, but something told me not to. He was wearing the pants for a reason, and though I could admit to myself that I really wanted to know what that reason was, I knew that he would tell me if he wanted me to know.
I pressed my thumb into the pad of flesh right under the line of his toes and he groaned. I eased up and his tense body relaxed again. He rolled his ankle to get rid of the feeling. It was a sore spot for a lot of people.
“Sorry. It usually releases tension. It’s a pressure point.”