The Brightest Stars

“Leaving last night?” I clarified.

He nodded, swinging his long muscular legs over the side of the table. I was surprised they didn’t touch the floor.

“I wanted to be there with you, in that room, listening to you tell your stories. I love it when you tell stories . . . I could listen to you for hours,” he said.

I turned the music up a notch to drown out our voices. “The Hills” was taunting both of us. Raspy and suspenseful, the song fit perfectly between us, filling our silence.

I love it when . . .

“Then, why didn’t you?” I finally asked.

“It was a friend thing—” Kael’s expression changed.

“Friend?” I asked and it clicked. “Oh, you have a—”

“Not that kind of friend,” he said. He wanted to reassure me and that was thrilling. A line of electricity charged through me. “One of my buddies is having a rough time right now. It, uh . . . his wife called and I had to go over there.” Kael’s expression was stone.

I was confused. He was opening up, but I needed more. “So, again, if you were going to help a friend, why couldn’t you tell me? I would have understood if you told me—”

He cut me off. “Mendoza’s business isn’t mine to tell.”

“Mendoza?” I moved across the room, stopping directly in front of Kael.

He sighed. He bit down on his lip. “It’s not my place, Karina. I’m not talking about it.”

I appreciated his loyalty to his friend. Really, I did, but wasn’t I his friend too? Wasn’t I someone? Apparently not. “And that’s so far from the norm. You not talking about it.” I meant for my words to burn him, or at least make him sweat. They did neither.

He looked at me like he was taking a lie detector test and I had just asked his name and if the sky was blue. Complacent. Assured. Calm as fuck.

IT WASN’T EVEN NOON and I was ready for the day to be over. How dare he come here and complicate my life like this. All I wanted was a normal life. A nice job. A nice house. A nice guy. Other people had these things. Why not me?

I took a breath and tried to soften a little. But I was careful not to melt. Not in front of him. Not anymore.

“Are we done here?” I asked. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I still have ten minutes left.” He held up his phone as if to prove it.

“Fine. But you need to act like a regular client. This is my job and unlike you, I can get fired.”

Kael looked away from me and at the wall behind my head, focusing on the shelf where I kept my speaker and clean towels. Next to the towels, in a little wooden frame, was a picture of me, Austin, and Sammy. It was homecoming of freshman year and Sammy and Austin went together, their second try at being a couple. I went without a date.

Sammy and I were all dolled up for the evening. Her dress was a shimmery red with a scoop back. Mine, was purple, come to think of it. Purple ombré. The neckline was a pale color, almost mauve, but the color changed as the dress draped my body, moving from light to dark until the bottom looked like it had been dipped in ink. We got our dresses at JC Penny, but kept the tags on so that we could return them the next day.

“Fine. Regular client. I get it,” he said. He was trying to crack my shell, but I wasn’t having any of it. He shrugged his shoulders and lay back down on his back. This time I did what I usually did with new clients or walk-ins and draped a soft towel over his eyes.

I lowered the volume on the music and lifted his right arm. I bent it gently at the elbow, then pulled softly, and as I did the thick muscles in his back shifted in response. I worked my way down his biceps. They weren’t beefy in that artificial way, jacked up on supplements and daily visits to the gym. He was solid under my hands, and I knew it came from hard physical work. Army work.

I used my forearm to apply pressure to the knot just under his bicep where he had a scar that looked like an unfinished M. The pink tinted skin was puffy and soft. It took everything in me not to run my finger over it again. I tried not to think about the pain he must have felt when it happened, whatever it was that cut at his body.

The scar was deep, like from the lashing of a serrated knife. It made my heart ache for him. I slid my fingers down his forearm, the part of his body that was the deepest in pigment. He had a soldier’s tan, which was like a farmer’s tan, but worse because they were in the desert getting baked by the sun. I lifted his hand into mine and pressed my thumb against the base of his palm and held it there. I felt his fingers go slack and moved the pressure along the palm of his hand.

Was it only the night before that we sat together, side by side on my childhood bed?

I started to think about Mendoza, wondering if he was okay. He hadn’t been gone very long when Kael got the phone call. It had to have been only twenty minutes before Kael left, and if he lived on base near my dad he couldn’t have been home for longer than fifteen. I hoped he didn’t drive.

“That feels so good,” Kael said to me when I bent his wrists, pressing against the sides, slightly pulling at the same time.

“I just learned it,” I told him.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I saw a YouTube video and tried it on myself first. It felt so good. Especially for people who use their hands a lot.”

“Wait, you learned it on YouTube?” he asked me, lifting his head a little. I pulled the towel back over his eyes and gently pressed my palm against his forehead to lay him back down.

“Yes. It’s helpful.”

“You’re such a millennial.”

“So are you.” I laid his arm back to his side and moved to the other side.

“Technically, yes. At least tell me you have an actual license and didn’t learn everything on YouTube?”

“Ha. Ha.” I rolled my eyes back. “Of course I have a license.” I remembered it was his birthday. “Happy Birthday by the way.”

“Thanks.”

I quietly slid back into the treatment and even gave him an extra ten minutes. When we were finished, he thanked me, paid, tipped well, and mumbled a shallow goodbye like a good client.

The fact that he had given me what I asked for and I hated it, burned like bad coffee.

I WAS NEVER SO RELIEVED to be done with customers for the day. Mali had asked me to take a walk-in after that awful session with Kael. I don’t know if it was the mood I was in or if it was the client, but nothing I did was good enough for her. The pressure was too light, then it was too heavy. The room was cold, could she have two blankets, then her feet were hot under the blankets, could I take one away? And could I please blow out the candle because the fragrance was giving her a headache.

I made every accommodation and even tried to reason with myself over her. She felt like a test from the universe whether Kael could ruin my day or not. Somehow everything linked back to him and my imagination started to take her on, creating her life where she’s overworked or in a shitty marriage. Maybe I was the only person in her life that she could take her anger out on. Better me than her kids, or family, or even herself. I started feeling for her, everyone has a bad day. Even when she said my nails needed to be clipped … and then she left without giving me a tip. I may have flipped her off as she walked out of the door.

My one o’clock was okay, thank goodness. The walk-in after that was fine, too—a pretty young woman from the yoga studio the next block over. She fell asleep almost as soon as she lay down and her skin was soft, no tense muscles to work out.

Still, I was happy to call it a day and to be heading home. Thank God. Mali had given me some Ibuprofen, and that helped turn down the volume in my throbbing head. But I still felt like complete crap. I was anxious and annoyed and nothing was helping.

All I could think of was flopping down in bed with the blinds drawn and the covers over my head. I wanted darkness and quiet. But then I rounded the corner to my little house and saw him waiting for me on the porch.

My biggest problem and biggest relief wrapped up and delivered directly to my f

ront door.

Kael.

He looked nervous, sitting there with headphones on, a faraway look in his eyes. He was so distracted he almost didn’t see me approach.

“Did you come for a refund?” I asked, trying to keep it light. I wasn’t at all bothered that he was there. I wasn’t nervous. No, I wasn’t. Nope. Not at all. I was cool. I hadn’t let him get to me, not the way he thought he did. Not me.

“No refund,” he said, shaking his head. “I think we should finish our conversation.”

“Oh? And which conversation is that?” I was playing it coy and he knew it. Cat and mouse. You know, how adults foreplay.

“About meeting someone. You know, whether or not we’re dating, or not.”

“We’re definitely not dating,” I said through a forced, fake laugh.

“Well, what are we doing then?”

“You didn’t know earlier,” I reminded him.

“Neither did you,” he flipped it back to me.