MY SHIFT THE NEXT MORNING was so long that I could barely keep my eyes open. It was toward the end of Stewart’s treatment and she was telling me about her upcoming move to Hawaii. It was a big deal for her—the promotion she’d been angling for had finally come through. Stewart was talking a mile a minute about her partner, about how optimistic she was about moving her small business to Hawaii. She designed these cute floral dresses and sold them online and in a few local boutiques, so her business was portable. Actually, she’d most likely do better in a beach town than here near the border of Georgia and Alabama, almost five hours away from the coast.
I was a little distracted while Stewart was talking. Every time I moved, I felt Kael coursing through my body. Twelve hours after that explosive moment and I could still remember every moment and every touch. I had barely landed back on earth.
“She’s going to set up one of those little shops right on the beach. She’s convinced she’s made for beach life,” Stewart winced as I applied my harshest pressure. She was always full of knots, but she could handle the pain better than most.
I laughed a little while she continued talking. Her head was in the cradle and her voice was muffled a bit, but that’s something you get used to. “I reminded her that we’re going to be living by the post, since we can’t live on post,” she said. The military needed to catch up with the times. It blew my mind that she could serve her country the same way as a straight woman, but she couldn’t tap into the same benefits for her family that a straight soldier could. Seemed like don’t ask, don’t tell was replaced by don’t care, won’t pay.
Kael once told me that he knew a gay woman who was on her deathbed in Germany from war related injuries and the Army never called her partner. Just her homophobic parents who left her to die alone. They hid behind regulation to get away with their horrendous negligence.
“I heard the on-post housing is really nice, but we did find a cute little house only a few miles from post. It has a small garden for the dogs. Speaking of dogs, it’s next to impossible to bring them to Hawaii with us. People are telling me that their animals were quarantined for months before they would release them. That’s a headache we’re still trying to navigate.”
I listened to Stewart talk for the rest of our session, but underneath every word, there was Kael. His calloused hands grazing my thighs, his mouth between them, spreading me open. Being exposed like that didn’t frighten me. The way he touched me, the way he looked at me, it was as if he found something inside of me, made it blossom. I begged for his mouth to suck at my skin, pleaded for him to hook his fingers inside of me.
My tummy ached, my body missed his. After last night, I didn’t feel so afraid of what was going to happen next with us. We didn’t have a plan, but we didn’t need one. We had time to go at our own pace and tailor this … relationship to exactly what we wanted it to be. Right now that meant spending each and every waking moment questioning the world together.
I found myself counting down to the end of Stewart’s treatment so that I could at least check my phone. I wanted to connect with him in any way I could. I needed to feel closer to him. Even just to see his name on my phone screen. To reread the texts he had sent this morning. I wanted to see the picture I took of us, lying in my bed with his arm draped lazily across my lap. His eyes were closed, a big smile on his face. Three more minutes. That seemed excruciatingly long. I didn’t think Stewart would even notice since I was already just doing a sort of cool down on her, gently moving my hands over her skin to relax her after the deep tissue massage.
I waited it out for one more minute and ended her session with two minutes to go. I felt a little guilty, but a little rush too. I grabbed my phone from the shelf the moment my hands left her body.
No new messages, but I did have a missed call from my dad. Well, that could wait. I didn’t feel like talking to him. The only thing on my mind was how Kael’s mouth tasted like his cherry ChapStick and how hard he laughed when I tripped over a piece of tile in my bathroom. We had moved from my bedroom to my bathroom, still not able to let go, to stop touching, stop exploring one another.
“Karina?” Stewart’s voice made me jump. My phone dropped to the floor, the picture of Kael and me open on the screen.
“Oh my God, sorry!” I hid my face under my hair as I bent down to grab it. “I’ll let you get dressed. See you in the lobby,” I told her, leaving her in privacy.
When I stepped into the hallway, I had to bite my lips to stop myself from laughing. Typically, I would fret over something like that. Even something as small as that. Was Stewart uncomfortable or thinking that I lost my mind? This time, my brain didn’t go there the way it normally did, until I forced it to. It naturally thought about how obsessed I was becoming with Kael and how big his smile would be when I told him about my phone mishap in front of Stewart.
What I felt for Kael was something between sweet infatuation and total annihilation. It was powerful and raw. He was fierce as an animal, and yet so kind and gentle. He was a bundle of contradictions. Every conflict there was. He had an animalistic nature. It was more secure and calm than the chaos of being on the verge of commitment. I was terrified because no matter how thrilling it was to immerse myself in Kael and the stillness he brought to my life, until last night my fears had made me fight against everything, even my own desire. As he slept on my chest, and again when he woke up in the middle of the night asking for someone named Nielson, then shouting Phillip’s name, I made a promise to myself and to Kael that I would confront my fears, that I would stop letting the terrible unknown control everything. I deserved to let go and live—really live. And he deserved the version of me who didn’t need to know where everything would fit.
And I was living, now that my doubts and insecurities had been lifted just enough enough to feel the buzz inside me turn from panic to excitement.
Was this what happiness was like?