“It is.” It’s strange to be talking about this stuff with Ethan, but his questions seem genuine, his interest sincere. He makes me want to talk, to ask questions. “You know, I don’t think I know what you do for a living. Something with math? You showed up to Ami’s birthday party in a suit and tie, but I just assumed you’d evicted some orphans or put small mom-and-pop shops out of business.”
Ethan rolls his eyes. “I’m a digital identification planner for a research company.”
“That sounds made up. Like in Father of the Bride when she tells Steve Martin that her fiancé is an independent communications consultant, and he says that’s code for ‘unemployed.’ ”
He laughs over the top of his water bottle. “We can’t all have jobs as self-explanatory as ‘drug dealer.’ ”
“Har, har.”
“Specifically,” he says, “I specialize in budgetary analysis and breakdown,
but in simple terms I tell my company how much each of our clients should spend on digital advertising.”
“Is that fancy for ‘Boost this Facebook post! Put that much on Twitter!’?”
“Yes, Olive” he says dryly. “That’s often what it is. Mostly, you’re right, it’s a lot of math.”
I scrunch up my face. “Hard pass.”
He lets loose a shy smile that rattles my bones. “Honestly? I’ve always loved geeking out about numbers and data, but this is next level.”
“And you seriously dig it?”
He shrugs, lifting a distractingly muscular shoulder. “I always wanted a job where I could just play around with numbers all day, looking at them in different ways, try to crack algorithms and anticipate patterns—this job lets me do all of that. I know it sounds super geeky, but I genuinely enjoy it.”
Huh. My job has always just been a job. I love talking science, but I don’t always love the sales aspect of the position. Basically, I tolerate it because it’s what I’ve been trained to do and I’m good at it. But Ethan talking about his job is surprisingly hot. Or maybe it’s just the water, which continues to bubble between us. The heat is making me drowsy, slightly light-headed.
Careful to keep the boobage below the surface, I reach for a towel. “I feel like I’m melting,” I say.
Ethan hums in agreement. “I’ll get out first and let the therapists know we’re ready.”
“Sounds good.”
He uses his finger to indicate that I should turn around. “Not that we haven’t seen everything already,” he says. I hear him drying off, and the image of it does weird, electric things to my body. “The Bathroom of Doom sort of took care of that.”
“I feel like I should apologize,” I say. “You did throw up directly afterward.”
He laughs quietly, under his breath. “As if that would be my reaction to seeing you naked, Olive.”
The door opens and closes again. When I turn to ask him what he meant, he’s gone.
• • •
ETHAN DOESN’T COME BACK TO get me, and as soon as Diana, our new massage therapist, leads me down to the couples’ massage room, I see why. He seems to be frozen in horror, staring at the massage table.
“What’s with you?” I ask out of the corner of my mouth as Diana walks across the room to dim the lights.
“Do you see two tables in here?” he whispers back.
I look back and don’t get what he’s saying until— Oh. “Wait,” I say, looking up at him. “I thought we were each getting a massage?”
Diana smiles calmly. “You will, of course. But since I’ll be teaching you, and you’ll be practicing on each other, we can only do one at a time.”
My head whips up to Ethan, and we share the exact same thought, I know it: Oh, hell no.
Diana mistakes our terror for something else, because she laughs lightly, saying, “Don’t worry. Many couples are nervous when they come in, but I’ll show you some different techniques and then leave you to practice them, so you don’t feel like you’re being graded or supervised.”
Is this a brothel? I want to ask, but of course don’t. Barely. Ethan stares bleakly at the table again.