The Brightest Stars

“I’ll keep tryin’ to call them,” he offered.

His fingers reached down and touched his longhorn belt buckle. He looked like he was already sweating and when he grabbed the massive rug from the bed of his truck, I almost wanted to help him.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll let Mali know.”

THE DOOR WAS LOCKED, the lights were off—even the hallway light that we usually kept on—and it was freezing inside. I turned on the oil warmers and lit the candles in the lobby and in two of the rooms.

My first client wasn’t until ten thirty. Elodie’s wasn’t scheduled until eleven thirty. She was still snoring when I left the house, which meant she’d rush through the door at ten past eleven and give her client a sweet smile and a quick apology in that cute little French accent of hers. Then she’d be on with her day.

Elodie was one of the few people in the world I’d do most anything for. That was especially true now that she was pregnant. She’d found out about the baby just two days after her husband’s boots hit the dirt in Afghanistan. That kind of stuff was the norm around here. I saw it with my parents, with Elodie … pretty much everyone around these posts knew it was a possibility. Not just a possibility. More like the reality when you were married to the military.

I shook the thought off. I needed some music in here. I hated silence. I had recently convinced Mali to let me play more relevant music over the speakers while we worked. I couldn’t handle another shift of “relaxing spa tunes” on repeat for hours. The sleepy sounds of waterfalls and waves got on my nerves like no other. Made me drowsy, too. I turned on the iPad and within seconds, Banks was washing away the memory of all that soft, dreamy babble. I walked to the front desk to switch the computer on. Not two minutes later, Mali came in with a couple of big tote bags hanging from her little arms.

“What’s wrong?” she asked as I took the bags from her.

“Um, nothing? No, hi? No, how’s it going, Karina?” I laughed and made my way to the back room.

The food in those bags smelled so good. Mali made the best homemade Thai food I’d ever tasted and she always made extra for Elodie and me. She graced us with it at least five days a week. The little avocado—that’s what Elodie called her baby bump—only wanted spicy drunken noodles. It was the basil leaves. Elodie had become obsessed with them since getting pregnant, to the point where she’d pick them out of her noodles and chew on them. Babies made you do the strangest things.

“Karina,” Mali said, smiling. “How are you? You look sad.”

That was Mali for you. What’s wrong? You look sad. If it was on her mind, it came out of her mouth.

“Hey—I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just not wearing makeup.” I rolled my eyes and she poked my cheek.

“That’s not it,” she said.

No, that wasn’t it. But I wasn’t sad. And I didn’t like that my mask had slipped enough for Mali to notice. I didn’t like it one bit.

TEN THIRTY CAME AND my client was right on time. I was used to his punctuality, not to mention his soft skin. I could tell he used oil after his showers and that made my job easier, massaging already soft skin. His muscles were always so tight, especially around his shoulders, so I assumed he sat behind a desk all day. He wasn’t military. I gathered that by his longer hair, curling at the tips.

Today his shoulders were so tense that my fingers hurt a little when they rubbed the patch of tissue at the top of his shoulders. He was a groaner—a lot of clients were—and he made these deep throaty sounds when I loosened the knots he held in his body. The hour went fast. I had to tap his shoulder to wake him when it was over.

My ten thirty client—his name was Toby, but I liked to call him ten thirty—was a good tipper and kept things simple. Except for that time he asked me out. Elodie freaked when I told her. She wanted me to tell Mali, but I didn’t want it to become a thing when it didn’t need to be. He was fine with my rejection—unusual with men, I know. Anyway, he hadn’t even so much as hinted at any attraction toward me since, so I figured things were okay between us.

Forty-five minutes past eleven and there was still no Elodie. Usually she’d text if she was going to be more than fifteen minutes late. The man in the waiting area must have been new, because I didn’t recognize him and I never forgot a face. He seemed patient enough. Not Mali, though. She was two minutes away from calling Elodie.

“I can take him if she’s not here in five minutes. My next client can be moved an hour later, it’s Tina,” I told Mali. She knew most of the patrons who came in and out of her salon; she remembered names like I did faces.

“Fine, fine. But your friend is always late,” she scolded. Mali was the nicest woman, but made of pure fire.

“She’s pregnant,” I said, defending my friend.

