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.