Mali rolled her eyes. “I have five children and I worked just fine.”

“Touché.”

I kept my laughter quiet and texted Tina to see if she could come in at one. She immediately responded with a yes, like I knew she would.

“Sir,” I called to the man in the waiting room. “Your therapist is actually running late. I can start you now if you’d like. Or you could wait for Elodie.” I didn’t know if he was partial to her for some reason, or if he just wanted a massage. Now that we were on Yelp and booking online appointments, I never knew which clients wanted a specific therapist.

He stood up and walked to the desk without saying a word. “Is that okay?” I asked.

He hesitated for a second before he nodded. Okay …

“All right—” I looked at the schedule. Kael. What a strange name. “Follow me, please.”

We didn’t have assigned rooms—not technically—but I had fixed up the second room on the left to perfectly fit my taste, so that was the one I used the most. No one else took it unless they had to.

I had brought in my own cabinet, my own decorations, and was in the process of convincing Mali to let me paint the walls. Anything would be better than this dark purple color. It wasn’t exactly relaxing, plus it was dull and dated the room by about twenty years.

“You can leave your clothes on the hanger or the chair,” I told him. “Go ahead and strip down to however you’re comfortable. Lie facedown on the table, and I’ll be back in two minutes.”

The client didn’t say a word; he just stood next to the chair and lifted his gray T-shirt over his head. He was definitely military. Between his solid build and his nearly-shaved head, he screamed soldier. I grew up inside army posts my entire life, so I knew. He folded his shirt and set it down on the chair. When his fingers tugged at his athletic pants, I left him alone to undress.

I PULLED MY PHONE OUT of my scrub pocket and read the first line of a text from my dad: See you tonight. Estelle is making one of her best recipes! I could name at least a thousand things I’d rather do, but this is what the three of us—sometimes four—did every single Tuesday. I’d missed only one family dinner since moving out a year ago, and that was when my dad drove Estelle in our family RV to the boot camp graduation of some distant relative, so technically I guess I wasn’t the one who missed it. They still had it, on their little family vacay, while Elodie and I shoved our faces with Dominos.

I didn’t respond to my dad because he knew I’d be there at seven. My “new” mom would be in the bathroom curling her hair and dinner wouldn’t be started, but I’d be there on time. Like I always was.

It had been three minutes since I told Elodie’s client I’d be back to start his treatment, so I pulled back the curtain and walked into the room. The lights were dimmed so everything was a shade of purple from the hideous walls. The candles had been burning long enough for the air to take on the clean smell of lemongrass. Even after my restless night, this room had the power to calm me.

He was on the table in the center of the room with the white blanket pulled up to his waist. I rubbed my hands together. My fingertips were still too cold to touch someone’s skin, so I walked over to the sink to warm them. I turned on the

faucet. Nothing. I had already forgotten Bradley’s warning and for the last hour, I’d managed without water.

I rubbed my hands together and wrapped them around the oil warmer on the edge of the sink. It was a little too hot, but it did the trick. The oil would be warm on his skin and he probably wouldn’t notice that the water wasn’t working. It wasn’t convenient, but it was manageable. I hoped that whoever worked the closing shift put clean towels in the warmer last night before they left.

“Do you have any specific areas of concern or tension that you’d like me to focus on?” I asked.

No answer. Had he already fallen asleep?

I waited a few beats before I asked again.

He shook his shaved head in the face cradle and said, “Don’t touch my right leg. Please,” he added the please at the end as an afterthought.

I had requests from people all the time not to touch certain parts of their bodies. They had all kinds of reasons, from medical conditions to insecurities. It wasn’t my business to ask. My business was to make the client feel better and provide a healing experience. It seemed like every time I didn’t have them fill out a treatment card, they had special request. Mali would scold me over this for sure.

“Will do. Would you like light, medium, or intense pressure?” I asked, grabbing the little bottle of oil off the cabinet shelf. The outside of the bottle was still really hot but I knew it would be the perfect temperature when it hit his skin.

Again, no answer. Maybe he was hard of hearing. I was used to this as well—one of the rougher things about army life.

“Kael?” I said his name, though I didn’t know why.

His head popped up so quickly, I thought I frightened him. I jumped a little myself.